Wait wait wait wait........
A lot of audiophiles would say a DAC is a DAC and there is no difference but we all know that's not true. Why in the world would people say there is no difference in streamers? I've owned the ifi zen stream and a pi4 and there was an easy to hear difference. I still sent the IFI back though because it's a buggy pita but it's hard knowing it sounded better.
It's kind of comical that this was the answer from people who measure every single damn electrical item and pick over differences your ears can't hear. There is FOR SURE differences in streamers and how they sound.
I just stumbled across this reply and I’m surprised no one else jumped on it. I don’t recall anyone on here saying that “a DAC is a DAC”—perhaps most of the DACs measured on here are sonically equivalent if their performance differences are beyond the range of human hearing, but certainly there are notable differences in how accurately they do their jobs or there would be no point to performing measurements or for this site to exist, frankly.
But it’s this very comparison that is flawed in its reasoning. DACs bridge the realms of digital and analog audio—namely music in a form that has no sound to one that does. A network streamer—a pure network streamer like the Zen Stream—exists wholly in the digital domain, and its sole purpose is to transport a TCP/IP network signal to the input receiver of your DAC, with a few metadata retrieval options on the way. Since network protocols have their own error-correcting packet filters in place, and the signal never leaves the format of a bunch of ones and zeroes, there is no logical or scientific basis to claim that one streamer “sounds” better than another unless that streamer comes integrated with a DAC that converts the signal it carries into something that has a sound to begin with.
So basically what that means is that a streamer is nothing more than a computer, hence the comparison of the ZS to an RPI. You switch it on and off. It doesn’t matter whether you use a fancy power supply or burn it in anymore than it should matter to you to do such things for your PC. And whatever sonic differences you swear to god you can surely hear are completely a product of your imagination, I’m afraid. My hopes for you is that you didn’t put much of a dent in your wallet on your quest for a better sounding network transport, because if you did you might as well have sent that hard earned cash to the furnace. If you didn’t, for heaven’s sake abandon your cognitive biases and put that money towards a fantastic set of headphones! Your streamer should be the component in your setup you budget for the least.