Sound quality differences in streamers

@johnsmith55 

The logical fallacies abound from our friends.  “Anyone who’s compared a $400 streamer to a $2k+ streamer…”  This is called the “appeal to authority” fallacy, and it’s not even a good authority.  Note in my first post where I linked to a discussion where an audiogon member actually didn’t hear a material difference between a bluesound node and an Aurender W20 ($23k).  So I guess the full appeal is to “anyone who’s compared a $400 streamer to a $2k+ streamer and agrees with me.”. lol!!

I don't know, visit @mdalton 's virtual systems and you can see for yourselves that he's no dilettante.

Yes I get it even digital audio is susceptible to noise, ok fine. So I’ll put it to you this way: when I dove deep into streamer search I ended up with the antipodes Oladra. I had the opportunity and privilege to spend as much time as I wished with it. I tested, tested, demoed, tested, and demoed, against my personal custom built pc. Same cables, dac, amp, cords, conditioners, volume settings, everything even balanced so as to make the testing process evenly balanced, no advantages or disadvantages on either device all ending to the tail of the chain to my Susvara. After weeks of testing, late nights, gallons of coffee and my favorite playlist consisting of 490 tracks coming out of roon, being mesmerized how sublime, beautiful, pleasant, and powerful emotional everything sounded. My findings were the Oladra sounded a 10/10, my custom pc 9.9/10 😁. Enjoy the 🎶.

Susvara —> Viva Solista —> Fidelice RN Dac —> Oladra / custom PC

The logical fallacies abound from our friends.  “Anyone who’s compared a $400 streamer to a $2k+ streamer…”  This is called the “appeal to authority” fallacy, and it’s not even a good authority.

@mdalton  No, it’s called most of are capable of using our ears and can easily hear the improvements better and/or more expensive streamers can provide despite you not being able to and despite your one example of an audiogon member who apparently can’t either.  We get it, you’re a streamer denier despite trying to say you’re not and you’re in the vast, vast  minority here but obviously the majority of us are just deluding ourselves.  Rrrriiiiiiight.  But you just keep tilting at windmills and we’ll just keep making decisions based on our ears. 

Audiophiles who own more expensive streamers are generally no longer comparing these to the affordable, they've moved past that. Vast majority are comparing expensive streamers, the fact a wide variety are purchased likely goes to show all expensive streamers don't  sound alike, they aren't choosing their particular streamer  based on some emotional attachment or bragging rights. Evaluating sound quality is what sets the audiophile apart from the casual listener, based on my experience listening to a wide variety of high end systems over many decades I've come to understand many audiophiles are very good judges of sound quality. Seems some believe they have golden ears, so if they don't hear a difference between streamers its not possible for others to hear differences.