Are streamers digitally enhanced?

To me, streamers are three to minimize noise and clock the stream as accurately as possible.  DACs can be there to shape the sound to your desire just like a preamp, amp, or speakers. Streamers should just get the hell outta the way.  But that’s me.  Those who say streamers don’t have a “sound” are kidding themselves, because minimizing noise and optimizing clocking IS A SOUND!!!  IT AFFECTS ALL THE SOUND WE HEAR DOWN THE LINE.  

Yes, there are high end dacs, streamers, that can "enhance" the sound with a dsp engine that’s hidden away. You wouldn’t quite know unless you had the engineering/software background, knew how to dig.

The manufacturer won’t tell you about it because the guy who’s buying it thinks he’s getting a purist piece. In reality, the purist piece won't sound as good, make his jaw drop, etc like the enhanced piece. 

Processing the signal is what streamers do. Just like “smart TVs” but just sound.    The nature of the picture on smart TVs tends to be somewhat different and discernible when compared  in each case.  
 

Anything is possible with digital including house sounds or anything a vendor determines might give their product a one up on others.  The end result is what matters more than how it’s achieved. Do you like it or not?  Plus it’s a black box.  You hear the output but how that is processed is not necessarily advertised.  Vendors have been associated with “house sounds” since day one.   Digital just opens up new possibilities compared to say a phono cart designed to deliver a particular kind of sound when used properly.  

If interested it’s  a fair question to a vendor though exactly what kind of signal processing their product does  to get best results either by default or otherwise.  
 

It’s more about “how” than “if”. 
 

I have a background in signal processing. If it were me I know I would be fully leveraging various DSP tricks in my product in order to get best results.  What matters is if the DSP is applied wisely or not.   The resulting sound will tell. 
 

I think that there are manufacturers who work to reveal and others who work to enhance. My guess would be that the better streamer manufacturers seek to reveal.

“Are streamers digitally enhanced?”

In simple terms - YES!  

“But what do we know about how streamers or DACs are processing the signal? Is the goal purity or beauty?”

The answer lies in the intersection of engineering, philosophy, and subjectivity in audio. That’s why high end streamers like Pulse embodies their designer’s intention and vision for listener’s values.

Folks like your engineer friend often approaching it from a strictly data-transfer mindset, not an audio-performance perspective. Offering an explanation to a skeptic is like debating color depth with someone looking at a JPEG on a CRT monitor.

That said, for the rare skeptic who’s open-minded, one well-controlled listening session can say more than any technical spec sheet. Once someone hears how a streamer like the Pulse can open up spatial and harmonic information without adding glare or artificial edge, it’s hard to go back. 

I don't see how a streamer could possibly alter the harmonics or tonality/tonal balance of an audio system. It is only the apps loaded into streamers that could possibly affect one of these two parameters of sound quality, music players such as Roon, Qobuz, Tidal, etc. and DSP engines.  To claim otherwise  is arguing that digital packets of 0 and 1's have inherent tonality/ timbre. I  also don't  see how any music player app or dsp engine can change timbre, timbre/harmonics live solely in the analog realm. On the other hand I do agree the apps and dsp engines could change the tonal balance.

Streamers sole impacts are in resolution, transparency and presentation, this why minimizing noise and providing highest quality clocking is so important. When people are claiming their streamer adds some character to the sound they are conflating the contributions of other parts of their audio system with the streamer. A high quality streamer simply allows the 'color' of the rest of the system to shine through. The color, harmonic texture comes solely from the analog components of system, the only digital component that can alter this is the analog output stage in a dac. No network or digital data processing component has a 'sound.'

...'digitally enhanced'....
'Ell, I'm "D E'd"....

A pacemaker/defib in my chest, and I wear aids in my ears....

Ask spouse, she'll tell you I'm starting to 'talk' like R2D2.....

I agree with your studio guy. If there is a difference in sound with a well engineered streamer, it is being deliberately introduced.

From Chat GPT

If the streamer outputs bit-perfect data and doesn't introduce jitter beyond the DAC's rejection capabilities, there should be no audible difference.

Most well-engineered DACs (especially those with good jitter rejection and galvanic isolation) will perform identically regardless of whether they're fed by a Raspberry Pi, a $100 streamer, or a $5,000 one.

In blind tests, assuming a bit-perfect, clean digital output and a competent DAC, streamers do not impact audio quality. Differences reported are likely due to implementation flaws, system noise, or psychological bias.

The DAC output parts would have a "sound"

Streamer isolation, power supply design, clocks make a difference if nothing else you can hear more of the music.

@sns careful, that isn't the dogma here... Apparently bits have emotions

yes, there’s a whole new class of plastic surgeons popping up in LA.

@mdalton  ~ and it’s changing the entire landscape of aesthetic medicine 🤣

To me it doesn't matter as long as it sounds good.  I've never heard a high-end streamer so I'm not sure what I'm missing.

Apparently bits have emotions

@kofibaffour Bits can be affected by noise and timing.  If you can’t hear the difference between streamers I truly feel sorry for you.  

