The music player/streamer, like say Squeezebox Touch, is a specialized computer designed specifically for streaming audio.
As such it is a special kind of digital audio source component designed to deliver good audio performance that can also be easly both physically and electronically isolated from the computer data source. That's usually a good insurance policy for a good sounding audio system because a general purpose computer is not generally designed to be used as an audio component in an audio system and may often prove to be a source of unwanted noise and distortion best kept isolated from a well performing audio system.
It gets it's data using a normal network data connection (wired or wireless) to your computer and then connects like other audio sources to your audio system. If you use the built in DAC the connection to the audio system is analog. Or You can use the digital output to an external DAC which then connects to the audio system. The DAC used will largely determine the resulting sound.
As such it is a special kind of digital audio source component designed to deliver good audio performance that can also be easly both physically and electronically isolated from the computer data source. That's usually a good insurance policy for a good sounding audio system because a general purpose computer is not generally designed to be used as an audio component in an audio system and may often prove to be a source of unwanted noise and distortion best kept isolated from a well performing audio system.
It gets it's data using a normal network data connection (wired or wireless) to your computer and then connects like other audio sources to your audio system. If you use the built in DAC the connection to the audio system is analog. Or You can use the digital output to an external DAC which then connects to the audio system. The DAC used will largely determine the resulting sound.