ARE SUPER EXPENSIVE STREAMERS REALLY WORTH IT
Folks I am confused why some streamers need to be so eye wateringly expensive. I appreciate the internal basics need to be covered such as a high quality, low noise power supply and a decent processor speed etc.. but that is not rocket science.
So my question is could a decent streamer outputting its data stream via I2S to a good quality DAC receiving the I2S stream be a more cost effective way of rivalling let’s say a streamer costing 5k upwards.
I have heard and digested the argument for expensive streamers quality being centred around the management of the data timing via a quality clock circuit but there are very reasonable in relative terms, DAC’s out there that have dual super high quality temp controlled clocks within, at least the equal or arguably even better than the say a 5k streamer with some sporting dual high end DAC chips etc.
So could utilizing a good quality streamer and a separate high-quality DAC connected via I2S indeed offer significant benefits and potentially reduce the need for a very expensive streamer.
I say this with the knowledge that I2S is designed to preserve and separate the Signals so avoiding the timing issues connected with multiplexing. I2S (Inter-IC Sound) separates the music signal from the timing signal, potentially eliminating jitter or at the very least greatly reducing the possibility for the pesky music killing jitter which we all could agree would lead to improving overall sound quality.
Wouldn’t this separation ensure that the timing information is more accurately preserved, even when compared to a high price streamer, leading as clean or cleaner and more precise audio data output. With I2S, the DAC can use its own high-quality clock/s to synchronize the data, which will reduce jitter and improve sound quality.
Could this possibly mean that even if the streamer has a less advanced clock, the DAC’s superior clock can take over, ensuring best performance.
So bang for buck would it not be advantageous to investing in a high-quality DAC and using a good but not necessarily top-tier streamer to achieve excellent sound quality without the need for an extremely expensive streamer. Surely the DAC’s performance will play a crucial role in the final sound quality.
Play gentle with the pile on please....................
All of your various streamers are just generic PC boards running a custom front end app on top of Linux. Theyʻre just computers dedicated to running that one app.
But go ahead and drop $5k on something youʻll be trying to unload for $1800 in 3 years. |
@soix Bits is bits. Thatʻs the beauty of digital audio. At the very lowest level of computing, all machines do is:
Everything a computer does is a combination of those three operations. The ability to copy data from one place to another with 100% accuracy is the hallmark of computing. If you canʻt trust a machine to do that, you should be very, very worried about your bank account.
When you stream music data from Qoboz, or whoever your source is, those bits are copied at least a dozen times between devices, routers, etc, over wired and fibre links (none of which are "Audiophile grade"), each and every time with 100% accuracy. Once those bits get to your streamer, they get copied and moved around 3 or 4 times more before they go down the wire to your DAC or such. And then you tell me that somehow, at the very last few inches of wire, the data transfer is NOT 100% accurate? |
@ddafoe What we hear is analog. We never hear a digital signal. Only analog. So when we are hearing differences, itʻs always in the conversion of digital to analog, or something farther down the audio chain. |
@soix So what youʻre telling me is that you can transfer terabytes of data halfway around the planet, transversing dozens of routers, going from fibre to copper to fibre and wireless with 100% accuracy routinely, but you cannot reliably transfer 10 to 50 megabytes over a USB cable? |
