All I know is I went from a 1K streamer to a 6K+ streamer and the difference in sound is palpable.
Are streamers digitally enhanced?
I had a conversation yesterday with a studio engineer friend and I was telling him about the sound of my Innuos Pulse. He has heard my system with the Node 2i and was skeptical about how much difference a better streamer could make.
After I described improvements in soundstage and overall sound quality he remarked that it sounded like some digital enhancement, similar to a studio plugin, was part of the higher end circuitry. I offered that it was revealing, not enhancing, and he replied "how do you know".
How do we know? Digital circuitry is controlled by software/algorithms and these can't be readily seen like hardware. When new hardware comes out, reviewers can open the hood and look inside. But what do we know about how streamers or DACs are processing the signal? Is the goal purity or beauty?
- ...
- 28 posts total
To put a coda on this discussion, I spent an hour with Gemini as an EE professor, explaining the fine points of digital streamer design. It confirmed the primary of clock and PSU, but also mentioned another variable. FLAC is a lossless but still digitally compressed file that has to be converted to PCM and the quality of that conversion depends on both hardware and software. The lower tier of streamers use off the shelf computer versions, while higher end ones use specific chips and in-house specialized software to do the most bit perfect translation. Apparently few audiophiles are curious about the technology underlying digital sound. We'll go on for hours about tube types, but chips and software are somehow uninteresting. Personally, I find all aspects of audio technology fascinating. |
@mashif I, for one, learned something from the discussion, especially from your Coda above. I would only add that some manufacturers, like Auralic in my experience, will give the user the option of adding DSP functionality through configuration software options. Whether or not the default configuration also includes such optimization is still an open question for me. |
Unfortunately your “studio engineer” friend doesn’t know much. streamers that output less electrical noise in the digital output will sound better. adding a quiet power supply to a streamer (or a better power cable if it’s built in) will result in better sound. so will using a better quality USB or toslink cable.
|
- 28 posts total