Point of higher priced streamer?

If the streamer is optically isolated USB, I would love to hear in your own words what a "better cleaner data packet" is.

No the pointnis that more powerful streamers present the dac with a better cleaner data packet which produces audible improvements

Funny enough, ASR did measure the Chromecast audio and showed that it had somewhat high jitter on the optical output, and that final performance would be DAC dependent. Maybe I am selectively remembering the review, but I am too lazy to look it up again :-)

Iron lung,

This is audio not rocket science. Even 24/192 is minimal data and and any number of bit perfect options exist. Wireless networks are more than sufficient to carry audio error free with retry. Again not rocket science. Data rates are way faster than needed to recover lost packets without breaks.


Your posts are conjecture, no more.

If there is missing data there would be highly audible effects.

How the missing data in spdif flow would affect SG is not clear to me, maybe someone else could open this in more detail.

f your connection to your DAC is coax or USB, then there is the potential for noise entry which can impact jitter which can impact sound.

If the entry is coax or fiber and the DAC is recovering timing info from the digital I/F that can be an issue.

The Node2i has a setting for jitter reduction that seems to makes things worse. Electrically noisy and coax out ... It's not a viable comparison point.

Goes isolated USB and pretty much every argument goes out the window. No jitter, no electrical noise.

Ignore people making comments using NOS DACs as they are highly dependent on the data rate they are fed so variability is understandable.

Take our electrical noise and jitter and what is left? Nothing, unless there is intentional manipulation of the data stream.

The trusty old Radio Shack sound meter does not have the resolution for level matching and take with a grain of salt that a dealer would properly level match which you never do with a sound meter you do with a test tone and a multimeter. However it's a digital stream. You should not have to level match at all ... Unless manipulation of the stream is happening.

Iron lung,

You are distorting reality to suit your desired outcome. IF there were packet sized dropouts in audio due to UDP/WiFi then you absolutely would hear clicks and pops and breaks. If that happens you know you have a problem. It’s not a matter of well maybe my WiFi does not sound as good. It works or it does not.  Noise in chipsets is just noise in this discussion.


Starting with wired the typical home network has near 0 data loss. Effectively 0 wrt audio usage. WRT wireless the streaming protocols build in bufferering and retry. Data loss absolutely occurs but streaming protocols handle that on packet and encapsulated data sets. If you had a dropout you would have clicks and pops just like your have stuttering on video streaming or block artifacts from incomplete data. It is very obvious when data is lost.

I laugh at your comment ironlung, because you telegraphed the thinness of your knowledge and position when you said you switched out WiFi for wired due to DROPOUTS. Not a perceived loss of quality but DROPOUTS.

You mean like when someone makes a statement like this arafiq, using fancy sounding terms like "computational theory" which is totally meaningless within the framework of delivering a bit perfect data stream? .


It sounds impressive if you want to reinforce a bias.

I'd suggest delving a bit more into computational theory and architecture before making this claim. I.E., "the network is the computer" and processes within the computer are analogous to/similar to the OSI layer system used to deploy WANs/LANs.

Of course when you then start going on about transcoding which is a cmpletely different discussion from bit perfect delivery ..... We already recognize more likely and mundane issues such as O/S transcoding for data rates which need to be addressed with the right software choices to ensure bit perfect delivery of the uncompressed audio data file to the DAC, which for all the flowery words presented is still child's play.

Ironlung,

You seem to think that your MCSE level or similar networking experience renders other people not knowledgeable however, your posts are nothing but deflections of the fact that bit perfect non transcoded delivery is child's play if what is desired.

I think my M.A.Sc. (EE) and a few years of PhD before I decided I liked making money, not to mention sitting on the original AES67 technical committee gives me the skills and background to understand the issues quite well though I would rather pull off my finger nails than sit on a committee like that again.

I don't have to know Mr Darko personally to know that the claims he makes and the things he says are factually wrong and that they reveal that he is technically illiterate on many of the things he claims to be somewhat of an expert on.

I think if you read my post I tend to be a little more balanced than many. I have spent most of my life working to ensure that people subjectively prefer the audio that I have been involved in. I'm not just speaking from a standpoint of uninformed belief I've been involved at an academic practical and research level on audio most of my life.  I've spent a lot of time trying to understand what people prefer subjectively.  I also have very healthy technical skepticism that skepticism was not formed purely by my technical knowledge but by practical tests far too often usually with someone ending up surprised that they were fooled by no one else but themselves.
Just remember that so many of these claims never survive controlled testing and the only measurement that's used is someone's ears and brain. It's not measurement and technology that tells me these things don't make a difference it's actual listening experience not just mine but of the many people I've put through it. Hey even I have convinced myself of a difference only to have a colleague make me look stupid.

Still smiling and laughing thyname, I've positively influenced your music, all Darko has done is influence the lightness of your pocketbook and made you envious.

lemonhaze94 posts12-27-2020 9:40am@ironlung, you are fighting an uphill battle trying to reason with audio2design and his ilk, but full marks for effort.

