Sound quality differences in streamers

You know that nice feeling you get when you walk into an IKEA store? The warm smell of cinnamon wafting from the oven?

Except the only ovens in IKEA’s kitchens are the microwaves with which they nuke horsemeat meatballs made in Slovakia.

Many people aren’t even conscious of the cinnamon aroma being piped into the store entrance area during business hours, but it still registers subconsciously and they’re feeling just a little bit better for it.

Too many people hear sonic differences between different brands and price points of streamers to dismiss. Their ears are too well-trained (some of them, anyway) to explain away with confirmation bias. But, maybe they’re just hearing that warm cinnamon aroma.

@mdalton 

The human ear works in non-linear process, and can hear the smallest differences in the time domain too subtle to be accurately measured. In the auditory sciences, this is known as fine-grained temporal perception, or simply, ‘auditory acuity’. This does mean that human listening can be trained to hear nuance of timing difference that vitally impact how we hear the ebb and flow of music which resides not only in the notes and frequencies of what is heard, but the infinitesimal or broad spaces of time that separate them. What is vital here to to know that listening, as with seeing, touching, smelling and tasting, can be critically trained. Here are some references you can choose to read through - 

How We Hear: The Perception and Neural Coding of Sound - PMC

https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio-webdav/handbook/Binaural_Hearing.html#:~:text=The%20ear%20can%20detect%20a,milliseconds%20(see%20diagram%20below).

https://developers.meta.com/horizon/design/audio-intro-localization/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5819010/#:~:text=The%20fact%20that%20humans%20can,for%20both%20classes%20of%20stimuli.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207834/#:~:text=Since%20people%20with%20hearing%20loss,person%20has%20a%20hearing%20loss.

If you believe that jitter is detrimental to digital sound reproduction, you have to acknowledge that you don’t really know the degree to which it is so, since the threshold of jitter affecting the timing of what we hear cannot be precisely measured.

A streamer is basically a computer, and computers generate huge and incredibly small quantities of various sources of jitter. For you and others to say that you conclusively know the  threshold at which jitter cannot affect timing couldn’t possibly define confirmation bias more clearly, whether through appeal to measurements or an unacknowledged inability to hear subtle difference.

And I say ‘subtle difference’ not because the difference is subtle, only because it appears subtle from just one viewpoint. Learning how to listen is like learning how to ski - after all these years, the excitement I felt the very first time I skied Mount Hood in Oregon is no different from the excitement I feel about it today, forty one years later, and despite a completely different skill set. Imagine the beginner plowing on a groomer looking up at the expert flying down a black diamond - the beginner may be unable to see the subtle late initiation of turn, that tiny lack of edge control, the almost unnoticeable late transfer of weight. All that beginner can see is that of a small return past being that of an expert skier. Now put your mind into that of that advanced skier, knowing his or her weight is ever so slightly back, excited to achieve better flow with carving, through the offpiste, moguls or in perfection of that backflip. Every step forward, no matter how little, is no small return. You see, there is no end to our adventure, no end to what such endeavour brings. 

The law of diminishing returns only exists from a viewpoint of the beginner, not the experienced audiophile. While it is perfectly understandable that one is unable to proceed further due to financial constraints, it is not acceptable to heap scorn on those listening or skiing at a higher level of the adventure. 

This adventure of listening is the reason so many audiophiles resort to grandiose claims or hyperbole whenever they hear difference, it is due to the powerful effect that the ebb and flow of music has in us, and it is as much the pleasure in finding a piece of equipment that takes us up to a new level of realism, as it is joy in our having learned another skill in our journey of listening. Hyperbole should never be condoned, but it helps to understand that it only comes from the excitement of having experienced an entirely new facet in the journey of listening.

Finally, if you could take a moment and carefully read through my earlier post, note especially the bit which says ‘Mdalton and some others cannot hear much of the difference between cheap and expensive streamers to make the expensive ones worth their while.’ - i did acknowledge you hear difference, just not enough to make a better engineered streamer worth your while. No misrepresentation there, big or small. 

I hope this has made sense. Do excuse me for sounding snarky at the end of my previous post - it was not intended, but I realise came off that way, upon a reread.

In friendship - kevin

The point may be mute. You buy the streamer you like or the one you can afford and be happy. Same as cars, houses, or anything really. The ones and zeros are probably not important. If you are happy with WiiM... great. If you are happy with Bluesound.... that’s great too. Maybe HiFi Rose or Aurender that’s just fine as well. Lets all keep this in mind.... they are all boxes of wires, not much more than that.

Also the service and support is often absent from the conversation. It should be a factor since some companies are almost non-existent. You may find yourself needing someone to fix your fancy box of wires.

@kevn 

Sure, it makes sense, but is not really responsive to my fundamental points.  Jitter is well understood and measured.  And there are folks who know a lot more than me about the science who have done all sorts of tests on the limits of human hearing as it relates to jitter, and those levels tend to be many multiples above what most of the decent streamers we’re talking about measure at (some of them talk about msecs vs psecs).  And I find it interesting that none of the uber high end streamers publish any specs that I’m aware of showing how much better their products are than their cheaper competitors as it relates to jitter or any other noise measurement.  But still, that doesn’t matter either.  Because I’ve shown actual measurements that are essentially identical to each other at price points ranging from $1k to over $30k.  So even if you are hyper sensitive to jitter, if there are no differences between streamer a and streamer b, there is nothing for you to be hyper sensitive to.  

I guess you could make an argument that there are as yet undiscovered graviton and dark matter jitter particles that we’re not measuring, but don’t you think the manufacturer who has mastered their elimination would want to brag about it a little?  There are some very serious people who think jitter was largely solved once we became aware of it well over a decade ago - remember how the wyred4sound mod of the Sonos was primarily about jitter reduction (and upsampling, of course)?  But since it’s pretty non-intuitive for so many of us, jitter is still focused on by many of us as some mystical thing to invoke when we don’t really understand what’s going on.  

I love our hobby, and I love all of my systems, and how they measure has virtually nothing to do with that love.  I just think folks are wasting alot of time - and yes money - on an area of the hobby that has nothing to do with musical enjoyment.  And worse still (and this is what I find particularly irksome), they spend alot of time trying to convince others to make the same mistake for the wrong reasons.  

Unlike many, I am fortunate that I have the financial freedom to spend what some non-audiophiles might believe are silly amounts of money on new toys to indulge my passion.  (My latest silliness is a $7500 subwoofer with a custom finish to match my lovingly restored Altec Santiagos.)   So no, I am not “heap(ing) scorn” due to “financial constraints.” I’m simply providing an alternative perspective to help others educate themselves to make informed decisions.