Quote:
Originally Posted by W9TR
The notion that tablets or laptops are intrinsically inferior to dedicated end points is simply not true. The answer is ‘it depends’ and there are a multitude of interference sources in play when you connect any digital device to your lovely analog stereo system.
When you hardwire your mains powered endpoint to any DAC, you have a multitude of interference sources to mitigate. I think Uptone is doing a fantastic job building effective products that mitigate this type of noise.
This is the frontier of excellent digital playback and deserves more airtime.
Tom
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My technical background is weak, so I hesitate to comment--but my experience is that laptops are "intrinsically" inferior to dedicated purpose-built servers. That's why there's a cottage industry dedicated to mitigating their shortcomings--Uptone, as you mentioned, is a great part of this.
I messed around for years tweaking a Mac Mini via USB with various software fixes and add-on products, then noticed a marked improvement in switching to a Naim Uniti Core via S/PDIF. (Thanks to this thread I now understand part of the improvement was the linear power supply.)
My take is that if you're just starting out with computer audio, and you have a spare computer, that's great. But if you are in for the long haul, standard PCs are a false economy.