Do I Need a Dedicated Streamer?

@danb99 ditch airplay it’s not great

as to streamers - cheap ones will most likely not be an improvement. The expensive ones will be a waste of money if you continue to use Hegel’s inbuilt DAC as it will be a bottleneck.
If you’re not looking to spend a lot, try Roon for 30 days free (H590 is roon ready) with either Tidal or Qobuz or better yet both so you can determine what you like best. It’s completely free for the trial period. You can choose to buy a separate streamer later and 1) you will have a good baseline and 2) you will be able to compare.

P.S. Don’t use computer as a streamer via USB. It’s not optimized to serve as a network transport and you will not realize the potential of your gear. 

Forsure if streamingQuality a good LPS power supply to the router 

not$10 junk noisy wall wart routers come with , also a Quality Ethernet hub $600 minimum on up jays audio makes a respectable one with over controlledclock 

LPS ,and regulated power supplies , forsure quality Ethernet cables  and buy a quality dac ,the Under $2k Denafrips pontus 2 12th is much better ,sounding 

you also need quality cables minimum at least $500to over$1k each including usb cable and power cords ,my friend owns a 590 Hegel and that’s the dac he bought 

I totally agree and a quality streamera must for best sound .

hegelsNew 600iheardis muchbetter acrossthe board ,Thst has its own LPS power supply ,better dac ,as well as amp preamp section, youcan get away with a streamer with that but the LPS for router , good cables and power cords and 

quality Ethernet hub still apply , No short cuts being an Audiophile if you want the best quality sound .

Short version

Hard wired streamer.

Lose AirPlay 2 use and app the runs a streamer.

Read @audioman58 & @audphile1 and others offering the same advice above. Loved the soup analogy!

Poke around these fora and there’s great info to be gleaned.

we are streaming experts and have sold and tested most of the major brands

we started with Aurlic then Lumin the Aurender then Innous

Our first hookups were both a laptop and desktop usb out to our dacs]

the dedicated devices all sounded better and the servers especially the Innous produced the most musical results..

Long story short we discovered the 432EVO music servers from Belgium and started Importing them and they were even better and offered a modular upgradable platform our clients loved.

2023 Editors' Choice: Best Music Servers Under $10,000 - The Absolute Sound

from the review:

A ho-hum laptop with file-management software installed isn’t going to get you to the point to which digital playback has advanced in 2022. There are a host of decisions to be made to optimize the process of turning stored or streamed data into music and the 432 EVO servers present these choices in a way that helps assure the best possible results. In short order, even the most obsessive enthusiast will stop tweaking filter settings and buffer size and just…listen. Which is always the best choice an audiophile can make. 

Dave and Troy

audio intellect NJ

US Importers 432EVO music servers

"My experience has been strictly with the SPDIF interface, in which case streamer quality and jitter are very apparent."

Right. As I learned here, if the streamer has better clock than the DAC, connect SPDIF. If the reverse, use USB.