Best Music Streamer to pair with Rogue Audio monoblocks and Pre-Amp

To the OP:  As you can see, there are some on this forum whose beliefs/experiences suggest that you need to spend a material portion of your budget - relative to your DAC - on the streamer.  There are others, like me, whose beliefs/experiences suggest that if you spend more than a relatively small amount of $ (i.e., $250 to $2,000?) on a streamer, you may be spending money on features that have nothing to do with sound quality.  

In my experience, most of those who argue for substantial expenditures on streamers point to lower noise as the explanation for differences they claim to hear (if they offer an explanation at all), because that can be the only explanation!  And sometimes they cite manufacturer marketing materials promising “decreased jitter and noise”.

But here’s the rub.  Noise, particularly in the digital domain, is pretty easy to measure.  And yet there’s this weird cognitive dissonance among some when confronted with actual measurements of noise.  They claim you can’t measure it, accuse others of being Luddites for incorporating actual science and data into their decision-making process, resort to name-calling (I mean, I’ve even been called an “Alvin” for god’s sake, lol!), etc.

Let’s take jitter, for example.  The issue is not whether there’s no jitter, it’s whether there’s a substantial difference in jitter across streamers, how much jitter we’re talking about, and the extent to which different DACs reject jitter from streamers.

In my research, I have found the “lab report” section of HiFi News streamer reviews incredibly insightful.  For exposition, I’ve looked at the results from 11 different streamer reviews over about 4 years, with prices ranging from £1,000 to £33,000; in 5 of them they use a usb connection to a computer as their control scenario vs. the streamer, and then they use up to 3 different DACs with both the computer and the streamer.  All 11 of the reviews I’ve pulled feature the Mytek Brooklyn dac, 6 include the iFi Neo iDSD, and 4 include the AQ Dragonfly.  Here are some takeaways:

1) The Mytek has low jitter levels itself, and also is very effective at rejecting any streamer-induced jitter;

2) The iFi is a low jitter DAC, but is not nearly as effective at rejecting streamer-induced jitter; and 

3) The amount of jitter produced by all 11 of the streamers is very low, and doesn’t vary materially by price.

How did I arrive  at these conclusions?  Here are several snippets of the data:

- the single highest jitter number, 550 psec, was with the computer/iFi combo, substantially more than the computer/Dragonfly number (300 psec).

- but, when paired with a decent streamer (e.g., the Volumio Rivo or Aurender N200), the iFi’s jitter amount was substantially less than the Dragonfly (18 & 9 psec v. 150 & 135 psec, respectively.

- the Mytek’s jitter levels were never above 10 psec, whether using the computer or any one of the 11 streamers.  

That’s why even a Raspberry Pi can sound really good; many DACs, even moderately priced, do a very good job of rejecting jitter - and other sources of noise - from a streamer.  But there are decent DACs, in this case the iFi, that may not be engineered to reject jitter from a streamer.  So, to be safe, you can invest a little more than $150 and get a very low-jitter streamer.

And finally, I am most certainly not a welcome visitor to ASR and Amir.  After all, I use tube amps and spin vinyl, two technologies that Amir sh_ts on as from the fricking Middle Ages.

I hope this is helpful.

I hope this is helpful.

@mdalton  It’s not. 
 

There are others, like me, whose beliefs/experiences suggest that if you spend more than a relatively small amount of $ (i.e., $250 to $2,000?) on a streamer, you may be spending money on features that have nothing to do with sound quality.  

So, I see you have a Zen Stream and ProJect Stream Box so let’s just cut to the chase here.  What >$2k streamers have you had in your system that don’t sound any better than those?  An Innuos Zenith was superior on every level in my system relative to my Zen Stream with upgraded power supply — not even close, so it’d be very interesting to know on what you’re basing you’re contention that there’s no sonic benefit to spending more on a streamer.  Please share, or is it just your belief that more expensive streamers don’t sound better because numbers or other people say they don’t?

Soix. I’ve been thru this with him. He had formulated his opinion based upon what he read in the reviews and elsewhere on the internet…and he only made note of the material that fed into what he believes and deems logical and scientific. This guy is impenetrable. You’re embarking on a fools errand. 

@audphile1  Got it, and thanks.  Funny how impenetrable often coincides with unwilling/afraid to just use their own ears.  🙄

@audphile1

Please don’t speak for me, you’re wrong on the facts. 

@soix

It’s really not all about you, I was asking the OP if it was helpful, not you, lol!

Be that as it may, I have been streaming since 2004 - I was a very early adopter, obviously.  My experience of direct A/B comparisons during the last 20 years includes some in my system, some in friends’ systems, and some at dealers.   In addition to my original Musiccast system, I’ve owned Sonos and a wyred4Sound modified Sonos, both using external DACs, of course, and then more recently, the 6 streamers in my current systems (2 Bluesounds, the Pro-Ject, iFi, RPi in Okto DAC, Goldnote streamer/DAC) as well as a Raspberry Pi I built as an experiment for this very purpose.  Friends’ and dealers’ streamers I’ve A/B(ed) include DCS Bartok, Innuos Zenith, Simaudio Moon 681, various Aurender products, and others.  

I’ve sat next to a good friend who, being coached by a dealer, heard things I simply did not.  I know he thought he heard them, and I honestly believe the dealer did too.  (This friend, btw, is almost 10 years older than me - over 70 - and has definitely experienced greater hearing loss than my 63-year-old self, so it wasn’t my hearing!). Aural memory sucks, valid A/B comparisons are difficult, and confirmation bias is challenging. 

In summary, I didn’t start doing research and reading reviews until recently, almost 20 years after I began listening to streamers in all sorts of environments with lots of different gear.  This research has only served to validate my 20 years of experience.  It certainly helps explain my experience, and I offer it to others to help them as they try to sort their way thru the disparate views and experiences on this forum and others, including yours.

I don’t really understand why my contrary views are such a threat to your constitutive self.  Oh well.  I’m quite sure we’d enjoy each other’s systems, certainly more than each other’s company, lol!