Can I Improve Sound--Macbook Pro as Music Server?

Have you tried Audirvana Plus? It sounds different from PureMusic. You may like it better. It has a 15-day trial as well.

No, I haven't tried Audivarna. I'll try it.

Put your music files on a separate drive and use a firewire connection. (It's important to use a different bus connection than what your music drive uses). Max out you memory, 4Gb at a minimum. Only use non-data compressed files. Try Pure Music again and set it up for memory play with factor of 2 upsampling.

Onhwy61, thanks for the post/ I should have mentioned that I'm still trying to sort out CA and what you just said in your post is mostly a foreign language to me.

Optimize your Mac OS for music server

Reinstall the OS on a clean new partition preferably on an SSD

(this may not be applicable if you run the MBP as a multi purpose machine)
- disable spotlight
- disable IR
- disable Dashboard
- disable Spaces
- disable Energy Saving
- disable BT (and WiFi if you aren't using it)
- disable Time Machine

Use Audirvana Plus
- use A+'s System Optimizer
- enable Direct and Integer mode in A+ (should be supported by the USB-SPDIF device

If you are using a USB-SPDIF device like the Audiophileo, store the music on Network Server with a wired connection or use a Firewire/Thunderbolt external HDD (not USB).