Point of higher priced streamer?
mgrif104 Expectation/confirmation bias goes both ways. All devices were level matched. I went in a skeptic.I think that explains many audiophiles and that many of us are inherently skeptical. There was a time I found it difficult to believe that a cable could make a sonic difference. But my dealer at the time put a pair of Fultons in my hand and told me to try them at home. And so I became convinced. I bought an Aurender N100H as a more elegant solution to a Raspberry Pi, which I was using with the DigiOne hat. It was easy to A/B the two by feeding the same file from each into my DAC - the outputs inherently equal in level - and the difference was more than enough to warrant the Aurender’s cost. Of course, that’s a subjective evaluation; for someone else the price difference might not be worth the expense. I grew weary of the Aurender’s rocky software updates, intolerance of power outages and indifferent support, so I upgraded to a Bryston BDP-3. For a while I had both connected to the system and in A/B’ing the two I found subtle differences. Again, I realize it’s subjective for me to characterize the differences as "subtle." Someone else might consider them major differences, or perhaps hear no difference at all. Technical explanations for these differences are really just a matter of curiosity to me. Because of my own first-hand experiences, I tend to ignore those who insist that there can be no difference. |
