dac and streamer or seperates

Bits is bits.  That is the blessing of digital.  If you don't trust a computer to accurately transfer bits from one place to another, then you should be very, very worried about your bank account, because your money is nothing more than memory bits.

All the streaming  you need can be provided by a laptop PC, a USB cable and a USB DAC.  Done...  But guys like you have money to burn, so please spend it on foolishness.  

When you rip a CD to disk, you’re copying data off the CD. Do that 10 times and each file copy will cksum exactly the same. If it doesn’t then your data is corrupt. That’s what I mean by bits is bits. Call it a streamer if you like, but it’s still just a computer with a CPU, data bus, I/O ports and an operating system - most likely a Linux varient under the hood.

Data gets copied from one place to another, bit by bit. That’s how computers work. 30 years as a UNIX/Linux IT engineer in Silicon Valley doing mission critical projects is how I made my money. I do rsync backups from California to Hawaii and the data transfer are accurate. Every cksum comparison matches. EVERY one.

So the data leaving my laptop PC being fed to my DAC is precisely the same data being fed by your streamer to your DAC. Bits is bits.

It’s what happens to that data which is what you hear. It’s not until the data is being converted to Analog that there can be a possible difference.

@mgrif104 You write:  "Digital data travels in analog wave form. EMF and other noise is carried along for the ride."

So what you're saying is that you don't believe that the transfer of digital data from a PC to a USB DAC is inaccurate and that it is accurate from a streamer device?  Is that right?

If I copy a music file from my Linux laptop PC to any other machine, I guarantee you that the cksum will show that the file was transferred accurately, bit for bit.  I am in Hawaii and know that I can reliably copy data files over 2500 miles, across the ocean, and the cksum will show that the copy went perfectly.   

I fail to see why that would be different for a data copy to a USB DAC (which is also a coputing device in its own right).  Once that data is at the DAC, what happens is a totally different animal. 

Why is it that a DAC is incapable of accurately receiving a data file from a PC?  Why is it that data traveling 2500 miles across the Pacific Ocean is more reliable than a 3 foot long USB cable?

 

@mgrif104 @vonhelmholtz   Of course all of this discussion is rendered irrelevant with a system like the Dutch & Dutch 8c when you connect to it over a local IP network as a Roon target.  Everything is fully contained in the D&D 8c - DSP, DAC, active crossover, digital power amp...  There are no USB cables, no interconnects, no speaker cables, no cable lifters, no balanced or unbalanced connectors, no source clocks, no...  did I leave anything out?

I think the D&D 8c is about $14k now, but consider what you can spend on all those components as separate items, $14k isn't a bad deal.

@mgrif104 You write:

"I completely agree that the digital data received from a PC vs a streamer (a type of PC optimized for audio quality) will be identical."

This is where it doesn't make sense to me.  If a DAC receives the exact same digital data from two different sources, then why would it then result in a different analog signal?

Sadly I'll probably never get the chance to make the comparison you're suggesting.  Hawaii Island a backwater.  There are no audio shops here, let alone audio repair techs.  It's very rural.  Think Northern Idaho 10 miles from the Canadian boarder.  We're as close to the 3rd World you can get and still be in one of the 50 states.

@vonhelmholtz  I read through the link you sent.   It speaks about clocking at both the source and at the target.  I have to say I'm mystified as to why clocking at the source is an issue.  Data being transmitted from one device to another is broken up into packets which are reassembled at the target.  That's how I can copy a data file from a PC in California and send it 2500 miles to a machine I have in Hawaii.  Those data packets have passed through more than a dozen routers, each router having physical connectors, wire and fiber cables of unknown nature, as well as the data bits being converted from electrical signals to light, etc.  And yet in audio, people seem to obsess over a single 3 foot length of USB cable.

When copying a data file from California to Hawaii, the copied file is precisely the same as the source file.  Not almost the same.  Exactly the same.  I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the copy of a file from a PC to a DAC cannot also be equally accurate.  I still fail to see how the data received by the DAC would be different from a streamer than it would from a PC.

The first program I ever wrote was in assembly language on an IBM 1401, which had 16k of actual physical core memory.  The IBM 1401 is proudly on display at the Computer History Museum in Sunnyvale.    You could ***SEE*** the core memory in a cage!  There were these little wire grids with ferrite donuts that were the actual bits of system memory.  One of the things I learned was that there are really only three things a computer can do, and that everything else we see a computer do are elaborate combinations of these three operations.

1.  You can copy bits from one place in memory to another.
2.  You can compare bits in one place in memory to another.
3.  You can do a numerical add of the bits in one memory location to the bits in another location and then write them to a memory location.

That's IT.  EVERYTHING a computer does is combinations of those three operations.  And that's the beauty of digital data.   Copying data is done perfectly or it's not done.  The data transmitted to a DAC, which also a little computer, is precisely the same whether it comes from a PC or a streamer (which is also a computer).  When data is not accurately transmitted, it is corrupt and useless.

I can understand that clocking the data for conversion within the DAC is an important design element, but the data it is working on will be identical coming over the wire regardless of whether it comes from a PC or a streamer.

@mgrif104 The Dutch & Dutch 8c was originally conceived as a studio monitor.   As far as I can tell, EVERYTHING about it, and every component, have been optimized.  They have some of the most startling imaging I've ever heard, as well as a superb tonal balance, power, yadda, yadda.  

I have a vinyl rig because I first began buying records while Johnson was president.  Frankly I encourage newbies to NOT get into vinyl as I feel it is far, far too expensive for what you get.  I have about a dozen recordings in both vinyl and digital and feel there are things about each I like better than the other, but none that makes me want to abandon either format.

Just because there might be electrical noise on the wire is pretty much irrelevant to the transmission of a digital signal.   To quote another technically astute audiophile, 

"USB has error detection (in the form of a cyclic redundancy check, CRC, on each packet). It has no error correction as such - however, any packets with a bad CRC can be re-sent - there's plenty of time at audio rates! Yes, any cable bad enough to introduce multiple CRC errors won't work and should be binned."

Thus the data that is received by a DAC is precisely the same data regardless of whether the source is a streamer, or a Linux laptop like mine.  Noise on the sending end is totally irrelevant.  The musical information is 100% contained in the data.  Everything audible that you hear is what is created by the DAC.