Aurender

Like many listeners my early forays into computer-based playback were with a computer, in my case a Mac Mini. The results could be, and often were, surprisingly good. The ability to store music at and far above CD standards on a small device was also appealing. However at some point the computer itself became a limiting factor. A very poor quality power supply and an operating system that did music playback as an afterthought meant that the computer's main functions bogged down the resources and degraded fidelity.

Aurender was one of the first, and arguably the best, to provide a high performance solution. A small dedicated server with internal storage or streaming from a NAS, this uses Linux and is only designed to play back your music. It will also stream Tidal at or above CD resolution. These truly make a big difference in a good system. So much for once you go Mac . . . at least in this instance.