We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes

@richardbrand 

A person relies extensively on cut-and-pasting at the risk of appearing lazy and unintelligent.

Some highly knowledgeable folks contributed their expertise to this thread, but rather than learning from their expertise you chose to go ask google AI.

Incidentally, as you know, we all have access to google AI and we would know how to query it if we felt like it. Doing it on our behalf adds no value and merely pollutes the thread.

No one can be expected to read 2,000 words of google-generated drivel and I admit I did not - so if I missed something I apologize, but the gist of it seems to be that 100% error-free transmission of a music stream cannot be 100% guaranteed 100% of the time. To which I’m happy to concur: A listener may get caught up in traffic in an underpass and their buffer times out, a submarine may sabotage an underwater backbone cable, etc.

What should be abundantly clear at this point, however, is that music streaming via Tidal and Qobuz, the only kind that matters to audiophiles in this day and age, is error-free absent a rare unrecoverable error; if an unrecoverable error happens, it will manifest in gross failure and playback will stop; and therefore, in no case is a TCP/IP stream or file transfer ever susceptible to the kind of subtle sound quality degradation that strikes fear at the heart of audiophiles. It will either work perfectly - meaning, your streamer will get exactly what Qobuz sent - or not at all.

So it stands to reason that that TCP/IP stream will remain unaffected by components it encounters in the home just like it was unaffected by the components it encountered in the depths of AWS - until it arrives at a component capable of modifying / altering sound quality, aka the streamer.

Router, switches, Ethernet cabling and the like should have zero effect on sound quality (again, all power supplies being equal), and devices claiming to "fix problems" with your home Internet are necessarily making false claims, since there are no problems there to fix.

Happy listening! 

For the application of producing sound, the networks job is to have enough bandwidth to deliver the data needed fast enough so the streamer can stream in real time.   So the network needs to have sufficient bandwidth for the job.  That’s pretty much a given with modern home network technology.  
 

For wireless connections, you have to make sure the wireless connection is strong enough.  Bandwidth will decrease with distance and can become a bottleneck if not done well. 
 

Thrn it’s the streamer and DAC working together to take the data off the network and convert it to sound.  This is where there are lots of possibilities and results can vary widely depending on specific implementations component to component.  
 

The good news is that the technology here is now fairly advanced as well and in practice realized well by many newer products at all price points.   

I am not at all horrified by any of this. I am thankful streaming works well enough to meet the quality standards I demand without a whole lot of fussing about. I appreciate that physical media may in fact be better but in the final analysis I am not sure the difference is audible. If I cannot hear the difference then its a non-problem.

“Router, switches, Ethernet cabling and the like should have zero effect on sound quality“
@devinplombier 

You’re absolutely right from a purely technical and engineering standpoint. However, many experienced listeners here reported audible differences when they tinkered with Ethernet cables, Routers/switches, Network isolators and filters ahead of a well designed streamer’s. 

The proof is in the pudding and in audio, your ears are the spoon.

Theories, specs, and measurements are critical, but what you actually hear is the final word. If swapping a switch or cable makes music more alive, relaxed, or emotionally gripping in your system, then it’s real for you regardless of what measurements suggests. 

The best systems aren’t built by following rules, they’re shaped by listening, experimenting and trusting your own instincts. 

@lalitk 

Thank you for your post. In principle, I 100% agree with you.

That’s why I was careful to write that pre-streamer digital components should make no difference in sound quality. I was also careful to insert a qualifier about "all power supplies being equal". Finally, it is conceivable that, amongst the millions of possible component combinations, a new switch might correct some kind of incompatibility or condition caused by the old switch.

In short... I don’t know. I’m aware of opinions out there holding that passive digital components may have a positive impact on sound quality, and I respect some of them.

Claims of "stunning" or "transformational" differences, however, are 99.99% certain to be hogwash (the remaining .01% being due to correcting some equipment incompatibility as mentioned above). Barring the latter, folks making such ridiculous claims likely haven’t heard any difference at all, let alone a "stunning" one, and probably couldn’t tell the difference between the cannonade in the 1812 Overture and their wife slamming the lid on the trash can.

Which brings us to, if passive digital components do make a difference in sound quality, how big can that difference possibly be expected to be? How big of a positive impact can these components make, considering that the packets they transmit at that stage represent anything and everything besides music? I believe, very very little; and whether it’s worth pursuing it is a personal choice. Personally, I am not willing to spend time auditioning network switches, because the reward is more likely than not to not justify the investment. But that’s just me.

You mention measurements. I’m aware it’s something of a dirty word for some around here, but the good news is that the bit-perfectness (?) of audio streaming is demonstrable without any measurements involved, simply by checksumming the sent and received data.

For the record, I am biased toward science and rationality (in case you didn’t notice :); however, I think measurements are only as good as what they measure, and that they do not necessarily correlate to sound quality. I do believe John Atkinson’s work adds value to Stereophile reviews, creating a balanced approach.

I think I read somewhere that John Atkinson himself said he does not review digital components because "there is nothing to measure" (correct me if I made that up!).