The Emperor Has No Clothes!!

I replaced all the solid state components in my car with tubes.  The road is so much more liquid and smooth now, but man when a tube blows, you gotta hope you're not on the highway. 

But why treat people with disdain for enjoying their systems?

Sometimes it is truly disdain, other times it's in the eye of the beholder - i.e. people take offense when none was intended. Depends on whether it's actually an ad hominem attack or just being presented with a contrary viewpoint.  The former is below the belt, the latter should be something that can start a civil conversation.

 Yes, I like the Original series the best.  

We can definitely be friends.  There's nothing like the chemistry of the TOS crew.

Confirmation bias, your brain playing tricks on you…all these standard lines are used by those who either 1) can’t hear; 2) never heard and have no experience, and 3) can’t afford to own

And this is the standard line used in response to allegations of confirmation bias. #3 is especially obnoxious -- "your system is not resolving enough."

It really does no good to have this debate in a macro sense. Each individual tweak, type of gear, etc., has its own likelihood (or lack thereof) in influencing sound.

There are CDPs that use tubes ; is it really nuts for a streamer to do the same.

CD players that use tubes include the analog stage of the DAC. That may influence sound. A pure streamer takes the PCM stream (packetized) from the LAN port and outputs it via USB or SPDIF (or other). There’s no analog stage. Putting tubes in an entirely digital data processing device is beyond silly. If it affected sound at all, it would likely be detrimental since a tube is more sensitive than solid state to many electrical issues that theoretically could affect a streamer.

The introduction of the Aurender streamer into my system introduced a very natural and sweet tone that reminds of good tube gear

Let’s break this down: (1) if used as a server only (with another device - a streamer --  on the other end of the network attached to a DAC/with an internal DAC) then the server cannot possibly affect sound quality except as to DSP processing or similar - i.e. the bit perfect signal received by the streamer is the same no matter what machine is transmitting that signal across the network; (2) if used as a server/streamer, then yes, it can theoretically affect sound quality, but only in the sense that the theory goes that the processing at the server end can be electrically noisy and detrimentally affect sound - so a really well designed server *might* be able to avoid some of that, but most likely using a server/streamer combo device isn’t optimizing sound quality if it makes a difference at all. It’s possible you like sub-optimized sound, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

it’s stuff like this that make all of us the deserving objects of ridicule from our non- audiophile friends.

I think the point here is that audiophiles look silly putting rocks on their speakers, using directional colored fuses, and making claims about digital networks that make no sense to the experts that really know how they work. Then the anger and ganging up that occurs when someone makes a point using science and engineering just exacerbates this.

I am a big proponent of being open minded and considering anything, at least for a minute. But you still do have to engage the logical/science part of your brain at some point. Science hasn’t explained everything yet. So observation has its place in starting a thought process. But that also doesn’t mean that network gear has magical qualities that literally cannot exist given how networks work.

All of that said, I don’t know that I would have started a thread just to make fun of someone. I think a response in that thread that explained the science and engineering behind the server-streamer concept would have been sufficient.

Once you grow up

The irony!  

Let’s just agree to disagree. 

This is a good step towards mutual respect and a civil discussion (or lack of any discussion) but I suggest it needs to come with the caveat that if someone makes an unqualified statement (i.e. doesn't portray it as an opinion or experience and rather as a fact) that is contrary to science and engineering, that it's fair for others to chime in and say that it's not supported by science or engineering (perhaps best in a non-mocking tone). 

You don’t seem to like servers and streamers and you are convinced they all sound the same.

I can't speak for mdalton but I love both and have built many as a hobby in excess of what I really need. I've also bought them.

I think it's important to differentiate between the server role and the streamer role even if there are combo units.  The server sends digital audio, the streamer receives it and passes it on to a DAC (or its internal DAC).  

Science and engineering say that servers must all sound the same assuming identical software configuration. Streamers can theoretically be different, but in this day and age it takes a poorly built DAC to be sensitive to the theoretical differences (i.e. cannot reject electrical noise if there even is any). 

What I mostly rail against, trying to be respectful, is the server/streamer combo unit. If someone likes the convenience of the specialized software on those units, that's fine, and if someone is interested in units built like a tank for reliability or longevity, that is fine. Or if someone wants a fancy unit because they want the Porsche of audio, bling, that is fine. I have done my fair share of conspicuous consumption. 

But building out a server/streamer combo with the idea that it will sound best because of all the effort to isolate/insulate against electrical noise, that's a waste of effort and money, because you can get the same isolation and insulation by using a separate server and streamer and isolating the streamer with the network.  So a $10,000 combo unit won't beat a laptop as a server and a decent streamer from a SQ perspective (albeit it may be more fun to play with).  

OK I've said my piece on this one.  Peace all.  Enjoy the music!