Do I need an expensive digital cable?

@devinplombier 

I agree with you about tweakers, and I think you can add your 2 cents. But it could be in a nicely put question. Like where did you hear that. Or, do you really hear a difference in the quality of your music. Or I have tried that and it didn't work for me.

Guys get caught up in this kind of stuff. Jay Leno with all his cars. (Sorry to hear he was burned fixing one.) I had an audiophile friend who taught at Harvard. He bought a good system with Wilson Sasha speakers, an ARC Reference 3 preamp, Hovland Radia amp (which was handed down to me when he died, as was the ARC Reference.)

But he was a workaholic who spent all his time in the office and listened to his computer for music, while his wife listened to the big rig and really didn't like it. I'm not a fan of Wilson speakers, either. I find them dry. But a lot of people love them. 

He was a guy who grew up poor, and he'd always wanted a primo stereo. He asked me to help him buy it, and it was a lot of fun spending that kind of money on gear. He drove a BMW M series and showed me how fast it accelerated on the freeway. Here was a man with a PhD teaching at the premier college in the world. People have their own quirks. If it makes them happy, what the heck. (I use heck because I have had posts deleted for using stronger words.)

It's probably my age, because I used to be far more judgmental. I think I have a better understanding of human nature. Everybody gets caught up in stupid things. I think of Larry Summers, the once president of Harvard, getting caught up with Epstein. Of course, that was illegal and buying cable for $2k a foot might just be stupid. I say might because I've never been able to try out $2K per foot cable and I'm sure I never will. Next item on my list would probably be a better streamer, but as far as my wife is concerned, my list is complete. I could spend $300 on a piece of clothing, but another $300 into my stereo and she will flip.

@audio-b-dog 

At least @audphile1 recognised a bit of humour when he saw it!

the $10 went into a power cord upgrade on a BT speaker

I note that nobody has seriously commented on my previous serious post, where a serious reviewer for a serious magazine reviewed a seriously priced cable and came to a serious conclusion - that US$4k on a cable got streaming a little bit closer to CD quality.  Wow

@richardbrand 

I find it hard to imagine that a reviewer can be 100% sure that a 16/44 on any of the streaming services is the same master that is on a cd that was used for comparison.

I have a large library of ripped CDs. FLAC, WAV, AIFF. 

I do not have a $4k Ethernet cable but I do use a high quality cable, Audience Hidden Treasure.
CD rips and streaming in most cases are not the same masters. Plus streaming services sound different. And that too invalidates the comparison. 

What I can tell you though that in my system it highly depends on an album I’m listening to. In most cases streaming sound just as good as CD rips, and at times it’s better. It took time, effort and funds to get my digital front end to this level. It’s far from ultra high end, but it’s definitely good enough for me and enables me to enjoy listening to CD rips and streaming. 

@audphile1 

Do you find streaming CD rips sounds better than streaming it from Qobuz or Tidal? I don't think I own a CD that isn't on one of those services, and I own a lot of obscure CDs. Streaming some albums at 44.1 sometimes seems flat to me. I will go to my CD and play it on my transport and it often sounds better.

@audphile1 

I find it hard to imagine that a reviewer can be 100% sure that a 16/44 on any of the streaming services is the same master that is on a cd that was used for comparison

In the post where I quoted from a review, I also put a link to the original so anybody interested can see the full context, which I took to be a generalisation across the industry.

You have identified one way in which digital sound quality may genuinely differ depending on the source.

There must be a surefire way of finding out - stream to a file and use a computer program to do a word-by-word comparison, maybe?

I very recently bought my partner a set of Barbirolli conducting Elgar on CDs, some of which are famous recordings which have been full price in the catalog for decades.  The new set did not sound right and it turns out they have been remastered in 24/192, which possibly means remixed as well?

Another way for digital to differ is if what arrives at the dac, differs from the source. If any digital link in the chain does not implement full error detection and recovery, that’s a potential variance.  Any digital that travels over an I2S cable connection is suspect.  Same for Ethernet unless it is within an end-to-end error correction protocol.

If you can be sure your digital is arriving perfectly (which requires a memory buffer and an on-board clock), the next potential source of variation is analogue variability and interference.

After that, differences can only be psycho-acoustic in my book.