SQ Comparison of 3 streamers

I’m a pretty long-time user of Roon, and I don’t think that’s accurate with respect to Roon processing.  Here’s the word directly from the manufacturer for their bit perfect path:

“Lossless signal paths are indicated by a bright purple light, and mean exactly what the name implies: that the stream is going from the file to the device without being modified. Lossless signal paths are pretty boring--there just isn't much to look at if no-one's touching the audio stream. This is one of the more interesting ones possible in Roon, because it identifies two separate devices that are involved in the playback chain.”

For those of us who are not computer geeks, this just means someone gives you a file, you don’t open it, do any redactions (joking) or changes, and you hand it off untouched to the DAC.  That’s the same basic process for any app that does bit perfect transfers.  My understanding at least.

And again, you seem to be confusing DSP with up/oversampling.  In Roon, oversampling is an option in Room EQ Wizard, but DSP includes a bunch of unrelated stuff:

• Equalization (EQ): Boosting or cutting specific frequencies to balance sound (e.g., adding more bass).
• Active Noise Cancellation (ANC):Analyzing external noise and creating an "inverse" sound wave to cancel it out.
• Room Correction: Adjusting audio to compensate for the specific acoustics of your room, making speakers sound better in tricky spaces.
• Compression & Limiting: Managing volume levels so quiet parts are audible and loud peaks don't cause distortion or damage speakers.
• Spatial Audio: Using algorithms to simulate 3D surround sound through standard headphones or speakers. 

And btw, handing off the file unchanged doesn’t mean every streamer doing bit perfect transfers sounds the same.  That’s the whole point of this thread.  There are the various noise components (jitter, electrical, rfi/emi, etc.) that the OP and I have been discussing that can account for sonic differences, depending on your dac.

@mdalton 

For those of us who are not computer geeks, this just means someone gives you a file, you don’t open it, do any redactions (joking) or changes, and you hand it off untouched to the DAC.

There is no data interface in this world that identifies the contents of the feed without opening, validating and making sure the contents are what they’re supposed to be. This includes compression and encryption/decryption.
Nothing can be done without processing the data. Or you think Roon only opens the file when DSP is engaged? How does it know what format the stream for your DAC should be passed in? Example - native DSD vs. DoP from local library. It communicates with the streamer and formats the data accordingly  

@mdalton So, with no DSP, volume set to fixed, no ReplayGain, and no fade in/out (only WiiM has it, but I turn it off), there’s nothing that should prevent us from claiming that the Volumio app or others are bit-perfect. Yet, the native apps still sound different from Qobuz Connect. I haven’t reached out to Volumio or any vendor, but I did contact Qobuz but no response. Rivo+ owners raised the same question in the forum but received no answers either, so I didn’t bother following up.

Well, that is when I seek help from AI which provide me the followings:

Many people report: Qobuz Connect > Native app sound. Possible reasons:

• More direct streaming path

• Different buffer size

• Less intermediate processing

• Different thread scheduling

• Lower CPU overhead

Seemingly sensible — but then how do you explain the opposite case with Volumio? I asked AI again, but this time I’m not convinced by its response, though it hinted at the MPD (Music Player Daemon), the open-source audio playback software used by Volumio. In short, MPD to Volumio is like RAAT to Roon — a core playback engine. Other vendors do not use MPD. The theory is that Volumio’s Linux-based software gives better control over buffering, threading, network flow, and related processes. I don’t know for sure, and right now I feel like AI is just giving me BS. Someone with audio software development expertise, please step in and shed some light on this.