Hegel H300 still worth getting?

It's not the DLNA causing the problem. That is as stable a platform as their is.

The problem is elsewhere, router, switch, service, cables, etc...

or it sounds like you need set a larger buffer via audionirvana


USB from Macbook is total garbage and Airplay is even worse garbage and I say this not to be critical at all but to help you out.

Ethernet is by far superior to either of those. If you must use USB and many prefer this then do yourself a favor and pick up a cheap used microRendu and a power it with a cheap used Uptone LPS and it will be 1,000 times better but better yet iron out that Ethernet DLNA because Ethernet is vastly superior. Like 100 to 1 better. Good luck...   

Hegel is nice and a quality product for sure but it's a little laid back, I used to own the H30 and was always looking for the volume knob but you can kick it in the pants a bit with some super revealing IC's which helps or a AC cable with some pop. The Higher end Nordost stuff for example could work well if you like that sound. Don't use Cardas or the like or anything warm unless your speakers are super revealing then you maybe good to go as is. 

I had the intermittent transformer hum when I had my H160 and H360.  The humming would go away after a while.  I believe that's normal.  If it stays humming all the time, then it may be AC line issue.

@fsmithjack , yea I experimented with the LAN cable and it is better than using wifi. USB connection somehow is a bit sketchy when playing dsd64 files but is ok streaming Tidal/Spotify.

@respected_ent,Possibly its the AC. I tried turning off every thing but still the hum exists. Probably I have to get the Emotiva CMX-2, but I suppose there is no harm to the system or the sound quality?

i had a lot of drop outs streaming tidal from my laptop so I bought a music server, got my laptop back and no more drop outs. the h360 doesn't decode mqa so the highest res we can get from tidal is 24/96 still very good.