You mean knowledgeable and not susceptible to flowery but technically in context meaningless words.

Pretty much always, but room correction generally only corrects total energy, and some timing with good bass management, but cannot account for things like strong reflections, non symmetry, etc.   It's best to use acoustic treatments and placement of speaker and listeners to start, and use room treatment to tweak.

Wouldn’t room correction play perhaps a more important role than increasing a few dbs in SINAD beyond a certain level?

I would insult you back @Thyname, but you seem like a sad, lonely person, and since this is the holidays, I figure you have enough to deal with already.

I already pointed to one thing, I was on the committee for the original AES67 (2013), something that John Darko will not and could not be part of. I don't blog, I publish peer reviewed papers, and odds are, you have listened to music that was made better because I was involved some aspect of making the equipment perform to its best, studio equipment I have developed, plug ins, or helping the odd artist get just the sound he wanted.  I don't need your approval, but it makes me smile to know I influenced the one thing in life that brings you happiness, music, while John Darko, realistically, has just made you chase meaningless impossible fantasies while lining his pockets while providing you no additional joy.  And yet it is me you insult.  That makes me smile .... and laugh.

Not sure you were trying to insult me here, but when Mark Twain wrote this, he was not talking about people like me, but about people convinced about things like the the earth being flat, or the virus is a hoax, or that fuses make a dramatic difference in sound, or that masks can't provide any protection, or power cables need burn in.  He was not talking about people who actually know what they are talking about, he was talking about people, absent any real knowledge on a topic, convincing themselves of the superiority of their views. Not their knowledge, their views.

vhiner535 posts12-27-2020 11:03am@audio2design:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that’ll hurt you, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain

This article was written in 2014, long after asynchronous USB was dominant for DACs and jitter on USB became meaningless, not to mention bit errors are extremely low.

https://darko.audio/2014/12/global-feedback-can-ethernet-cables-make-a-difference/

This statement is a beaut ...

Then comes the argument that the DAC will resolve all data arrival-timing errors by first buffering them and then re-clocking them before sending them onto the decoder chip. That’s a nice idea in theory but experience tells us otherwise.

I have a hard time finding even one blind Darko test which calls into question everything he says.

Do you really take your hat off for this? I suspect the sound you are attempting to achieve is nothing like what was originally played. Vinyl most definitely is not "true to the source". Boring, technically accurate, digital is. You may not like it, but it is.

vhiner541 posts12-28-2020 2:50am My hat is off to any designer or company that manages to make digitally reproduced music more faithfully resemble the original sound that was recorded.

Because it is not just a nice idea in theory, it is factual in practice. With asynchronous USB, there is absolutely no timing data incorporated in the data stream. None, zip, nada, 0.  It is not a matter of resolving arrival timing errors .... there are none to resolve. This statement shows gross ignorance about how the stuff he is supposed to be an expert on actually works.

Then comes the argument that the DAC will resolve all data arrival-timing errors by first buffering them and then re-clocking them before sending them onto the decoder chip. That’s a nice idea in theory but experience tells us otherwise.

You asked for one. I jumped through your hoop.  There are more errors in this document. But this is so gross an error to make all others pointless to point out.

Except those are not minor changes. They are significant changes in the digital reconstruction filters that have direct impacts on the output. They are intentional modifications of the signal.

There was a time when people doubted that minor firmware changes in DACS could result in clear changes in audible performance. Ted knows why. I heard those audible differences before I ever heard him explain it.

For a DAC manufacturer to add a fully isolated data interface to carry audio, let's say 32/784 to cover all possible cases, we are talking <$10 in volume, perhaps $25-50 for a low volume manufacturer and I am being pretty generous.

Your analysis of fiber optic is correct, but keep in mind Ethernet already is galvanically isolated though there is a path for high frequency noise.

yyzsantabarbara1,909 posts12-28-2020 3:00am My understanding is that Fibre Optical cable (I do not mean Toslink) cannot carry analog noise from the 1's and 0's being transferred on the Ethernet wire.

The Node2i is SPDIF out so there is potential for jitter introduction. If you were connected via wired internet, there is potential for the different routers (and their power suppliers) used by the different service providers to introduce electrical noise. If you have differences with WiFi you have bigger problems.

Swenson has a lot of "theories" which he does not seem to back up with actual measurements of end devices to prove the effects he claims.  I am not doubting the things the says, I am doubting his claims of how the impact what comes out.

That starts with simple things, like leakage current, which he claims is a big issue at 50/60Hz, but then claims it is hard to measure because it is small. Well no, it is not hard at all. It is easily measured and characterized. He claims it is the primary noise source if you have a great system.  If you have a great system and turn the volume up, do you hear 50/60Hz hum? No?  So where is this?  Not to mention that differential connections eliminate pretty much eliminate this source of noise. Also note that in single ended connections this is predominantly a noise current on the ground wire, and since the current is low and the resistance low, the developed noise voltage is small.

