We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes

The analog output sections in DACS have a huge effect on the final sound quality of the digital sources. The quality of the transformers & other parts used as well as the circuit board’s & physical candy’s including their feet & isolation capabilities all can have a substantial effect on the final sound quality . This is all after the 1’s & 0’s have arrived. 

I was trying to make my original post both polite and sensitive to various points of view, but it seems I mostly tripped over my own feet.

My goal, or wish if you will, would be that folks who haven’t yet had the opportunity to educate themselves on the fundamentals of digital audio do so, so as to know what is possible vs what isn’t, and what makes sense vs what doesn’t, instead of slapping long-held analog-related beliefs on digital where they don’t belong.

I think it is emblematic of the problem when a clearly intelligent and learned individual accepts and propagates, doubtlessly in good faith, falsehoods about digital within this community and more importantly for themselves, those beliefs may lead them to make unnecessary and / or wasteful purchases.

A lot of folks seem to confuse digital files (made of ones and zeroes) with digital signal (the analog waveform representations of said ones and zeroes on transmission lines) and undesirable (but analog) noise that might travel along over said transmission lines.

Looks like a number of folks agree that the digital audio file that "lands" in your streamer is an exact, bit-perfect copy of the file Qobuz sent you, and of the file coming out of your CD or SACD of the same, assuming resolutions match and they originate from the same master.

In other words: Despite the horrors it traversed through AWS facilities, your digital audio file has suffered absolutely zero degradation or ill effect whatsoever on its journey to your home, explaining why audiophiles largely consider streaming equal in sound quality to traditional digital sources such as the aforementioned CD/SACD, local audio files on a NAS, or DAT transports if you’re into that.

Now, how would Ethernet gear located in the last 10 or 20 feet (aka your home) of that file’s 3000-mile journey somehow manage to compromise it where AWS itself failed?

Why would a simple $18 Monoprice Ethernet switch affect a digital audio file unaffected by a trip through hundreds of super-noisy industrial-grade switches...?

What can reasonably be hoped to be achieved by swapping in a $700 "audiophile" switch, all power supplies being equal?

If that $700 switch sounds better to your ears, I respect that, and I would prefer all the stuff about confirmation bias, sunk-cost fallacy, misery-loves-company, etc. be left out of this thread. It would be really interesting, however, to understand how a device that does nothing but send network packets on their way can favorably impact sound quality.

 hundreds of AWS’s super-noisy industrial-grade switches

I am curious what you mean by this?

respectfully, you can't draw correct conclusions from incorrect facts. I don't understand the point of this thread; I guess I am the exception and I will just stay away from commenting.

two issues might influence how your DAC translates everything back to analog.

Jitter coming from the streamer into the DAC. Yes, the file in the streamer is bit perfect. But the last meter might add jitter to which the DAC might be sensitive.

b) Common noise from the last meter might affect the DAC.