His individual experience is a fact. Now all the variables may not be the same for someone else, but given his chain, his observations are facts. That is why many experienced head-fiers list their chain in their signature or note it in their comments.
Dan Clark Audio Stealth Review, Interview, Measurements
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jlbrach
Headphoneus Supremus
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I have and had a TOTL macbook pro...the computer is meant to do too many things and isnt meant to play music like a server is...I am good with whatever anyone chooses to do but I think the consensus is pretty solidly in the direction that a server is better...but hey, whatever
What I notice for those who are critical is the lack of experience of truly testing multiple streamers, dacs and amps long term and the justification as to not get burned for purchasing blindly is to go with visual (not aural) metrics of a product's performance. This is just based on my opinion as always, and I don't discourage anyone who is not experienced with multiple gears to use visual metrics for purchasing advice.
IMHO, like what some have concluded, the easiest way to get great sound quality to feed any DAC is to eliminate noise that enters the DAC at any level and feed the best possible signal into it (i.e. the lowest jitter possible). I don't use a fancy streamer myself but I utilize this principle on a cheaper scale (my opinion of course) by using a short optical cable out of my AK SP2000 (Wireless Roon Endpoint) feeding the DAC. If you need high sample rates and DSD, the best way to utilize my principle IMO is to have an optical ethernet solution in between router and streamer or have a very stable wireless solution then you can finally use USB interface or I2S to DAC
801evan
Headphoneus Supremus
Yea PC, and even rPi with LPS playing Hi-Res is quite noisy still that a phone + TWS BT is quieter and closer to my CDT + OCXO + Stealth setup. 
You _might_ have to deal with a PC ground loop issue, or some noise induced over USB. If that's the case and your DAC cannot deal with it, either use optical output or use a galvanic isolator:
https://intona.eu/en/products/buy/7054/
Then you are done.
https://intona.eu/en/products/buy/7054/
Then you are done.
I think this thread is getting really cleaned up again throughout the day ,…
6PANDEMONIUM6
100+ Head-Fier
Personally, I found that switching from USB to SPDIF solved all of my noise problems. I'm not exactly sure what other problems people are trying to solve with dedicated streamers/servers. Other than the convenience of not needing to use a PC.
New release? You mean something from Focal?
Only the gods know that
NOMAX
PS.In any case, it has not been as difficult as this time for me in the last 10 years
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That should be good enough if you are not playing very high rate audio files as optical transfer rate is not as high as USB (assuming you need that high rates, which most often is not the case). I still would expect any decent DAC to properly filter / isolate their inputs. If not, they are out of my radar. My RME ADI-2 is connected to my work PC which should be massive noise source: It is a 24 core Threadripper processor and quite high end GPU. Even when working under load, with HQPlayer running and using a sensitive IEMs, I don't hear _any_ noise over the USB.
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801evan
Headphoneus Supremus
TOTL playback conversation that talks about 'noise' in the chain is never about the audible, but rather how it eats up the quality of the playback and adds distortion.
I talk about what I hear or don't hear, not what others gossip about.
My source for both of my dacs and amps are PC. D90se is optical and I have a Monolith 788 on USB and I don't hear any noise whatsoever. Streaming or local files.
Sometimes we just need a new thread:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dan-clark-audio-dca-stealth-impressions-thread.964573/
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dan-clark-audio-dca-stealth-impressions-thread.964573/
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