Interesting subject, one I do not understand, but I try to have an open mind on. Here is my experience and conclusion:
- I used to just feed my PC into my DAC. Switching from using iTunes to specialist audio software did make a small, but noticeable improvement. No biggie.
- Switching from a PC to a macbook pro made little difference to sound quality.
- Switching from the Mac to a bog standard Intel NUC running Roon (sat on a LINUX operating core), getting its data from a NAS via a wireline ethernet network did sound a bit better, no biggie, but noticeably better. My partner noticed something had changed. Bit surprising to me given all those additional steps.
On the scale above, changing DACs was a "biggie", a really significant improvement.
- Recently I changed from connecting the Roon NUC directly via USB to feeding my DAC from a Pro-Ject streambox (which I think is a Raspberry PI running some sort of Linux system), which still uses USB, and this also made an improvement, of the scale of changing software on a Windows PC.
So this is where my head is now:
- Bits are bits. I can't tell the difference between Tidal via internet and CD rip via my NAS or via my PC. All the network trickery in my house seems to have no negative effect on the sound.
- DACs are having a big affect on sound quality, and they do seem affected by what they are being fed by. I think grunge/noise or whatever you call it is messing with the DAC. My dac is a 2QUTE.
- Something in the OS of complex PCs/Mac is messing up the sound a little, in addition to all the electrical noise.
So short answer: I would guess that a stand alone CD player would sound better than a computer. But I think a good streamer could equal it.
