Rebadging of Streaming Platforms

@curiousjim It was Andrew Robinson in a Q&A. But I have two dealers who also make the same point, which is their way of saying the DAC is more important.

Everybody jumps to conclusions about the original post, but nobody has actually answered the question.  I think the analogy that might best fit here is CD-Players.  Yeah there are all kinds of DACs, power supplies, and other things that go into the end product but most players contain a disc spinner from either Sony or Phillips (which hopefully your players manufacturer stocked up on to service their product as I have found out).

Yeah, the "magic" is in the implementation, but generally speaking the actual streaming board in any unit really is just delivering the signal to the parts that really impact the sound.  I absolutely don't believe this is a "low or mid-price" thing.  As two examples of brands that you can buy as stand alone DACs or with a streaming card added, it's unlikely that Weiss or Bricasti has developed their own proprietary streaming card.  I'm not saying that is a bad thing.

So back to the implementation question--what can you actually do to a streaming card to really improve what's being feed to the DAC?  And how much variation in units is possible?  Power supplies and isolation look like two positives.  It also appears that the only thing that really markedly improves the sound quality out of a streamer (not talking just 5% better) might be galvanic isolation, something akin to what Sonore does with the Opitical Rendu.  I'm sure there are others. 

So does anyone actually know who produces the platforms that many streamers use?  It seems hard to find (like they don't want you to know), much more difficult than finding out what CD drive mechanism is in your CD player.  

I've got a new DAC coming, just really trying to get down to brass tacks with a streamer that helps me get the most out of the DAC w/o paying for total BS.

@ghdprentice It's obvious that you actually have no idea what I think, just jumping to all kinds of conclusions.  No need to jump on the bits is bits defense, I don't think that at all.

I do think I would be much more likely to spend money on a DAC (up to a point) than the streamer.  I have heard differences, but interestingly they seem much harder to pick out the higher you go up the food chain (to me).  I asked a pretty simple question--one that I have had more than one dealer tell me, and no one actually seems to know--which I find interesting.  

I would be interested in demoing an Auralic Aries G2.1, the Sonore Ultimate Rendu and the Innuous Zenith MkIII (which I already own) against one another once my DAC arrives next month.  No way I'm heading north of those on a streamer though, I'll leave that for you.  

@facten I think that's the more on-point observation--none sound the same.  Picking out which is better is often a lot more difficult for me than noticing the actual differences.  It often seems they are trading one trait for another and it all comes down to what's important to each listener. 

@fittebd No, not at all.  

@oltmb Thanks, I think you got closer to what I was asking than anyone else.  I have a feeling there are two or three companies providing the streaming capability in all kinds of high end components.  Interesting that the image under HiFi is a Naim Uniti Atom and under Smart Speaker it's one from B&O.  $20 says if you pop the top on streaming Weiss or Bricasti you find something like this in there.

Unless you are talking something uber bespoke (on the level of the Grimm), I'm guessing most folks use something similar to the StreamUnlimited boards.