Are all streamers the same?


Dogma says they’re all the same. Experience suggests otherwise. Price may or may not be guide. Are there solid tech reasons such as bleed of noise into the digital signal? What does “it’s all about the ‘implementation’”really mean? How come power cords and interconnects make a difference? For example, there are numerous USB cords that separate the power from the signal cables to minimize interference and noise transference.

Why don’t we have an accepted science of audio, as yet? Where’s the research compilation esp at textbook level? Yes I’m happy just listening and using my ears and my biases to make judgments; no problem.

Yet I continue to see dogma, from the USA and Europe, indeed everywhere, that remains steadfast in their disbelief in variances. It becomes tiresome at times. But hey what do I care? Lol, my pursuit of fidelity and knowledge remain equally strong.

128x128johnread57

Showing 2 responses by jji666

Some have nicer displays.

On a more serious note, I think the conversation has to be split between servers and such and the device that is actually connected to the DAC (or has the DAC in it). 

For example, Roon recommends one box acting as the server, decoding the audio, doing DSP, running the user interface, etc., and a separate, much quieter box that only takes the decoded audio stream from the network and passes it to the DAC. 

Getting to an adjacent topic, but yes, there is little logic in thinking that, as long as the server device has sufficient processing power, that the packet stream across the network to the rendering device could be any different.  That's the beauty of Roon's configuration. 

I would also agree that DACs can sound different and that different inputs on a DAC may sound different (optical vs coax vs USB etc.) albeit I think a bigger influence is the analog implementation of a DAC.  Thus, playing around with different configurations may result in something more pleasing.