Point of higher priced streamer?

1. TCP/UDP and network protocols are only tangentially relevant to this discussion. At the end of the day, the one thing I think that 99% of us will agree on is that a streamer or network endpoint (roon or hqp or direct tidal/quboz) will deliver exactly the same bit-perfect digital audio from it’s *output*. How the data got from source/cloud/drives/whatever via streamer to the output is somewhat moot. All streamers are going to deliver bit-perfect digital audio output.

2. That said, while the *content* of the data is the same, the timing of the delivery of the content may differ for various reasons, something that manifests as "jitter" and could have subtle audible results. Could be due to network issues (wifi or ethernet), or processing/cpu issues on either sending source or receiving side. As @ironlung described above, this is dealt with in various ways between a streamer/network endpoint and a DAC, via combination of clock synchronization and buffering. Better streamers/endpoints will output with less jitter and thus make it easier for a DAC to reconstruct the timing with the most precision possible. Similarly, better DACs will be able overcome inbound jitter more easily than others. Things like asynchronous USB audio were also formalized in order to minimize these issues. At this point in it’s evolution, it’s questionable if jitter is really ever an issue, particularly to the point where it affects the audible end-result. Some still think it is, some don’t. As long as the protocols, devices, and network in use are of sufficient quality it should probably be fine.

3a. The remaining unknown is electro-magnetic noise and interference that might get ’passed along’ from a streamer/endpoint to the the DAC along the cable. In theory, this noise might affect the output of the DAC process with audible consequences. Indeed, this seems to be often realized when people connect DAC’s directly to PC’s/laptops. The PC’s have high-noise switching power supplies and other processes running that cause issues. This issue has been exacerbated by the fact that USB Audio, unlike SPDIF/etc, allows for a 5V power bus signal. So on most implementations, the USB connection is carrying not only the (bit-perfect) digital audio but also an inherently noisy max of 5V @ 500ma power. This power bus will transmit any excess electrical noise from source to DAC, just like a power cord may. And until recently, most USB receiver cards/implementations inside of DAC’s did not deal with this well or at all. This is why many, when doing A/B comparison, have felt that SPDIF sounded better than USB, all else being equal. More recently, some USB receivers self power and don’t pull power over USB and/or galvanically isolate the input to mitigate the issue. Just like one wants a good low-noise (linear) power supply for their DAC, they should also want a low-noise input. And the better the power supply on the streamer/endpoint the less noise it will transmit in the first place.

3b. Noise can also similarly travel along ethernet cables. So any wired connections carrying upstream/source data/audio to a streamer/endpoint maybe also carry some noise. Ways to mitigate this include using high-quality wifi, but as per above, may induce electro-magnetic interference of it’s own. Or using fibre optic instead of copper ethernet - which effectively carries only 100% data - and isolates any upstream noise.

My personal setup includes a cheap Roon core running on a PC in my basement which is then hardwired (via routers/whatever) to a Sonore OpticalRendu endpoint ($1000) via a fibre optic media converter. The OpticalRendu is powered by a low-noise LPS and has low-noise data input over fibre, buffers source data and clocks to provide clean low-jitter output. I then use USB to my DAC which importantly has a USB receiver that is *not* bus powered. While the noise issues may be overstated I sleep well knowing that I removed any potential gremlins and have not spent too much $$$ in doing so.

IMO, the ’streamer’ part of a digital audio chain has very basic needs and can be done on commodity hardware it if’s properly isolated from the DAC/endpoint. $4000+ for a entry-level Lumin streamer with a noisy switching power supply??? $10,000 with mainly off-the-shelf PC parts wrapped in a nice chassis with a 3 line UI on the front? Unless you really really have to have a fancy faceplate with the song name, bitrate showing on your rack ...

