Sound quality differences in streamers

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.

@mdalton 

thank you for your well-mannered reply, mdalton; ) - my response is just to say that my post was indeed relevant to your fundamental point, which claims that everything that matters can be measured. I provided links to articles that say this is not true.

And just one other thing, you also claim that you’re ’simply providing an alternative perspective to help others educate themselves to make informed decisions’ - I would argue this is not true either. I persuade others to critically listen for themselves to decide, and provide links to help broaden knowledge. Your telling others and  less experienced audiophiles not to bother listening and learning for themselves because the ‘science’ and the measurements tell the full story, is not an alternative perspective nor is it a helping hand towards education and informed decisions - it is the basis of indoctrination and the very foundation of confirmation bias itself. 
I so hope you will make a little time to reflect on this.

In friendship - kevin

lol! We’ll just have to disagree on that.  I’ve provided my 20+ years’ streaming experience, links to discussions where multiple perspectives have been shared, industry resources for helping others evaluate products, and credible explanations for my and others’ experiences base in science and logic.  Pretty much the opposite of confirmation bias.