Hello!
I have a question about the sound quality I hear.
Is it possible I hear an increase of sound quality when upgrade from a slow and old Mac to a new powerful M2 Mac?
If yes… how is this possible?
Thanks! 
Seems pretty unlikely. We often hear differences that aren’t there when swapping in new equipment because we change our listening not because of the equipment.
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Maybe the new one has better USB ports, my very old MacPro sounds better than my newer iMac
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Unless you have a very poor performing DAC that doesn’t make much sense.
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True. But I cannot think of another objective reason (than my imagination). So to fight my imagination an Intona upgrade it is planned.
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I’m going for your imagination. Buy hey your money.
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now you got me thinking
but here is better:
This is not that difficult to explain. And also ROON says you need to have a certain level of device performance for the core to enable better performance.
So to sum it up: the more stress the device running the ROON core has (due to too little CPU, RAM, harddisk I/O etc) the more noise etc. it will create which is passed on in the chain reaching the DAC at some point.
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The OP didn’t even say that he uses a USB DAC. If he uses network to a Roon Ready endpoint, this is all moot and the answer to the OP question is a clear “No”.
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Roon performance as a function of CPU does not necessarily equate to sound quality. Search speed, DSP capabilities yes but that’s not sound quality.
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I know of ‘auto suggestion’ and thinking playing with better equipment equals better sound;)
I did not expect differences and I THINK I’d heard something better with the new Mac.
But it’s only ‘I think’ … I don’t know for sure;)
I cannot think of a reason why it should sound better? 
But I thought maybe there is a reason higher computing power results in (slightly) better audio quality.
I think it is 
Okay. And no… I don’t use an usb dac. I use an Linn network player as endpoint and therefore I can’t think of a reason why it should sound better using higher computing power
Yes, Roon says this in their website. But I’m curious about the reason why
Where does Roon say that increasing computing power increases sound quality?
No they don’t:
"We strongly advise against using older macOS and Windows versions than are listed here. As Roon’s technology continues to improve, older Operating Systems will not be able to properly provide a quality experience.
For large libraries over 100k tracks and/or if you plan on using heavy DSP and multiroom functionality, the specifications of your Core will need to increase to meet the demand."
These are about user experience, search time and DSP (as I said earlier), not sound quality.
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So in-between shutterings the SQ is the same (sorry, could not help myself)
Of course stuttering can happen, but that’s the thing. It stutters or drops out, but this is not what is usually understood as “SQ”. Performance doesn’t gradually degrade/increase sound quality. We are not talking about adaptive video codecs here 
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When stuttering occurs things are way off. Jitter and noise are well established problems that have a direct effect on sound quality.
@Jeffrey_Mudrick That’s unrelated to a worse performance on search etc as I have outlined in m comment above.