2. digital
  3. 190027-170711

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

 

delmatae

Showing 1 response by emergingsoul

emergingsoul
1,309 posts
 

Lumin x1 streamer/dac is awesome.  I had a separate dac but I found integrating it with a streamer at least in this component was a great idea.  It also has an optical connection.  And a separate power supply which I think is really nice to have.

You can buy a separate streamer but then you gotta spend a lot of time deciding which dac and there are so many choices and so many interconnect issues it's an incredible pain in the ass.  So I would check out the Lumin x1 to avoid all the annoying issues related to this area. I am a big proponent of separates otherwise.  

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