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Are streamers digitally enhanced?

I had a conversation yesterday with a studio engineer friend and I was telling him about the sound of my Innuos Pulse. He has heard my system with the Node 2i and was skeptical about how much difference a better streamer could make. 

After I described improvements in soundstage and overall sound quality he remarked that it sounded like some digital enhancement, similar to a studio plugin, was part of the higher end circuitry. I offered that it was revealing, not enhancing, and he replied "how do you know". 

How do we know? Digital circuitry is controlled by software/algorithms and these can't be readily seen like hardware. When new hardware comes out, reviewers can open the hood and look inside. But what do we know about how streamers or DACs are processing the signal? Is the goal purity or beauty? 

mashif
lalitk's avatar
lalitk
6,180 posts
 

@mdalton  ~ and it’s changing the entire landscape of aesthetic medicine 🤣

tubeguy76
233 posts
 

To me it doesn't matter as long as it sounds good.  I've never heard a high-end streamer so I'm not sure what I'm missing.

soix
11,247 posts
 

Apparently bits have emotions

@kofibaffour Bits can be affected by noise and timing.  If you can’t hear the difference between streamers I truly feel sorry for you.  

kofibaffour
718 posts
 

@soix Fortunately I'm not plagued by the ability to hear difference between asynchronously timed bits over USB for a streamer so yeah I enhanced my system by the only ways that sounded audible to me. Do not feel sorry for me, I am content with where my whole setup is now. Can't get better. Can get louder though but I'm not listening from more than 12ft out so speakers having sustained 110dB SPL with peaks into the 120dB are not on my radar.

 

I hope not to get to a place I can hear a difference though cos I will obsess to the high heavens to find out why

mashif OP
473 posts
 

I originally asked this question hoping someone knew more factual information about how digital designers program chips to convert Internet packets to a PCM stream and, how that might affect the sound. I don't know whether chips are just built to do that off the shelf or whether a designer has some control over parameters. I'm not asking about magic, just electrical engineering. 

For the moment, I agree with @soix that the clock quality matters. I believe the differences I hear between my coax and USB input are due to the streamer having a better clock than my DAC. That will eventually change. 

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