Do streamers make a difference?

@phusis  I re-read your post again. You made an excellent point:

To me for something to be objectively better it needs to be so fundamentally that warrants an actual purchase. That being the case I’d rather wait a bit, save up the extra dough and go with the investment that provides a definite advancement in SQ, instead of going "sideways" with a less costly streamer. 

So yes, moving "sideways" often results in spending money just to shift the color of the sound rather than actually improving the fundamental performance.

 

I am curious as to how others regard the audible contribution of the server versus the streamer. Does it matter more, less, or the same?

@tcutter I have some thoughts on this subject. Over the years I’ve used these streamers:

Auralic Aries

Sonore microRendu 

Aurender N10

Innuos Zen MK3

Innuos Zenith (latest)

Lumin U1 Mini

Lumin U1 with X1 supply

Lumin U2 mini

Lumin U2

Playback Design MPS-X

Direct PC over USB

Servers have been: Roon Core hosted on NUCS(ROCK OS and Windows OS), Windows machines of various classes, Roon hosted on Innuos, Nucleus One (latest), Melco basic one (forget the model)

DACS have been: Meitner MA1v2, Meitner MA3, MSB Discrete, Chord Cutest, TT2, DAVE, Mojo2, Bricasti M3, M1, M21, Denafrips Terminator II anniversary, Moon 791,Playback Designs MPD-8

SACD Players: Luxman D08u, D03X, Marantz SA-10, Accuphase DP-770 (latest)

Switches/gadgets: Various Netgear, SFP cages, USB reclockers, Ethernet filters, linear power supplies, $$$ eth cables, Melco S100/2 (latest)

What I’ve noticed, in terms of rank from biggest to least, impacts on sound quality (1 being most important):

1) speaker room integration (a sufficiently capable speaker is assumed)

2) Amplifier

3) Preamplifier

4) DAC

5) Streamer

6) Cables

7) Network accessories

These are digital only observations. Vinyl will have its own set of tradeoffs.

My latest digital front end, Accuphase DP-770 SACD player with USB input option and fed by a cheapie $300 ifi Zen Stream 3 seems to leave nothing off the table in terms of resolution, transparency, functionality, ease of use, audio performance, etc. I’m reasonably sure to improve on say noise floor to get blacker blacks, would require a huge outlay for say something like high end Aurender or Lumin. But to me I see no value in that play whatsoever. The DAC’s noise and jitter rejection over its USB port is significant to the point that I see zero reason to invest any further on improving streaming. The SQ is very close to the primary purpose, which is playing CDs and SACDs. In a sense I’m both shocked—and not, at this result. I think the USB implementation DAC side, is super critical and pays dividends in the end. I am using a Wyred4Sound USB Reclocker on the iFI and feeding the iFI LAN port with my Melco S/100 which hilariously cost a few X more than the streamer, so these accoutrements might have something to do with it. 
In any case I think uber $$$ streamers are fine and should cause no harm, but this latest experience has proven to me that they are NOT necessarily required to unlock glorious sound. 

As always YMMV :) 

cheers 

 

 

 

 

 

@tcutter 

“Server” and “streamer” are often used interchangeably…it really comes down to how they’re implemented in a system. I’m a Roon user, but I don’t run a separate server for Roon Core. My DAC has the Roon endpoint/renderer built in, and that’s all I use. My music library lives on a portable Samsung 2TB SSD, plugged directly into the Merging DAC via USB for seamless playback.

I mention this because your Nagra streamer follows a similar philosophy, keeping noisy servers out of the chain. It’s a clean, minimalist approach to music playback without heavy processing or added noise 😊