Streamed music sounds awful in my system and I don't know why ....

This thread has gotten a bit off track.
 

I have been an early adopter of digital since it’s inception… sad, I know… thirty + years of disappointment. Digital has been improving, especially in the last fifteen to twenty years. Today with careful choice of equipment Streaming >= CD or stored files and  can = vinyl. I am not saying a $10K digital end will sound better than a  $100K analog end. I have talked about it elsewhere, but very generally at the same price level, plus or minus 20%. My system does. You can see my systems under my UserID

Like all other things in high end audio your results are going to depend on your component choices.

Qobuz uses lossless compression. Meaning your streamer unpacks the files and buffers them to be identical to a locally read file. Like every thing in high end audio, better components sound better.  I am able to directly compare on my system between the two streaming / CD or other combinations and they sound identical.

The place to start is thinking about equal investments in each component. Streamer, DAC, preamp, amp, phono stage, and turntable, if you have analog. My streamer and amp a bit more expensive that my other components. 

juanmanuelfangioii

Our servers snound better then innous.

when you did your 

comparison was it vias usb on the statement? because via ethernet you would not notice any improvement

Poor PC gets blamed. I recently built a Windows 11 based player/streamer and play my music through that. There’s probably tons of background services running on OP’s machine that might be degrading his playback. Simple things like switching off leds on motherboard and not running any other process except music playback is what a PC should do. All the prebuilt music players like Aurender, Lumin etc only play music and that is how a PC should be “purpose” built. Fidelizer optimizes the services even further. Also don’t use WMP. Use a different software like Foobar2000, Audirvana, etc with AISO or WASAPI driver.
 

If you cannot do this with your existing PC, then get a nice streamer and be done. But folks need to stop blaming the PC. 

“Poor PC gets blamed”

@milpai 

If I recall correctly, didn’t you recently upgraded from a laptop to custom build streamer and couldn’t believe the improvements over your laptop? 

It is possible to modify pc and get pretty nice sound, with some research and a modicum of skills possible to get there. Greatest problems with Windows platforms, Windows OS and power supplies. Even the Windows optimizing OS software doesn't turn off all possible processing for lowest noise, HDPlex solutions can help on power supply, still not optimum.

On Mac platform power supply issues easier to address, OS is greatest issue with this. Newest Mac OS loaded up with many unneeded embedded apps (for a dedicated music server), these apps cannot be erased and maintain a functioning OS. Result is mac os noisy.

One could go to third party or Linux OS for both platforms, this will help. One example of pretty nice Windows computer setup would be running something like Euphony OS with HDPLex power supply. One could also have pretty nice Mac setup with Uptone power supply running Euphony.

Above setups also dependent on quality of motherboard, RAM, SSD, processor, etc. To be really top flight all needs to be optimized. So bottom line, you can get pretty nice performance out of this type of diy pc. One should always keep in mind all music servers are computers, use computer motherboards, implementation means everything. Both off the shelf and bespoke music servers are essentially custom builds, and both beat the general service computer. I agree, general service computers have no business in high end system.