Then lets get into his argument for clock jitter, i.e. in an Ethernet output creating an audio frequency noise spectrum in the end equipment and justifies this with talk about ground plane noise. That is all fine and good, except good power supply decoupling, which is what competent designers do, will predominantly confine that ground noise to a section of the PCB, and a competent designer will also use good layout practices, such that ground noise from the digital circuit does not impact the analog audio.


Of course, it is easy when you make claims but don't back them up with measurements (which Swenson claimed he would provide) and make baseless claims that most engineers don't know about these things and don't account for them in their designs. All his claims are super simple to prove, so why does he not have a whole suite of measurements showing the improvement with readily available off the shelf equipment?

Oh, I love this that he wrote, "Galvanic isolators—be they transformers or any form of capacitive or optical digital logic isolator—still pass AC (alternating current). "  That is simply crap.  Optical digital logic isolators do not pass AC. They only pass AC, IF and ONLY IF they include a power supply for the opposite end of the circuit (most do not). The capacitive coupling on most optically based isolators is near nil unless they have a built in isolated supply.


A better power supply is going to do far more to reduce noise in the digital (or analog) domain than any of these products. End Rant.

One issue Swenson claims is an issue is literally just that, typical analog ground noise. The other would be internal system ground noise, which is real, but readily dealt with.

He throws around his chip design experience quite readily, but that does not make you a system level expert, and certainly has not provided him with the tools to clearly illustrate his claims matter, or he does, and chooses not to publish said results.


Of course he didn't think twice to link to a "review" where someone was taking pictures of a TV screen and claiming big differences between cables and power supplies, even though it was quite obvious to any amateur photographer that there were significant variations in image brightness resulting in saturation in some images, and differences in shadow detail in others, and then there was out of focus blurriness in others, though given the TV and camera sitting on a tripod method, vibration could have caused blurriness as well.

Not played with the Node2, but have with the 2i, and thought it had a problem till I found out about the Audio Clock Trim setting which you would think would make things better, but made things worse with an external DAC. Never bothered to hook up equipment and see what exactly it was doing. One day I guess.

I have used a Chromecast Audio feeding a Benchmark DAC2 and the noise floor was dead silent, as I would expect with any optical connection to be. That said, I was using ROON, and I have no idea what you were using. Unless your sofware was ensuring bit-perfect output, you may have been feeding the Chromecast a very poor signal.  The biggest issue is optical out can limit you, but the Benchmark handles jitter quite well which is not universal.

Thought the Bluesound Node2i was broken till I discovered the audio clock trim setting and turned it off.

How dare you bring actual facts into the discussion @rhj88 when people have strong opinions and sunk cost on their side!

@thyname,

Maybe you should actually try reading some time instead of this bizarre obsession you have with me (and others it seems). You really need to get out of that little row house and out the country more and get some air. Did you actually follow this link? https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/measurements-of-sonore-microrendu-streamer.577/

The MicroRendu with the iFi power supply is an absolute disaster. Truly horrible. Hard to imagine how poor the design is to result in that poor of result.

And here you are defending it @thyname. There is no need to hear a Microrendu with the iFi power supply personally to recognize that is really bad. If someone defends that result, one can only assume they are more interested in defending dogma than in audio.

@rhg88 just provided the links. What he has or does not have in no way negates that the MicroRendu with the iFi power supply is a seriously flawed implementation.

Apple only supports 44.1/16 max for music and what I remember, the earlier ones (and I think the one you were using is quite old) resampled everything to 48KHz with questionable math accuracy.

No mention in your posts of actually using a Chromecast, just some interest in it, but the DACs you have listed using I don't remember being well known for jitter reduction.  Chromecast had high jitter on optical out and optical is more jittery in general.


I believe you just discovered recently a setting in the Node2i that fixes a known issue (I had same problem) and you use it in your headphone system, so have you truly done a 1:1 level matched comparison?

When people say they have "compared" things, there is more than going off memory. You need to actually do a 1:1 level comparison somewhat coincident in time.  Most of your comparative examples are "troubled" and are you using your new unit in USB mode?

The post in which the term "chi-fi" was introduced was racist. The lack of maturity some illustrate in this thread is disturbing. Some people act more like school yard bullies than adults.

As a country, you are correct @unsound , but "Han Chinese" which is a distinct ethnicity (race), is both the dominant ethnicity in China, 91%, and also the people most associated with "Chinese".

jc51373343 posts01-12-2021 7:33pmI didn't feel like reading through the volleyball match of one-sided opinions on this entire thread, so maybe you mentioned it. What DAC do you have? I mean, I'd say yeah it won't make a huge impact on a lower end DAC, but it's a FACT a streamer makes a size-able, audible, not so subtle difference in higher end systems with a DAC that's able to respond to a more pure source. 

Of course this makes little sense at all and the opposite is actually true. A high end DAC (in most cases) is designed to mitigate external sources of electrical noise, and if an optical/co-ax connection, jitter.  What exact is "pure" anyway. It is pretty much guaranteed it will be bit perfect unless the streamer intentionally modifies the data stream. So at that point you have noise and jitter. Expensive DACs "should" deal with that far better than a cheaper DAC.