I’m not sure how it changes anything. If you want to stream whilst you work on your computer, you can. All the streaming providers have a desktop interface which never becomes out of date or yesterday’s tech (until the provider itself goes bankrupt). The computer remains the most versatile of all audio sources, even if not necessarily the very best SQ…
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You must yes 
True but that is not computer audio… those are streaming solutions using encapsulated products…; ie as much to do with computer audio as a mass market Sonos solution is… which again is not computer audio…
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Computer audio isn’t dead it just smells funny (apologies to FZ)
I prefer a computer audio system with no IP network required. It works when the Internet doesn’t (quite often in these parts). Why be dependent of cloudy people when you don’t have to be? Companies like Tidal do not reward the artists sufficiently in my opinion and buying direct from the artist seems to be the best way to do this. Perhaps, it simply that with a large collection already that I don’t need these services, perhaps if I were starting out I wouldn’t feel that way. I do wonder though with the current state of the hit parade if I were growing up today, I’d choose a different hobby. Or perhaps Go and join a band, it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.
My network audio system works just fine even if the internet is down, even though its network also uses TCP/IP; it does this by getting it’s data from a local NAS drive.
I regard the term Computer Audio as referring to the use of general purpose computers (e.g. Macs and PCs) as audio players (whether using an external DAC or not). In this context I don’t think Computer Audio is quite dead, but the specie as a whole is definitely in decline, being out competed by dedicated audio specific players and renderers.
Just bear in mind, brands with a streamer in their product portfolio are still massively outnumbered by those that just have USB DACs.
Most people using streaming and real hifi aren’t using dedicated streamers.
Yes my Linn DSM does that too, but is also fed using Cat 5e from my LP12 (Exakt rather than IP). I play vinyl more often than stream (OpenHome over IP) through it. Upstairs, where the Chord lives adjacent to the Mac mini there is a choice of CD or computer audio using asynchronous USB.
I’ve not heard a streamer transport to rival my Mac mini. I did look, but gave up on the idea. The MM is fairly noise free, but can vibrate slightly so is best isolated from upscalers, DACs etc., (or they from it)
And me…well less so at the weekends
I’m not so sure about that. I think there are a lot more people using streamers, either separate or built into a powered speaker, than there are using a computer with a USB DAC. Many of these people may be using something relatively humble (by Naim standards) such as a Sonos Connect or a Bose all-in-one, but I suspect there are a lot more doing this than there are people plugging a USB DAC into their computer.
Ditto. N.B any vibration from mine is imperceptible. Fan very slow running, inaudible more than 2ft away in quiet room. But I have SSDs in mine - maybe you have HDDs?
But I haven’t compared with much- i know better than ND5XS as renderer, and indistinguishable from a Melco N1A, though admittedly only a brief comparison (through Dave DAC, Bryston amp and PMC Fact 12 in dealer’s lightly treated room.
Kids today!
My intro to computing was managed by this beast:
It’s a HP 2000.
I sat at a terminal like this:
The connection was over a dial-up phone line, probably at about 150 bps.
I’m talking mid-1970’s when I was in high school.
The funny thing is that the HP 2000 did make strange electronic “music.” Someone had figured out some programming where if you put an am radio near the thing, and ran a certain program, the interference would play as music (relatively random sounding electronica, but way ahead of its time).
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I still have a roll of paper tape from an IBM Teletype. It’s got some long forgotten Fortran program on 
Of course bits really meant bits as you spilt the contents of the punched tape bin and ended up with ‘bits’ on the floor 
Kids have no idea today [sweeping generalisation] but they should really, if you don’t know where you have come from it’s harder to understand why things are as they are. I know coding is now being taught in schools but surely it should be preceded by the a history lesson - maybe it is I don’t know?
Agree on the Mac mini. I spent a lot of time this year tweaking a Linux-box with linear PS, dual LAN, ethernet filters etc. Only to discover that tha mac mini sounded just as good and is smaller and nicer in general. I am going to try and tweak it in the coming weeks.
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I also started with a teletype with papertape on a Data General Mini. I had Basic and 2kword to play with. I wrote a queue-simulation program as my assignment in school.
That takes me back… my introduction to computing, at school, was using a distant
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Pdp-11-40.jpg/1440px-Pdp-11-40.jpg
I worked it via … which took a week to get the results back
Then later via an acoustic coupler and this … a big improvement, at least real time…
http://www.baudot.net/teletype/pics/M43-KSR-1.jpg
And occasionally after a 40 mile round trip one of these
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Mac mini 2012 with 256 SSD, music held on Asustor NAS and MM retrieves from there. Blu2 playing CDs often sounded better to me than playing through its USB port. I found there was some vibration from MM (not a lot) - moving it off my Fraim made the difference and now I can’t tell if its CD or USB Audio. Blu2 is the best USB to S/PDIF convertor I’ve tried and makes a huge difference to DAVE. As Blu2 DAVE is the best CDP I’ve ever heard than Computer Audio matching it is very pleasing indeed,
Another advantage of MM is it can play many different sources of music. When folk ask for this or that to be available, it’s invariably available for MM.
My Olivetti M21 from 1986 still works!
Nothing plays the Toccata in D from Bach better than thta (game: Paratrooper).
Is a RPi a computer?
We used a PDP11/44 at college. They accounts they gave us had few privileges so I wrote a login emulator…waited and along came a list of high level user accounts. 
And a week later we got a bollocking when we’d fessed up. It was supervised access only for a while after that. 
Printing took an age then on dot-matrix printers and you could sit for a long time waiting for other people’s output to print. I wrote some code to watch for gaps in the spool - basically attempt open the printer port for exclusive access and repeat until successfull. I never got sussed for that one 
Assuming you mean a Raspberry Pi then yes, it’s just a small form factor Linux computer.
Well, in that case, Computer Audio is far from dead! I use 2 of it to stream to my systems - wonderful.