Anyone who says a cheap streamer sounds just as good as anything else hasn’t heard a good one or doesn’t have the system or ears to be able to tell the difference. The difference between a Wiim or Node and something like an Innuos Zenith or Aurender N200 is night and day, and if you can’t hear that level of difference, we’ll, that’s just sad. Ignorance is bliss.
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Streamers do not sound alike but stick with well known quality products these days and it’s hard to go wrong. Much harder than say with most any popular media format that preceded streaming. Dacs….also much much better for much much less these days but again each may sound different. Some quite a bit! Hard to find any good quality one (based on measurements) at most any price though that will sound flat out bad. I have a $80 portable DAC I use when out and about and it is very very good (as advertised). That is progress! DCS has a new SOTA 5 box 6 figure cost DAC. DCS has always been known for its cutting edge DAC technology and having heard their products I agree. Would love to hear that one on a system capable of delivering all the goods. |
S.M.S.L Sanskrit 10th MK II It’s the best measuring cheapest one that looks good in my rack. Cost about $120. My other system uses the DAC of my Paradigm preamp because it supports Play-Fi. Doesn’t measure as well, but still beyond the capability of human hearing. As to the you don’t have the equipment or the ears posts ... been hearing that stuff for over 35 years since I took my first two blind tests and saw the golden-ears crash and burn. Learned how human hearing measures and human psychology works. Read Harmon Kardon’s data and stopped trusting anyone’s opinion and started trusting the facts. And yes, DACs can sound different if the analog section is programmed to sound different. But that is a design flaw. You can see how this is done in the book Schitt Happened. The proper conversion algorithm was figured out long ago. I’ve programmed several types of conversions myself. There’s almost never a reason to deviate from the standard algorithm. Oh, and my "steamer" is $179 Windows laptop and a $30 Echo streaming Amazon Music HD. |
Congratulations @jssmith ! You have achieved musical nirvana…enjoy it to the fullest! |
@jssmith I didn't know that Dac manufacturers were using an analog computer for their output stages. |
@invalid they don’t. But you can still program it if you really try. |
@jssmith Thank you sir, I have a SMSL DAC as well (DO200) and it sounds pretty good to me. I am on the lookout for a DAC/Streamer to consolidate my system to save on space. |
@dunkin - I’m not sure if your question as to why so many were suggesting you switch to tidal or qobuz when all you were asking about was how a better streamer might give you better sound quality, but if not, it is for precisely the same reason why a truly good streamer makes a difference. Everything about sound quality begins with your source, and by extension, your source equipment. The ability of the computer that any streamer, server or basic iMac is to perform its processing well, if fully dependent on its ability to do that processing with as little noise created as possible. The most recent discoveries in digital audio tell us that huge amounts of digital noise/jitter/whatever is created with any kind of processing - while this isn’t a problem with the generally accurate transmission of word, drawing or perhaps interview sound files, with high resolution audio, the reduction to realism of these kinds of sound files can be huge. Some new and groundbreaking typologies of digital audio transmission are now so sensitive to processing noise, that basic 44.1khz sound files sound better than the higher resolution files of 192lhz and above due to amount of noise that the higher degree of processing creates. You can read more about this in relation to the taiko Olympus server, and their new protocol termed XDMI that has replaced the now ubiquitous and very compromised USB. In friendship - kevin |
@kevn Perfect. thank you |