2. digital
  3. 187218-178163

how does the app affect Sound Quality once streamer connects to the provider endpoint?

I am confused...I see many users comment on how an app [ roon, qobuz, spotify, jplay, lms, vendor app, etc] sounds better/worse than the other apps.  My understanding (excluding case like the software unfolding MQA) is that the app is just a user interface to access a site and present menus from which you can select music to stream.  Of course, if using a mac/pc as the streamer with USB to your DAC, then the app is responsible for the connection and sending the stream of 10101 to the DAC, but with a hardware system (streamer/network player) that control app on your phone or tablet just helps you make the connection (helps the player authenticate to a provider).  You use the app to change the selection, but again, the stream from the Internet goes directly into the streamer.  That app has no relevance to the 11011's coming from the provider.

Concluding: it's the streamer that is the source and the [local] beginning of the sound processing chain, not an app on the phone or tablet.  

dukebdevil

Showing 1 response by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
6,464 posts
 

Very complicated question if conflating methods.

 

Let’s start with the simple one. You own a streamer that does Qobuz natively. Like an Aurender, Auralic, or other high end streamer. In this case the streamer receives the music data directly to the streamer and you control what the streamer plays with an iPad or phone. So the iPhone or iPad is a “remote” to the streamer.

 

If you are using a PC, or iPad connected to Qobuz… all sorts of other options are possible. You could have the PC getting the music bits and sending them through a usb connection or through the air with Airplay to some DAC… this is a vastly inferior way of using the the service. PCs and Macs make very poor streamers.

The ballpark is leveled when devices (streamers) get Qobuz natively… and transmits to a DAC through a connection like SPDIF, or AES. In this case it is virtually always better than receiving the bits and retransmitting from a pc, Mac, or iPad. In this case typically a dedicated $20K streamer sounds better than a $10K streamer, which sounds better than a $5K streamer, which sounds better than a $2K streamer which sounds better than a $1K streamer, which sounds better than any PC, MAC or any other general purpose computing device.

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