We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes

... anyway, UDP is used only when latency is more important than accuracy: telephony, gaming, live sports. It is not used at all for audio streaming because latency isn’t that important, but accuracy is. Accordingly, both Tidal and Qobuz stream over TCP. Not sure what Spotify does, but no one cares.

Audio streaming presents a very, very light load in Ethernet terms, and error-free transmission is a given.

"Noise" and the so-called "jitter" are immaterial to digital-to-digital transmissions, and the vast majority of quality DACs readily handle noise and jitter before they can get to where they might negatively impact sound quality.

It’s probably safe to say that digital components (ie components whose inputs and outputs are both digital), and that have no onboard processing power, such as switches, routers, digital cables, etc. do not have a bearing on sound quality (again, all power supplies being equal).

Streamers, at least theoretically, should not either (digital in, digital out) but they do, or at least they can.

Streamers are computers in a pretty case, and even the weak-kneed Raspberry Pi-class CPUs employed by Aurender and the like have plenty enough power to handle relatively sophisticated DSP, thereby giving the designer wide latitude to transform the sound at will.

It isn’t that hard for DSP to make a streamer sound like a tube amp or, why not, a broken phone booth. Wanting to harness that power is understandable; what would you do if you made and sold high-priced streamers? Presumably, you would give your customers a taste of what you know they crave, just like the chef-owner who ladles fat and sugar in every dish up to just beneath the threshold of detectability. Pulling it off is a minor art form, but you don’t catch flies with vinegar.

DACs are half-analog, so of course they can make a difference in sound quality. So can upsampling, DSD conversion, and other signal processing taking place within the digital realm, but that’s a whole other conversation.

Personally, I believe system voicing is the job of the amps / speakers pairing. If any additional voicing is desired, it should be handled at the preamp level.

If every component in your system, including your digital chain - which should be absolutely neutral - intentionally dials in some level of euphonic distortion, pretty soon things become unmanageable. It’s like newspapers where every single writer is now a columnist whose important opinion on national affairs deserves to be heard, including food writers.

@sns 

So on top of Qobuz using TCP/IP protocol

I know Qobuz claims to use TCP/IP but to many people, and it seems to many here, the internet is synonymous with TCP/IP.  TCP is only part of the internet. I have tried to show that UDP/IP is equally ubiquitous, and that conclusions on accuracy drawn from TCP do not apply to UDP.

Qobuz also claims on their website that "An analog audio signal is composed of a sine wave" when they probably mean an infinite set of sine waves.  They are careless with the truth.

Streaming is different from downloading, which can be bit-perfect using TCP/IP.  The functional difference is that you can start playback of a stream before it is complete.  Nothing in the world can guarantee the future will be error free.

TCP/IP only guarantees bit perfect transmission after the transmission is complete, and cannot guarantee how long that process will take.

Qobuz is very tight-lipped about the actual protocols used, which are proprietary. It is possible that they make a stream up from many small files which are transmitted using TCP/IP, but nothing guarantees all future files will be ready when playback gets to where they are needed.

The Euphony article you quote illustrates this well:

The best way to do this is to preload the complete song to RAM before playing

It does not address Qobuz but the major streamers have the same issues to face:

We don't know that much about Roon's internal workings

My advice to all on this thread…. Buy a Rega Planar 3, a Schiit Mani 2 phono stage and some records… Problem solved, no digital variants to worry about. Try it, you may love it!

@devinplombier 

Audio streaming presents a very, very light load in Ethernet terms, and error-free transmission is a given

It is not a given, not by Ethernet.  Ethernet on its own does not guarantee packet delivery, nor timing, nor error-free status.  You need higher level protocols, which may operate over Ethernet, if you want to guarantee delivery and error correction. 

Ethernet timing is indeterminate, because unlike USB there is no central controller managing timing.  However, as you point out, it is usually fast, depending on the version.  Early Ethernet was under 3-million bits per second, though, which is not really enough for a CD let alone high res.  Ethernet does have significant overheads.

You might care to rethink your statement that latency is not important for audio. It is the reason streaming was introduced.

Also most Ethernet network components including routers, switches and gateways do include processors and do a fair bit of work on each packet.  They build up lists of Ethernet devices connected to each port and only forward packets to the necessary port(s)

@chrisoshea 

My advice to all on this thread…. Buy a Rega Planar 3, a Schiit Mani 2 phono stage and some records

I would say get a universal disk transport with HDMI outputs, and some SACDs, Blu-ray audio disks, 4K opera recordings and CDs.   You will always have your media, and it will always be as new because it won't wear out. Keep your fingers crossed that somebody will still be making transports if yours carks it!

Having said that, I have started buying records again ... but not if the music is also available on SACD!