[for what it’s worth, I have spent the last 15 years designing/coding low-level protocols over both TCP and UDP for real-time financial data]

My more concise opinion is that

a) yes streamers can sound different but it’s only because they do a better/worse job of jitter and/or noise reduction. If they are intentionally coloring/modifying or unintentionally maligning the day itself then they are should be excluded from all consideration. (Amarra software used to monkey with the source data that some seemed to like).

b) and thus more directly to the OP’s question - there are much more effective and cheaper ways to deal with these issues than trying to do it all in a single highly overpriced box, which generally don’t do it very well anyways. And gain a lot of flexibility to boot.

@ironlung

A.You are talking about something different - upstream services/clients *intentionally* pulling a different resolution or transcoding/decoding to a different format/resolution/shaping/whatever. Of course the data output from those processes will be different. I think most of us know this. What I was talking about was that any streamer set to a baseline setting of not modifying a file and simply sending that data to its output, is usually referred to as “bit-perfect” output and will have identical 1’s and 0’s with the same source file/stream. Bit-perfect implies that the source data has not had a single bit modified. If you can’t compare two streamers in this same apples-to-apples way then it’s pointless.

2. With all due respect the file format stuff makes no sense. Of course a lossless FLAC and a lossy MP3 file will be different and thus sound different. And different file types exist because they serve different purposes - compression formats like FLAC exist to save space at the expense of encoding/decoding time. Most compression formats allow one to specify the level of compression. Even a zip file can compress the same original file at different levels - the result is that the compressed file will be different. But once uncompressed they will again be identical. Another aspects of different file formats are security and recovery. Regardless I assumed that this was a given to the discussion. I will guarantee you that any given source file that is compressed with any LOSSLESS format like FLAC or ALAC will result in an identical bit-perfect output from 2 streamers if they have no additional settings to modify said file/stream. (A stream and a file basically the same thing to an application reading them btw - they are usually wrapped in buffers and the underlying process deals with pulling the bytes off of disk or off an http stream respectively).

As for proprietary storage formats like Kaleidoscope, they do this to optimize the performance of and add features relevant to their domain. But the same source file will be bit-perfect identical when read off a Kaleidoscope disk or a ZFS disk array or raided windows NTFS or whatever. Unless they are intentionally modifying the data, which includes lossy compression like MP3 or JPEG or MP4.

@yyzsantabarbara 
Thank you for your response to my question regarding room correction. I will read the threat that you have pointed me to.

Regarding your suggestion of replacing the USB connection by optical to prevent analog noise contamination riding along a digital signal in your microRendu, it appears that an important enhancement to decrease noise  in the microRendu is to use a linear power supply to power it, instead of its original switching power supply. 

There is an interesting post in audio science review (ASR) which shows how the performance of the microRendu improves significantly when you power it with a decent linear power supply.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-review-and-measurements-of-sonor...

This just reinforces what I was saying earlier with respect to streamers. With given bit-perfect output, which all streamers are capable of, and low jitter levels, if they even matter these days, the biggest difference unknown affecting streaming sound quality is electro-magnetic noise and interference. i.e. clean power and minimal noise transmission on cables. Isolating the heavy processing upstream via optical will provide incremental improvements, but the biggest improvement will come from a clean power supply. Linear power supplies are almost requisite in this regard. And if you are using USB then having a DAC that does not draw it's power over the USB 5V power bus will also help. 

In my case, I found the most (cost) effective solution is to run the heavy processing Roon core upstream on the network, and then use the highly optimized and lightweight OpticalRendu to isolate the input from noise. With LPS's across the board of course. If you think that the optical isolation only provides marginal improvements then you could go with an Allo USBridge Signature or Digione Signature (SPDIF) as a network endpoint - superb value for those devices. Powered by the Allo Shanti LPS, which is also a very good value. Regardless, you are talking about roughly $1000 or so for a good network endpoint solution that will sound every bit as good (if not better) than a $10k streamer. I have done an A/B comparison of my opticalRendu + upstream Roon Core vs a Lumin streamer and the isolated optical endpoint solution sounded better. It's important to note that the Lumin was just being used as a streamer and I am not talking about their built-in DAC's, which are actually pretty good. But that's a separate conversation if one is looking for an all-in-one streamer/dac combo.