Help settle a streaming argument!

@david_ten +1

@mteetank - not at all. Engineers are not designing the streamer to provide a certain coloration, but are trying to design the colorations out.

Digital data is read as a 1 or a 0. But how is a DAC to understand a 1 or a 0 when the actual signal is a voltage variation? Described simply, the signal can be represented as a sign wave and when the voltage hits a certain level, it is interpreted as a flipping to the other value. The sign wave has a positive and negative slope as the voltage varies. The steepness of that slope are influenced by a number of factors, and even minor differences here can cause timing variations in the signal (jitter or word clock error) even though the data is bit perfect in every way.

It turns out our ears are highly attuned to the distortions caused by jitter - even femto seconds of such are discernible. Lots of jitter hurts my ears - it’s sounds “glassy” or “steely” in the treble region.

Further, noise (not hiss, but typically EMF induced) is transmitted along the digital cable to the DAC. This too may cause distortions.

A better streamer will typically have the proverbial “blacker” background and will offer more spatial cues/information. Poor streamers may introduce enough jitter (even to DACs supposedly immune to jitter) that the sound becomes thinner or “steely” sounding. 

Others will greater technical knowledge can correct any deficiencies or inaccuracies in what I’ve stated above, but this does speak to the gist of the problem attempting to be solved by high performing streamers.

As others have noted, a good streamer will elevate and allow the full performance of an otherwise high performance system. A bad streamer will cripple the same to some extent.

Many times I see people post here and conclude their comments with “and it sounds great!”. I’m sure that’s true. But, if they’re using a mediocre streamer in their digital system, I can only say it doesn’t sound as great as it might as it’s only in direct comparison that the differences are readily revealed. 

I’m on the “low end”; I stream from an iPad, which goes into an Audiobyte Black Drragon DAC.  So, what does “jitter” sound like, if I may ask.

@boltapuresource I started streaming from my iPad and thought it was fine, but adding even a budget iFi Zen Stream streamer ($399) provided a huge performance boost so I’d highly recommend trying a streamer in your system.  Jitter has been described as hard, etched, glare, etc. and is a big factor in why saying something sounds “digital” has negative connotations.  Hope that makes sense. 

I use Roon.  Roon bridge is a raspberry pi, Intel nuc is roon core in another room. DAC is a chord qutest. Been setup this way for sometime.  I pickuped an Innuous Zen mini with separate PSU for a trial.  Returned it after a weekend and told them no noticed difference in my setup.  I'm told I am the first person not 'blown away' by the streamer 

is it my audioquest USB cable, my Cisco switch, my cat 6 cable or my lack of golden ear is the culprit?  I've switched Dacs and noticed differences in the past...

I use Roon. Roon bridge is a raspberry pi, Intel nuc is roon core in another room. DAC is a chord qutest. Been setup this way for sometime. I pickuped an Innuous Zen mini with separate PSU for a trial. Returned it after a weekend and told them no noticed difference in my setup. I’m told I am the first person not ’blown away’ by the streamer

@rgottschalk Hard to say why the Innuos didn’t make a meaningful improvement although I’ve read the Pi isn’t exactly a slouch as a streamer, but it is still a little surprising especially since you had a separate PSU (that I assume was a LPS). What pre, amp, and speakers are you using?

I’m not familiar with Roon, so is that your music source or do you use a separate music streaming service like Qobuz, etc., and I believe Innuos streamers are Roon ready so does that mean you can bypass the Nuc? (please forgive my embarrassing Roon ignorance) — wondering if you had the Innuos set up optimally to work with Roon? Just throwing darts here.

@rgottschalk 

Or, perhaps your Roon bridge and Intel Nuc is just fine and that your related hardware is helping things along. 

Of course, it can be difficult to compare because it takes time to connect different devices so A/B is hard. But it could be that all is just fine with your system. Be grateful. 

Be that as it may, your experience does not negate the experience of others.

Perhaps there is a way to help conceptualize why streamers can (not always) make a difference via a simple test most of us can do at home. Some will claim it’s an unfair test, to which i would reply I’m suggesting it only to illustrate the concept of why a clean and jitter free signal to a DAC is important - the function of a streamer.

Here’s the test: regardless of your streaming source (hi-end or not) try using a cheap analog RCA interconnect to the SPDIF input of your DAC. A digital spdif cable has an impedance (75 ohm) designed for digital transmission. But, the cheap RCA cable will transmit the digital information to your DAC - all the 1 and 0s that are supposed to be there will be there. Yet it won’t sound right. Why?

The impedance mismatch of the analog cable is causing a change in the slope of the voltage changes introducing jitter to the DAC.

Yes - not exactly the same thing as a streamer - but it does illustrate that 1s and 0s can be bit perfect yet not sound correct. 

This test does not illustrate the significant efforts to eliminate noise taken by manufacturers of streaming devices.That too produces audible beneficial effects.