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

@lalitk ,

That is correct. But what I am saying is that Windows PC is not necessarily a cause for bad sound. Devices need to be dedicated and optimized. Granted that general public will not be able to do that and hence should probably go with ready made servers. My server build was an ear opener for me.

@sns,

Let’s  agree to disagree on Windows PC customized for audio. I don’t necessarily believe that one has to go to Linux or other OS to get great sound. At least with my dedicated audio server, I experienced an amazing upgrade that I never thought was possible. I would think that only DAC upgrade might make a difference. But I do get the point that companies like Aurender, Lumin, etc put heroic efforts in power supply and hardware design to minimize noise.

@milpai I'd suggest doing trial with Euphony Version 4 OS for Windows platform. Run Stylus music player and compare with present setup.

Also you can add all music folders (data folders + music application folders) to your antivirus exception list if you use real-time protection.  You can still run scans manually when you're not playing music.

@sns Thank You for the suggestion. I am sure it would sound very nice. But I am happy with my current setup. I use Foobar2000 that is highly configured to stream everything (including Radio Paradise and Folk Alley) in DSD. Will keep this info in my back pocket for future.

"Excellent sounding streaming can be achieved with your PC in the right circumstances. If using USB, make sure your DAC has a good USB implementation and has Galvanic isolation. I’m streaming through Roon and Tidal/Qobuz and upsampling PCM as High as 1024X DSD with my Audio Holo May KTE DAC and HQPlayer. Even without using upsampling, it sounds excellent. You don’t necessarily need a dedicated streamer to achieve excellent streaming results! People who are telling you the PC is bad just haven't hear a well setup PC that had good results."

I can vouch for this exact setup. There is a bit of a learning curve with HQPlayer but no DAC can match the quality of upsampling/filtering, there is simply not enough headroom for the processing.