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

 

128x128delmatae

there are two separate camps on this topic lurking here on this forum.  One argues that spending a significant amount of $ on a streamer can be a waste of your precious resources, because the science, measurements and their experience tells them that beyond a basic level, there’s no difference in sound.  The other camp argues that based on their experience, there are clear differences, and therefore recommend spending upwards of $10k in some situations in order to optimize one’s system. I'm squarely in the first camp. So here’s my view:

Putting aside reclocking and oversampling, the only distinctions across streamers  have to do with levels of jitter and other sources of noise.  These are easily measurable.  Anybody who tells you that a more expensive streamer is less noisy while simultaneously claiming that measurements don’t matter is not credible.  If your DAC is good at rejecting noise (e.g., filtering, reclocking, etc.), you can assemble your own streamer for as little as $150 and it will sound great ( I’ve done this as an experiment myself).  However, if you want something less kludgy than a Raspberry Pi, and you want a streamer that measures and in some situations with some dacs may sound even better than a Pi (and measures and sounds comparable to some of the extremely high $ streamers out there), then there are a bunch of well regarded products that cost between $400 and $1k.  They include the iFi Zen, the Volumio Rivo, Holo Red, Pro-Ject Stream Box S2 Ultra, the Primare Np5, and a few others.

When I began my audiophile journey I connected my laptop to my dac via usb, using my Maxbook pro as the streamer with Audirvāna. That sounded good to me. Then I got my first streamer, the Sotm sms 200 ultra neo special edition. That was a huge sq upgrade. The I added their usb ultra, another improvement. Then I added a lps to power those units, another improvement. Then I added an I2S ddc to that chain…everything kept making sq improvements. So in my system a streamer made a huge difference. Now I’m building a DIY Taiko Audio Extreme clone, and so far it’s the best I’ve ever heard my music. I still am tweaking this latest server/streamer, but so far I’m very very impressed with it.

@8th-note This is a Thread I am revisiting and carefully reading the content.

Your Post covering a Streaming Source as Qobuz > PC > DAC AND FLAC > PC > DAC. Where each are compared to a CD Source from a highly recommended producer of CDT has been captivating to my thoughts on how to produce a Streamed Content.

It does seem a dedicated Streaming device is maybe a tool with attractive user  interfaces, and maybe blends in better aesthetically.

Your report strongly suggests that as a end sound in your system, a dedicated streaming device will struggle to present itself as a worthwhile successor to already used devices.    

@pindac Yes, I think you got my point. But the other point I want to make is that if you listen to a new component without using a control to compare it against, you are highly succeptable to expectation bias. It's interesting that so many people on this thread say one streamer sounds better than another but how do they compare to a standard control, like a CD?

My question to the goldenears is, If you hear a significant difference in two streamers, can you describe the differences compared to a CD? Have you compared the same song (using the same DAC) between a streamer and a CD? Did you run this test at least 10 times on different days over a period of at least a couple weeks?

There are dozens (probably hundreds) of blind tests that show that as soon as a listener doesn't know what component he is listening to, the differences in sound mysteriously dissappear. I am unaware of even one blind test that confirms that listeners can tell two streamers apart or two brands of cables for that matter.

My point is that if you are going to compare multi-thousand dollar streamers then you should use a CD as a control to judge their performance. I suspect that doing repeated listening tests, using a control, over several weeks, will greatly diminish the SQ differences between streamers.