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Point of higher priced streamer?

Hello,
Assuming I have separate DAC, and I just want to play songs from iPad by Airplay feature.
In this case, I need a streamer to receive music from my iPad -> DAC.

What’s the point of high price streamer? I’m bit surprised that some streamers are very high priced.
From my understanding, there should be no sound quality difference.
(Streaming reliability and build quality, I can see it but I do not see advantages in terms of sound quality.)

Am I missing something? If so, please share some wisdom.
sangbro

Showing 6 responses by pc997

pc997
50 posts
 
The difference could be just ‘perceived’. There can’t be any. Unless someone tell me where the differences are in technical terms. I call this a ‘snake oil’.
Are the comm packets are different? One operating system is better than others (has nothing to do with sound Q)?
pc997
50 posts
 
Don’t waste your money. There are no differences in the digital packets. I built few pi3 B+ with hifiberry Digi based streamers. They are doing tremendous job streaming hi-res files from my NAS drive and internet.
Spend your money on the DAC, speakers, and room acoustics. 
pc997
50 posts
 
You need to compare streamer vs streamer using the same DAC. You will see no difference. 
pc997
50 posts
 
When you stream digital data over the network, the sender and receiver agrees in the packets and each packet are checked for completeness (CRC checks, etc), if not incomplete, the the packet is resent. Resending does not impact the flow as the stream is buffered. So there will be no difference between high end streamer vs something like $80 - $100 pi based setup.
pc997
50 posts
 
@thyname, there is no wall here. If you all so sure about a $5000 streamer (no DAC) being so much better than a $100-$200 setup, why don’t you also tell us how they accomplish this, so we can all be properly educated?
how do you improve your ethernet or wireless connections? Did you install ‘better’ cabling to your house?
how are the high end streamers making digital signals (yes 1s and 0s) so much better than cheaper setups? How do you make those network packets ‘better’? After all, streamers ‘tell’ DACs how to recreate the audio. They transport/stream only the instructions.  High end streamers do not provide ‘better’ instructions than low end streamers.  Instructions are the same!
I spend my money on speakers, passive crossovers, DACs, class-A amplifiers and room improvements. Just don’t want to throw away money unnecessarily.

pc997
50 posts
 
@Thyname, again, you are not giving me any technical explanation. Just subjective measurements. Streamer does one thing, instruct DAC how to create the audio.
Regardless, Merry Christmas. Enjoy the music.

this is what I have:

Streamer: Hifiberry Digi+ Pro on Raspberry 3B+ running Volumio (currently)

DAC: Rotel RDD-1580

Amp: Mcintosh MC-302

Pre: Mcintosh C53

Speakers: B&W 805 Maserati Edition

NAS: WD mycloud mirror 8Tb



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