What makes One Music Server Sound Better than Another?

That’s what threw me off. My bad @mitch2 

@mitch2 few reasons I can think of…start from the point if entry and power supplies. Better Ethernet isolation, better power supplies result in lower noise floor, better processors isolated better to minimize noise, better clock if you’re using coax or AES outputs, galvanic isolation and or reclocking before the USB out (de-crapofier).

When your streamer is also a Roon Core it has higher processing demands. Whether it uses buffering or caching matters as well.
And how much noise does the streamer display create by tolling the processor, etc.

you hear what you hear. No blind testing necessary. 

@benanders happy listening!

@mapman oh poop I missed he’s streaming with Sonore. Scratch everything I said. Lol

thanks for setting me straight!

@curiousjim it’s an interesting question. I wouldn’t say it changes the sound on all servers. I just don’t know if it does. I owned Lumin U1 Mini and Auralic Aries G1. 

I will say though, that on Auralic, I preferred the sound quality of its native Lightning DS app. On Lumin, I preferred Roon. I believe it is due to signal processing taking a different path. In example of Auralic and using Lightning DS, the stream is cached, and that might potentially reduce the noise and result in cleaner processing. With Lumin, Roon sounded just a slight bit smoother than the Lumin native app, which is very user unfriendly by the way. In both cases, I had Roon DSP disabled. 
 

@mitch2 the two streamers you’re comparing are approximately on the same level. That is definitely one of the driving factors in the differences you’re hearing. There may be a difference between how one stream renders tone and presentation vs the other. It’s a matter of preference. If you want to experience difference in streamers, order a WiiM Pro, a highly hyped up streamer with built in dac. Use its digital out and compare to antipodes or mojo. You can return it if you don’t like it.
Forget the psychological aspect of it. One listen is all it will take.

As to why the streamers sound different, I listed few reasons above. 

@vandy357 that’s about how long the Aurender needs to break in. My N200 settled after couple of weeks. 

The issue is not that my system doesn't sound good, but that it sounds better with one server than with the other and I am curious why that is.

@mitch2 why is that an issue? I’m also not sure why it is so surprising to hear the difference between streamers. There’s a difference between preamps.  Different amps sound different. But when it comes to digital, somehow it’s impossible to get past that 1s and 0s 🐂 💩. 

It also seems very odd to me that you bought into the concept of fiber conversion for your network with LPS units on the FMC modules but you can’t seem to comprehend that streamers can sound different and that actual components matter more than all that clutter you created with copper to fiber to copper conversion. Dude…none of that💩 does anything to make your system sound better. But the components do.
I have tried the FMC several times on several streamers. I call BS. Because all it did is made it sound much worse than the simple router to streamer connection with a very good cable. 

Treat streamers and DACs the same way you treat amps, preamps and speakers. Forget the “it’s all 1s and 0s” narrative. It’s a defense mechanism for the ASR crowd that can’t afford a decent streamer and DAC. Peel away from it man.