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Which personal confuser for ultra high end audio, MAC, PC, notebook, tablet or desktop?

Hello all!

Existing circumstances dictate the OS must be either Windows, or MAC, only.

My daily “lots of use” desktop pc is an 32 bit XP OS Dell that was used by the Spanish Inquisition.

I’ve made minor upgrades to RAM and HDD only.

I need a new personal confuser. I’m gonna get one quite soon. I need to know going forward which platform and configuration will serve a digital sourced front end best in 2017.

That is, of course, if there is still any significant disparity between MAC and PC OS with regard to present software, or hardware limitations or other concerns.

My barely used 4 year old windows 7 Dell 64bit box never has run Office 2010 right but does enable PCM file playback via Lynx AES Exp SC and JRiver & Foobar 2K and iTunes infrequently.

I’ve only had exp with Windows machines. However, I own Apple iPad Air II and iPhone 6 S. but I’m a pretty quick study so adapting to a new OS ought not be a big deal.

I do not have a working laptop and one would be a real aid for day to day situations as well as ripping and playing files, streaming audio playing videos, and so forth.

This latest ‘new’ machine will be a daily use computer for office oriented affairs as well. Email. Correspondence. Archiving documents. Data collection. Contacts.

I’m leaning towards a MAC, but not sure which way. IMac or Ibook? Both appear as semi portable and the Imac can sport a 4 or 5K display. The display isn’t a big deal for me bit the RAM and CPU needed to support the far greater resolutions of a 4 – 5K display would be nice IMO. Computer Horse power is always a plus.

The only issue I see with the iMac, is the thing itself. It’s a big display and looks like a problem waiting to happen when wiring it up or into the LAN and audio system.

I have a Synology Disc Station NAS. The plan is to acquire a versatile DAC for DSD and Tidal playback.

Am willing to add whatever else thereafter to achieve the intended goal mentioned above. Apps, additional hardware, etc.

Your experiences and Thoughts would be most welcome.

blindjim

Showing 1 response by ejr1953

ejr1953
895 posts
 
I have used a high-end Dell laptop running Windows10 Pro for streaming Tidal, recording my CDs to AIFF files with iTunes and to run Roon.

The key things with a computer are 1) the quality of the USB port and 2) having more memory, the speed of the processor is not as important as the amount of RAM.

Windows requires that you install a USB driver from the DAC manufacturer and Windows does not support DSD, only PCM and only up to 192kHz/24 bit.  I believe that most modern versions of the MacOS support USB, so no manufacturer supplied drivers are needed.

I have never had personal experience using a Mac to do my digital audio, so I can't say for sure if the USB port is of good quality, I suspect it is, as Mac's seem to be well engineered and not cheap to purchase.

If your USB port isn't the best, you can purchase an outboard device (like the Schitt Wyrd device) to isolate the USB ground and reduce the noise.
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