@delmatae I felt the same as you give my technical background. Same exact data should be delivered to the DAC. I went from a Node to an N150 and it was easily noticeable and an improvement. Wife picked out in blind tests. I kept the N150. My expectations that it would be the same sound were wrong. It is true that you have to have a system resolving enough to present the differences and sufficient hearing to detect it - but I did and I don’t have golden ears. Based on what I know, it is my opinion that it reduces noise introduced into the DAC, perhaps due to the linear power supply or other factors. Again, small noise on a digital signal should not matter - but the improvement in sound is typical of what I have experienced with less electrical noise in the chain. I spent about 5% of my system cost on my streamer. I bought Aurender because my buddy goes to the audio shows and said he mostly sees Aurender’s being used. I figured those guys know best.
why expensive streamers
@soix and others
I am unclear about the effect on sound of streamers (prior to getting to the dac). Audio (even hi-res) has so little information content relative to the mega and giga bit communication and processing speeds (bandwidth, BW) and cheap buffering supported by modern electronics that it seems that any relatively cheap piece of electronics would never lose an audio bit.
Here is why. Because of the huge amount of BW relative to the BW needs of audio, you can send the same audio chunk 100 times and use a bit checking algorithm (they call this "check sum") to make sure just one of these sets is correct. With this approach you would be assured that the correct bits would be transfered. This high accuracy rate would mean perfect audio bit transfer.
What am I missing? Why are people spending 1000's on streamers?
thx
Showing 2 responses by 12many
@mdalton I understand what you are saying. I don’t have all the answers. My bias was that the N150 would sound the same for all the reasons expressed and that was my technical opinion as well. Beyond that I did not want to spend the extra money for the N150. I liked my node and its software. In spite of that, it sounded better. If it is the different processing that occurs, that processing is part of the product that sounds better so I am keeping the one that sounds better. Maybe I could have bought a $2000 streamer that sounded just as good, but you would still say I got fleeced. Not sure where to draw the line between a fair price and fleecing. I think the Wiim can be had for $100. The extra cost also goes to product reliability, personal support services, software updates, and additional features. I find these aspects valuable. I wish there was more technical research on this topic because streamers sound different and if we knew why, then that knowledge might lead to other improvements. What has been your experience when comparing streamers like the Node to something in the Aurender lineup? |