I know this site believes dacs make very little difference, but what about streamers?

[mikemcsw]

I have heard what i believe are differences in DACS, but I am not hear to argue that point. My thinking is that DAC could make a difference more than a streamer?

If everything is the same, but the streamer, should there be any difference, by swapping out the streamer?
I am more apt to believe this than dacs, but curious what this website believes along those lines?

I have bought 4 different streamers and still haven't tested them. I have just put careful listening on the sidelines for awhile, and just bought products as they came across my interest over the past couple of years and still haven't tried any of them. I have the wiim, wiim ultra, aurylic, and i forget the 4th (grin). I probably would have bought the eversolo DMP, but my main desire is something i can control from a web browser, and from what i understand they have very little support for that where both the wiim and aurylic say they support it, although i still have not tried any of them. When i bought the wiim ultra, i didn't realize it doesn't do dsd, so not sure what direction i am going, but will likely return it. I know this board doesn't think much of DSD, but i have a pretty big collection of DSD, and i believe i have heard differences...but that is not the subject of this conversation. I am mostly curious if i should hear any difference whether i use a wiim ultra pro or an aurylic assuming using same interface, same song, same bitrate, everything else the same but the streamer?

 

[Bamyasi]

If streamers were different then our modern civilisation would not exist. Streamers are just specialized computers. You don't believe your savings account could have different value depending on the brand of computers your bank uses, do you?

 

[mikemcsw]

If streamers were different then our modern civilisation would not exist. Streamers are just specialized computers. You don't believe your savings account could have different value depending on the brand of computers your bank uses, do you?

do you also believe any streamer should sound the same as using a cd transport (using same dac)?

 

[Bamyasi]

Unless your CD player is broken or streamed version uses different master, yes, of course they are the same. You can capture the bitstream yourself and compare to ripped CD image. Others did this and found the bits are all the same.

 

[mikemcsw]

Unless your CD player is broken or streamed version uses different master, yes, of course they are the same. You can capture the bitstream yourself and compare to ripped CD image. Others did this and found the bits are all the same.

that is my thinking but many say there can be noise on the line that could interfere with the dacs performance. I am of the belief that the bits are the same...i have ripped hundreds of not thousands of CD's and i see the checksum is the same...i am not so sure about noise from noisy cheaper power supplies, etc... basing it on that though then i would think that wireless would be even better or at least as good, and many people suggest wireless doesnt sound as good.
For the most part, i believe the digital signal is the same regardless of source, so it should sound the same if everything else is the same, but i also can see some validity to poor or cheaper power supplies could interfere with dac performance? For me, i am relatively convinced that most DACS sound the same if similar design, but do believe schiits or chords can sound different than ess/akm dacs. I believe i can hear a difference between them, where i cant hear a difference between ess/akm dacs.

I do admit though i never did decibel matching blind testing, but simple a/b comparisons...to me, both schiit and chords sound much better than ess/akm type dacs.

Back to topic at hand though...Just curios if ANYONE believes a streamer can make "ANY" difference in sound quality or if they believe they will sound any different than playing from a cd transport (same interface/dac)

 

[SIY]

I do admit though i never did decibel matching blind testing

That should be your very next step.

 

[mikemcsw]

That should be your very next step.

when you think about Chord or DAP dacs, they "should" sound different because they use a totally different method to convert digital to analog...i am not going to argue this one though because i have gone down this road before and i know most people here believe there is no sound difference...so if it's in my mind, that is fine...i am not sure why schiits sound different, but they do sound better than any ess/akm dac i have tried. I like both schiit and chord dacs, so williing to pay the premium...i still have one of the original D90 dacs (one with akm chips before factory burned), that i swap out from time to time too...personally i can't be convinced all dacs sound the same, regardless of majority (smile)...but i can believe that streamers should sound the same....looking for anyone that believes streamers can sound different.

 

[Jim Taylor]

I have heard what i believe are differences in DACS, but I am not hear to argue that point.

If you are not here to argue that point, why is it the first sentence in your post?

This is a public forum. You cannot control what other people think or do. If you introduce a subject in a post and state your position in relation to it, you have opened the door to reactions from other people.

If you want to discuss streamers, then it's best that you confine the post (and your comments) to streamers.

Jim

 

[restorer-john]

...personally i can't be convinced all dacs sound the same, regardless of majority (smile)...but i can believe that streamers should sound the same....looking for anyone that believes streamers can sound different.

I would expect the differences between various streamers would be more to do with their operation- ease of use, glitches when changing tracks/sampling rates, volume adjustments, etc.

