What sounds the best to me, on my system, is NAS storage (I just have way too much music to fit on my core) and a core with a linear power supply connected directly to my audio interface (aka DAC).
You treat listening to music as though youāre in the control room of a nuclear reactor.
Awesome.
Fundamentally this thread should have stopped at " I am going USB directly into my Auralic Vega"
The Vega is optimised for USB and fundamentally immune to Jitter. It doesnt matter what you plug into it, itās going to sound the same. Save money on fancy streamers (and yes, i tried), fancy cables (yes i tried) and worrying about cores / laptops etc. The Vega will make all compatible USB sources sound the same.
This is an old thread, but I think the takeaway is keep the path as simple as possible, with some sort of galvanic isolation between core and DAC. A networked raspberry pi (and ropieee) works wonders.
Chernobyl ā¦
I know I have been offline for a while, sorry, health issues. I gave up on JPLAY. I just use Qobuz streaming, I have an i7 NUC and Roon Rock. Done sounds fine. JPLAY although it sounds great is not worth the squeeze.
Ok few thingsā¦to optimise things you should really run Roon Rockā¦as a super dedicated pcā¦that has no other processes operatingā¦then use a good quality psuā¦and donāt use usb as a connection its generally horribleā¦ I am going to try a powerful HTC ā¦ and see what I thinkā¦as its so powerful with 8 cores 16 threads other activity and or processes should not really upset the Roon Coreā¦we will seeā¦