@soix Fortunately I'm not plagued by the ability to hear difference between asynchronously timed bits over USB for a streamer so yeah I enhanced my system by the only ways that sounded audible to me. Do not feel sorry for me, I am content with where my whole setup is now. Can't get better. Can get louder though but I'm not listening from more than 12ft out so speakers having sustained 110dB SPL with peaks into the 120dB are not on my radar.

I hope not to get to a place I can hear a difference though cos I will obsess to the high heavens to find out why

I originally asked this question hoping someone knew more factual information about how digital designers program chips to convert Internet packets to a PCM stream and, how that might affect the sound. I don't know whether chips are just built to do that off the shelf or whether a designer has some control over parameters. I'm not asking about magic, just electrical engineering. 

For the moment, I agree with @soix that the clock quality matters. I believe the differences I hear between my coax and USB input are due to the streamer having a better clock than my DAC. That will eventually change. 

Aside from those streamers that advertise DSP, I am with the crowd that says streamer sound is primarily affected by clocking and noise and no manipulation is occurring. The absence of noise and the use of a high quality clock makes all the difference. And while I can’t explain it, the cable to the DAC can have a significant effect as well.

Why are you asking electronic questions to audiophiles. Especially on the internet. You don’t need to learn this material. Sure some blow hard will chime in, “ I was an ee for 64 years before my retirement 30 years ago. It’s fine that you don’t know this. It’s probably best to keep it that way. Your device is awesome. So much thought went into it. A thousand things changed with your upgrade, not just one. Don’t worry about the math and just enjoy that pure signal. Peace yo

@mashif 

No, respectable and well-engineered streamers do not use DSP to "enhance" the sound, any more than a respectable speaker designer would seek to "enhance" the sound beyond producing something that reflects how he or she thinks a good speaker should reproduce music.  Adding DSP effects is your choice as an end user, but would be considered poor practice by a high-end streamer manufacturer.  

What your studio engineer friend cannot grasp is that there's a tremendous amount of science that goes into sending a digital signal from one place to another and getting it to your speakers in a form that resembles music.  I can only assume that he's never bothered to experiment with such things.  Even the basic software involved can change the sound, without getting anywhere near added DSP effects.  I have several different Raspberry Pi-based streamers.  Apart from the different mechanical designs of each streamer, a change in the base operating system employed can change the sound.  Roon, Volumio, Gentooplayer, Audiolinux, etc. can all sound different because of the transfer protocols and adjustments they make to the clocking, CPU, etc.  Power supplies, internal design and cabling, and so on, can all make a difference.

I recently pulled out a 1980 CD of John Lewis's "The Bridge Game" and was reminded of how far digital recordings themselves have come since then.  For the first time in a long time I heard that good ol' blanket of digital fog that afflicted so many early digital recordings, blunting the transients, smearing the instruments, placing a dirty grey plate-glass window between me and the musicians.  Presumably the engineers at Philips thought they were doing a wonderful job at the time, but it's a pity that such beautiful music is marred by such a dreary recording.

I'm also reminded of a listening session that took place some years ago.  My local audio club was hosting a USB cable shoot-out.  No less a designer than David Berning was in attendance.  He thought the whole idea was nonsense but after several hours he left shaking his head and muttering things like, "It can't be possible."

Your studio engineer friend is surely familiar with the work of Keith Johnson of Reference Recordings, who has spent decades improving and refining the recording process to produce legendarily beautiful LPs and CDs.  He didn't achieve that by shrugging off the differences in equipment as tricks or "enhancements." ;-)

Another important difference between streamers not mentioned thus far is operating systems employed. Various OS have potential to affect sound quality via optimization of hardware, this means optimization via minimizing noise and/or providing low latency, this means speed or efficiency of sending data packets. There are many technical explanations for why streamers don't all sound alike, read some white papers over at Audiophilesyle forum to educate yourself.

It would be illustrative if someone or some outfit like the venerated or hated depending on your views, like ASR, could take a streamer, feed it a known series of data and then simply measure the digital output to see how accurate that output really is. 

Obviously, things like jitter, if the measuring equipment is good enough to discern it, can play a part too in how we perceive the quality of that output.  But do you REALLY want to know the truth, or would you rather be happy in simply accepting that you think one streamer sounds better than another feeding the same external DAC via the same digital input? 

Like the old Star Trek episode goes, "Is there in truth, no beauty?" or as John Keats put it, "truth is beauty, and beauty is truth". But you might prefer your beautiful girlfriend with a little makeup on. 

All I know is I went from a 1K streamer to a 6K+  streamer and the difference in sound is palpable.

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.
Though I have been unable to hear differences in coax cables, but haven’t experimented much with coax. 
 

@dogearedaudio

big ++ and 👍🏽👍🏽 for laying it out right!!

@sudnh 

I can assure you that both my friend and I have forgotten more about audio during our 40 year careers than you will ever know. But I appreciate you informing me that better components result in better sound. That’s apparently the one thing you know. 

@mashif lol I like this reply... their passive aggressive comment was weird. why did they put studio engineering quotations