USB Cable

No further affirmations needed! There are several folks here, who took the initiative to audition a high quality streamer over PC; heard the obvious improvements and couldn’t go back to PC as their prime source for streaming.

The 1’s and 0’s and bits are bits believers won’t understand the value proposition of a well-designed streamer. Just leave them be.

I am curious how many of these people used a fibre optic cable for the final feet just before the DAC. Something like a Sonore OpticalRendu or better yet a Lumin X1 with direct fibre into the DAC. Compare that to a million-dollar music server/streamer (or also called a computer). 

I honestly do not know, you can start a new thread and conduct a poll. Million dollar or inexpensive music streamer/server…they all have a processor at heart. The premise here is, a general purpose PC is not optimized or optimal for audio streaming. You can add fiber or filters as alluded by @antigrunge2 ahead of a DAC to reduce noise but a general purpose PC will never sound as good as dedicated streamer designed specifically to stream audio. Fortunately, there are plenty of decent choices out there at all price points.

What is a computer or streamer doing? It gets the bits from one end to the other. If it is using a guaranteed network delivery protocol, then we are not losing bits.

So, all streamers should sound the same, no they do not. The streamer device connected to the DAC does add some sonic flavor to the sound. However, my argument is that the optimization of a computer for streaming is doing a couple of things. It is lowering the noisy internals found in a computer and it is adding some flavor to this clean sound.

In my case, I say spending on an optimized streamer to reduce noise is an expensive way to this. A simple fibre optic cable just before the DAC (which is all that matters) will also kill the noise. A simple test with Ethernet vs Fibre on most DACs will show the difference. Now adding an expensive streamer after the Ethernet input and then output AES, USB, et al into the DAC should be as clean as the fibre I advocate for.

You spend much more money to do this but gain some convenience. That convenience will be very important for most, but I am very comfortable with this type of things.

I recently had 3 streamers that got the stream from a cheap DELL computer (placed in another room) that I compared side by side and they sounded different. This is the cream of the crop streamers:

• Sonore OpticalRendu
• Lumin X1 (sold it)
• PlayBack Designs Streamer-IF

The sound was great on all. The Lumin was louder, the Sonore was quieter, and the PBD was shocking to me. I have not been able to use the PBD with fibre yet because I do not have the PlayBack Designs Dream DAC yet.

I have been using the PDB with a Benchmark DAC3B via SPDIF input. That also sounds great. What I think is happening is that there must be some fibre inside the PBD streamer. The guy who makes the PDB is considered a digital genius. Using fibre would be a genius move.

PDB designs has now come out with a very expensive streamer. Let’s assume I am mega rich and can afford it. I would not buy it over the demo $2K Streamer-IF I now own,

@carlsbad2 Current high end streaming is supposed to be TCP from discussion on A’gon. I have no time to Google this to show proof. In the past I believe music streaming was UDP.

I have ChatGPT open and asked it the question.

 

Music streaming services typically use a combination of protocols for delivering audio content to users, and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is one of them. However, it’s important to understand that the architecture of music streaming services can involve multiple layers of communication, and TCP may not be the only protocol in use. Here’s how it generally works:

1. HTTP(S) for Control and Metadata: Music streaming services often use HTTP or HTTPS (secure HTTP) for transmitting control commands, metadata (track information, album art, etc.), and user interactions. These protocols are based on TCP.

2. Media Streaming Protocols for Audio: The actual audio content is usually streamed using specialized protocols designed for efficient media delivery. While TCP can be used for this purpose, some music streaming services may use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) instead. UDP is preferred for real-time multimedia applications because it provides lower latency and faster data transfer, which is crucial for a smooth audio playback experience.

   • HTTP Live Streaming (HLS): HLS is a popular streaming protocol used by services like Apple Music. It segments audio files into small chunks and serves them over HTTP(S).

   • Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH): DASH is another HTTP-based streaming protocol used by some music services. Like HLS, it segments content into chunks and adapts the quality based on network conditions.

   • UDP-Based Protocols: Some music streaming services use UDP-based protocols for live streaming, which can provide even lower latency than HTTP-based protocols. These may include RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol) and WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication).

In summary, music streaming services use a combination of TCP, HTTP(S), and potentially UDP-based protocols for delivering audio content. While control and metadata often rely on TCP, the actual audio streaming may use protocols designed for efficient real-time multimedia delivery, which can include both TCP and UDP, depending on the service and its specific requirements. The choice of protocol may also depend on factors like network conditions, device capabilities, and the streaming service’s architecture.

Well I have not confirmed anything, I just posted some data that seems to support what I am saying. You were making a definite claim that streaming is lossy (and thus  UDP), such as watching a live sporting event on streaming video.

I used to think that way too for music but I have started to think that streaming music (at least Qobuz and Tidal level) are TCP based, and thus guarantied delivery.

Anyways, I got to get back to work.