What makes One Music Server Sound Better than Another?

Read the link I posted previously from Antipodes. 

I had scanned it before, but I have now read it closely.  Actually, I think it supports the position that the server end of a server-network-streamer configuration does not contribute to SQ, assuming sufficient processing resources to use DSP and avoid dropouts.

Here is what Antipodes says about their servers: 

Step 1 runs the Server app and does the best job if it is a computer with relatively high power (but not too high), and with a lot of RAM. It is the heavy-lifting stage and achieves a lot, but the power needed makes it relatively noisy (in an electronic perspective, not an acoustic one). In a car cleaning analogy, this stage is where you water-blast the big bits of dirt off, but the result is not yet acceptable.

So Antipodes does what Roon suggests: it has a high powered, electronically noisy server that decompresses the FLAC to PCM and applies DSP.  This is an acknowledgement that no matter the electro-noise at the server side, the network will clean it off for them.  

Here's what they say about their "player" side (streamer in our lingo):

Step 2 runs the Player app and this is where the essential neutrality of the sound is determined. To achieve this we use only a moderately powerful computer because we need to get the electronic noise interference levels down to much lower levels than what comes out of Step 1. 

Right.  the noise at Step 1 doesn't matter - it is "cleaned up" later.  While Antipodes allows their streamer to take credit for getting the level of electronic noise down from what the server sent, it is actually just the network that does it.  However, fine, good to have an electrically quiet streamer just to be sure.  

The remainder of the Antipodes steps are not relevant to the conversation.  The underlying point is that Antipodes itself acknowledges that it is not cleaning up the audio quality at the server end.  It is simply doing the same thing that ANY sufficiently powered computer will do.  Except, and I don't know this part, maybe there is a proprietary protocol in communicating with their streamers so that only the Antipodes server can talk to the Antipodes streamer so that you have to buy both even though the server part doesn't need to be quiet or clean or anything but a computer.  

I will say those are beautiful looking pieces and I appreciate how they relabel the backplane for audio purposes so that those who aren't comfortable with computers can use them.  However, I'd bet if you plugged a ripper into the "disk" port  or a disk into the "Ripper" port, they would work either way because they're just standard USB ports.  

Look, these guys make beautiful high end computers for use with audio.  There is nothing wrong with buying one of those.  I would if I had that kind of income.  And they cannot just come out and say "you don't need our servers to feed a streamer and get the same quality" albeit that is the natural result of what they do say.  

But, please, just don't buy into the idea that you HAVE TO have one of these to optimize sound quality.  It's a shortcut.  You know it's quality gear. But the server side simply isn't relevant to SQ.  Not as long as the server can keep up with the stream it needs to send. 

I absolutely agree with @jji666 .  And there’s a ton of support for his position from a subset of the audiophile community, that includes engineers, designers, Roon Labs itself!  

There seems to be a bias embedded in the arguments from a different subset of audiophiles.  It goes like this:  “I hear a difference.  If you don’t hear a difference, my experience trumps yours.”  That makes no sense from a logic perspective.  In the absence of any other explanations, those two observations have equal weight.  It is certainly possible that one person has a more resolving system, and/or better ears, but ceteris paribus, they have equal weight.  But then, when you introduce the digital science, that seems to give more weight to the listener who hears nothing.  But wait, the first listener hears a difference, that has to be explained by science too, doesn’t it?  Well yes, as a matter of fact, there’s a whole science behind confirmation bias.  Now to be clear, the second listener is also susceptible to confirmation bias, perhaps to hear nothing.  But on balance, the better argument goes to the second listener, because that argument does not require an assumption about greater resolution, golden ears, pseudo science, or faith, to make sense.  

Btw, when I started my own journey on the streaming side, before I did any serious research, I assumed I’d hear a huge qualitative difference when I changed servers and cobbled together a Raspberry Pi as one of my first post-retirement projects (i.e., my own bias was to hear differences).  Just my two cents….

@jji666 You have done your homework, I commend you on your perseverance. It's obvious you know more about computers than I do, and I think you are a better arguer. But I don't think people buy Porsche's just because they look nice and they want to brag about them. 

All I'm going to say is what I said before: take your server/player to somewhere where their is a high-end "audiophile" server/player, setup with appropriate highly revealing other components and cables and compare. 

Dear jji666, you miss the point about catching chickens.  Here is the point:  You can talk about how best to catch a chicken but until you have experience catching chickens, what you have to say is mostly meaningless.  

The First Rule of Audio:  Your system sounds great, until you hear a better system.

If you truly love audio, stop postulating, get out there and hear some good hifi systems and some hifi streamers/servers for yourself.  You might or might not hear a difference.  That’s ok.  It’s a personal matter.  Music, like all art is personal.

The issue that one person can hear something that another doesn’t is much much deeper than confirmational bias.  That’s merely a cop out for the ASR crowd.  Many factors come into play beyond the listener variable.  A good example was what happened last week to me.  I found a song on Qobuz that had some bad microphone clipping.  Sounds like crackling noise.  I have a very high resolution system.  The noise was like a slap in the face.  I texted my cousin to try that track on his stereo.  The track sounded fine to him.  I played the track on my iPhone with headphones and I played it in the car.  I could not detect the mic clipping at all in either case.  I bought the CD.  The CD plays cleaner than the Qobuz version but the clipping is still there- just not as bad.  I ripped the CD to FLAC and the same thing.  But on the Roon app I can see that the recording levels are maxed out.  That’s one of the downsides to a high resolution system.