Great answer
May I ask three additional questions?
Is Aneman and MAD also available for Mac?
As I use music from streaming services only (no Roon, no NAS) can I directly connect my Mac to HAPI (no switch)?
How big is the influence of the server on the SQ with the direct connection to HAPI?
Thx again
Matt
Sure no problem
Yes Aneman and "VAD" are available for Mac. They named the Mac version VAD compared to MAD for Windows. There are also Linux flavors but I have not tried it:
Merging Technologies repository of current software and documentation.
www.merging.com
Honestly I don't own anything Mac and have not tried doing so via a Mac but if I were to take a guess I don't see why you couldn't connect directly from Mac to HAPI like I do today via Windows. Probably best to call Merging on it if you are considering a purchase in the future.
Based on what I see in a Windows environment, I'm pretty sure I could use pretty much any source I wanted but my day to day source (90% of the time) is Roon.
The way the MAD Driver presents itself to Windows (as an example) via WDM makes it very easy to use various other sources as long as the OS "see's" the Audio Input/Outputs provided by the driver. (Youtube for example, or likely any stream source that uses the Default Audio device assigned to the OS.
I say likely because I cant claim to have tried every option but all the ones I've tried thus far work just fine. I would be surprised if most of the same didn't also apply to Mac.
I've never noticed any audible difference between the 3 music server types I have tried in the past. I've used a NUC, A Lenovo Laptop and my current, primary home brew server. All are/were Windows 10 Pro as an FYI and all had a physical NIC ports available. This of course is becoming more rare these days (ie..built-in physical NIC ports) but there are USB derived NIC's as well which I've never tried.