STREAMER - WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?

The thing to keep in mind is that streamers don’t have tonal characteristics, and anyone’s individual experience is likely to be different based upon their setup.  The reason that different streamers seem to exhibit slight tonal or sonic differences, apart from digital processing differences like up/oversampling, dsp, etc., is primarily due to electrical engineering factors like jitter, power supply noise, and electrical isolation (galvanic isolation) impacting the DAC's performance.

So while they pass the same digital bits, the quality of the transport (handling of timing/noise) differs as follows:

• Jitter (Timing Errors): High-precision clocks reduce jitter, which can affect the DAC's analog output, resulting in different perceived soundstaging or, rarely, tonal qualities.
• Electrical Noise & Isolation: Poorly designed streamers can introduce electrical noise (EMI/RFI) into the DAC via USB or SPDIF, affecting the analog stage.
• Power Supply: Better, cleaner power supplies (linear vs. switching) reduce noise floor, allowing for a cleaner signal, often perceived as a "blacker" background or more detail.
• The DAC's Sensitivity: If the DAC is well-designed with good jitter rejection and isolation, these differences can become nearly inaudible. 

In sum, the interaction of these factors influence the extent to which one can hear fully the characteristics of one’s DAC.  But you do not have to spend more than $2k to get state of the art performance - i.e., vanishingly low noise levels.  

Finally, there is some evidence that even when streaming  “bit perfect”, there could be subtle differences among different streaming software platforms, based on levels of CPU usage associated with software efficiency.  However, this is again related to noise, that is, the potential for heavier CPU usage to leak into digital outputs.

Here’s a thread that explores these issues more fully:

Prior thread

But you do not have to spend more than $2k to get state of the art performance - i.e., vanishingly low noise levels.  

You do not get SOTA streamer performance from a $2k streamer. 🙄  Anyone who’s compared lower models from Aurender, Innuos, etc. to their pricier models will tell you the $3k models are not SOTA.  Good performance, yes.  SOTA performance, no way. 

@mdalton - I was intrigued by your post.  With that said--and not that I know anything (I don't)--I'm inclined to agree with @soix regarding the need to spend no more that $2k for a streamer to achieve SOTA performance.  If that's true, then that

suggests that those who spend $2k+++ for a streamer are ignorant or suckers for the hype "spend more, get more, or both."   

I find it hard to believe that so many could be wrong and could save a boatload of money by buying a Cambridge Audio EXN100 or Bluesound Node Icon and get reference-level results.  

Could so many be so wrong? (In a world with $100,000 speaker cable, I guess it's possible)

My list of less expensive streamers would include the Sonore products, the Volumio Rivo and Rivo+, Holo Red, Pro-ject Stream Box S2 Ultra, and a few others, but would not include the Cambridge Audio and Bluesound, fwiw.

To be clear, there are $5k, $10k and $20k streamers that are well engineered, and do what they’re supposed to do, which is move a digital file from a source to your dad, without adding a material amount of noise.  That’s it.  You just don’t have to spend that much to achieve that result.  (Btw, I would never advise you purchase a product that combines the server and streamer function into one product.  That creates potential noise issues that require more money to be invested to mitigate the noise.)

There is one mainstream audio magazine - HiFi News - that does a pretty good job of producing standardized measurements for streamers to evaluate their noise (or lack thereof).  In the interest of brevity, I’ll just encourage you to read the full thread I previously provided a link to.  But to answer your question, yes, there is a huge amount of misinformation in the marketplace and among our fellow enthusiasts about streamers.  I’ve been streaming for over 20 years, and it’s just gotten worse over that time.  

To be clear, there are $5k, $10k and $20k streamers that are well engineered, and do what they’re supposed to do, which is move a digital file from a source to your dad, without adding a material amount of noise.  That’s it.  You just don’t have to spend that much to achieve that result. 

Yup. No difference between a $2k streamer and a $10k streamer.  Makes perfect sense. 🤣🤣🤣  Talk about misinformation.