Do I need a streamer?

You don’t "need" a streamer, especially when you have not experienced the benefits. Carry on.

Most SQ improvements require an A-B compare for me to confirm. Not so when I hooked up my first streamer.

Night & day.

And I use Fildelizer.

@whitestix In case you didn’t catch this thread, there’s a wealth of info on it:

The key to good quality streaming from a general purpose computer is keep the “noisy” computer physically well away from the hifi gear by using a long wire to connect. Mine is a good 8 feet or so away connected by a long good quality USB wire and the results are very good, competitive with using the hifi streamer as the source. Also be sure to use a driver on the computer capable of doing higher res streaming. Default driver on a PC for example may not be up to the task.

As much as I read about music servers and streamers, I am still bewildered how they fit in my system which includes:

Don Sachs preamp & KT88 amp; Willsenton 300b; Wells Audio Innamora,VTV EVO1200 

Spatial Audio M4 Triode Masters

So the streamer does not have the noise that a computer does?  Does a Micro-Rendu clean up that computer noise?

I have ripped all my music to my external HD which has nearly 8TB of music on it.  Would my HD connect to a streamer?  I am unaware of any streamers or music servers that have that much internal storage, or do streamers not even have storage?

I currently control music on my iMac with Audirvana so how to I control the music if I have a streamer?   Do I still use Audirvana if use a streamer?

Thanks for your information. 

The OP is absolutely correct.  He is currently streaming.  Streamers are just networking computers made to look like audio components.  Audirvana is a program that enhances the computers ability to stream music.

  Why get a dedicated streamer?  They tend to sound better and not be affected by issues that computers have, such as the need to constantly re update the OS for reasons that are unrelated to playing music.  For example I was using an older MacAir with Audirvana for a while, but periodically Apple would force me to do an update that “bricked” my DAC.  I would have to call Apple support, they would blame the DAC manufacturer, and a few days later all would be well, but I never had that issue with a dedicated streamer.

  If you like the sound of your setup, and you don’t mind having your computer unavailable to you while listening to music, and you aren’t having networking issues, you don’t necessarily need a dedicated streamer.