Sound quality differences in streamers

The logical fallacies abound from our friends.  “Anyone who’s compared a $400 streamer to a $2k+ streamer…”  This is called the “appeal to authority” fallacy, and it’s not even a good authority.

@mdalton  No, it’s called most of are capable of using our ears and can easily hear the improvements better and/or more expensive streamers can provide despite you not being able to and despite your one example of an audiogon member who apparently can’t either.  We get it, you’re a streamer denier despite trying to say you’re not and you’re in the vast, vast  minority here but obviously the majority of us are just deluding ourselves.  Rrrriiiiiiight.  But you just keep tilting at windmills and we’ll just keep making decisions based on our ears. 

Audiophiles who own more expensive streamers are generally no longer comparing these to the affordable, they've moved past that. Vast majority are comparing expensive streamers, the fact a wide variety are purchased likely goes to show all expensive streamers don't  sound alike, they aren't choosing their particular streamer  based on some emotional attachment or bragging rights. Evaluating sound quality is what sets the audiophile apart from the casual listener, based on my experience listening to a wide variety of high end systems over many decades I've come to understand many audiophiles are very good judges of sound quality. Seems some believe they have golden ears, so if they don't hear a difference between streamers its not possible for others to hear differences.

I should add the objectivist would also presume their system to be reference quality, therefore, has the potential to expose any possible difference in streamer sound quality.

Anyone who’s compared a $400 streamer to a $2k+ streamer will tell you there’s a very significant difference between the two.

That's a laughable fallacy—there are numerous counterexamples.  Here is one. 

@ricred1 You must be directing your comments to someone else.

Now you should rest assured that @mdalton was not directing anything at you.

Many years ago, when I got my Auralic Aries streamer, it sounded better than my modded laptop, but not night & day better.  I decided to try an experiment.

The stock DC umbilical cord to the factory LPS looked really cheap and flimsy.   I DIY’d a new DC umbilical cord out of 20 awg pure OCC copper solid core wiring.  Huh!  You got to be kidding me! The same streamer sounded much, much better.  Totally leaving the modded laptop in the dust.   Later, I replaced the factory LPS with a more powerful after-market low noise LPS.  Another substantial jump in sound quality.   The sound quality jumped again when I plugged the streamer's LPS into a power conditioner.   This totally disproved the theory that it’s only 1’s & 0’s.     Of course, a high-quality, well-designed streamer with all the tweaks built-in is going to cost more. 

As @sns pointed out, those who already own expensive streamers don’t regress back down the food chain.  They only go up.  If the budget allows, it’s worth it.

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BTW, I don’t use a waveform monitor to listen.   My ears do that.  They know what a piano sounds like.  I listen to a real one often.