 

[Galliardist]

that is my thinking but many say there can be noise on the line that could interfere with the dacs performance. I am of the belief that the bits are the same...i have ripped hundreds of not thousands of CD's and i see the checksum is the same...i am not so sure about noise from noisy cheaper power supplies, etc... basing it on that though then i would think that wireless would be even better or at least as good, and many people suggest wireless doesnt sound as good.
For the most part, i believe the digital signal is the same regardless of source, so it should sound the same if everything else is the same, but i also can see some validity to poor or cheaper power supplies could interfere with dac performance? For me, i am relatively convinced that most DACS sound the same if similar design, but do believe schiits or chords can sound different than ess/akm dacs. I believe i can hear a difference between them, where i cant hear a difference between ess/akm dacs.

I do admit though i never did decibel matching blind testing, but simple a/b comparisons...to me, both schiit and chords sound much better than ess/akm type dacs.

Back to topic at hand though...Just curios if ANYONE believes a streamer can make "ANY" difference in sound quality or if they believe they will sound any different than playing from a cd transport (same interface/dac)

We need to be very careful here. A competent streamer with "correct" settings should just select a source and pass through the bits unaltered, allowing it to sound the same as any other device set up that way.

However... streamers, and especially multipurpose devices that you may use to stream, could make all sorts of changes to the sound. I've had a couple of such cases. My first "streamer" was an Oppo 105, and it suddenly sounded odd one day - and lo and behold, it was different to a CD player. I tested the CD in both devices, also different in the Oppo. It turned out that the speaker management settings had somehow changed, and I could restore normality easily enough.

The second case is streaming through our current TV. It's fine with TV, and with YouTube, but is cutting low bass with its streaming apps. So, a 35Hz tone sent from Tidal via a laptop or on disc from my disc player is audible through my speakers at normal volume, but via Tidal on the TV - nothing.

The caveat with our understanding of no difference between DACs, or anything else, is that they are set up to have no audible difference, and that they are correctly matched to the rest of the system used for testing. So with a streamer, it's important to read the manual and set it up to work correctly for testing against other devices. You may prefer to use different settings for listening to music, of course: then, it may even sound different!

 

[restorer-john]

I have bought 4 different streamers and still haven't tested them. I have just put careful listening on the sidelines for awhile, and just bought products as they came across my interest over the past couple of years and still haven't tried any of them.

Get them out of the boxes, plug them in, play with them and work out which one works best for you. Get rid of the rest.

 

[Galliardist]

Get them out of the boxes, plug them in, play with them and work out which one works best for you. Get rid of the rest.

Agreed. Ergonomics and search are the most important factors with a streamer, as long as it's reasonably well designed.

 

[amirm]

I have tested countless streamers, comparing streaming to direct input (e.g. USB or HDMI). The results are always identical as far as noise. Once in a great while there is an exception but that is very rare.

 

[Chrispy]

What is it that makes you think that streamers have such "differences"? Dacs in any case make little difference generally. Do you buy as many different speakers as you do dacs and streamers?

 

[TonyJZX]

isnt this fundamentally easy to test?

get a PI with a hat and capture the sp/dif output as a wave???

get a high end streamer or a Wiim Ultra, stream the same output and capture the same?

compare the files?

it should be 100% identical

 

[JiiPee]

A streamer is a computer running a streaming application.

Make a following experiment:
Get a computer that runs Microsoft windows operating system, and an Apple computer that runs macOS operating system. Test the calculator applications of both systems by performing various calculations with them.

Do the calculators on both computers always give correct answers? Yes they do! How come the power cords, the differences in the electronics of those two computers, all kind of electrical noises and stuff that allegedly cause streaming applications to behave differently from each other, fail to do the same for calculator applications?

The answer: Unlike with music, the numbers on the display of a calculator are hard to dispute.

And before somebody claims that the differences come from the streamers noisy digital outputs - nope, with the current usb-technology (and other common digital outputs) , that theory does not hold water...

 

[Galliardist]

isnt this fundamentally easy to test?

get a PI with a hat and capture the sp/dif output as a wave???

get a high end streamer or a Wiim Ultra, stream the same output and capture the same?

compare the files?

it should be 100% identical

Even if the Wiim's been EQ'd?

 

[Rednaxela]

I wished the word ‘believe’ hadn’t been used in the thread title and opening post.

 

[JSmith]

I wished the word ‘believe’ hadn’t been used in the thread title and opening post.

JSmith

 

[TonyJZX]

its because some of us also believe in moon landings and a round earth and... climate change... <shock horror>