why expensive streamers

I recommend a streamer with a fibre optic option. A Lumin X1 DAC/streamer or their brand-new streamer based on the X1. It is not cheap.

I compared my much cheaper Sonore OpticalRendu with the Lumin X1 using fibre for both, and they sounded different, but none was better than the other. I sold the X1 and kept the cheaper OtpicalRendu.

There is a new streamer from Aurelic that looks amazing, except it does not have the fibre input I covet.

ARIES S1 - AURALIC

I may actually sell one of my OpticalRendu’s to get the Aries S1 since it can do more than 1 DAC at a time. I have 2 DACs in my office. It can also play CD’s using a computer quality CD drive. It has a buffering technique that renders the transport benign. I may go with the $1999 version since I did not find a big improvement with the audiophile upgrades to the OpticalRendu.

I should add that I just sold my Playback Designs Stream-IF that did not have Fibre input, just Ethernet. I was shocked at how good that sounded on SPDIF. I was not able to test the better fibre optic output of that unit. I compared the 3 streamers I mentioned side-by-side and all 3 sounded different. I cannot say anyone of them was the best.

@8th-note

I simply would not expect the streamed file to sound better than the CD played through the same DAC. If it did then I would question the quality of my CD gear. If my PC is somehow adding noise or corrupting the file then I can’t hear it. I don’t understand how a multi-thousand dollar streamer is going to sound better than a CD played through a Jay’s Audio CD3 Mk III.

You certainly do not need a multi-thousand-dollar music server/streamer that uses a lot of costly parts (and markup) to eliminate noise from getting to the DAC. A simple test would be to use a Sonore OpticalRendu streamer (used for about $700) with fibre coming out of a $100 (or less) network switch. Input the fibre to the Rendu and then USB into your DAC from the Rendu. Compare that to the PC going direct to your DAC via USB. If you cannot hear a difference, then you are set. I hear a huge difference.

Another factor is the ambient noise of a computer near an audio system. I have a computer in my office that is next to my office system. That PC is a SIlentPC and cost $6k to make it silent, but I do not put my ROON Core on it. I could but I want a PC that I have running for most of the day for my ROON Core.

For that I have a very internally noisy $500 computer nowhere near my audio systems (under a bed in the guest room). My systems are in the Livingroom and office. I use the "low-cost" OpticalRendu to stream. The Rendu’s use fibre optic cable just before the DAC. That is import because fibre is made of GLASS and cannot carry the analog noise in the computer network (or USB into the DAC (for the most part)). The same noise that you can spend a fortune to eliminate with a dedicated music server.

BTW - the chances of CD sounding worse than a streamer are rather low. CD has a big advantage in delivering the bits and could sound better. Spending a fortune also on a Transport seems questionable to me when buffering should render the need for a Transport less important. That Aurelic S1 non-fibre streamer ($1999) with buffering CD playback seems like a killer feature.

Lumin now has the streamer section of the X1 in a new product called the U2 I owned the X1 before and the streamer section was great. 

LUMIN U2 (luminmusic.com)

A shame Auralic did not add fibre optical network input to this new streamer.

ARIES S1 - AURALIC