I use network players designed to stream audio as the source feed to the dac. That keeps any issues that might be associated with using a general purpose computer as the source out of the picture.
With this approach there is no audible difference.
OTherwise, there are many factors that can come into play that affects sound with any source type for that matter. Power/jitter issues associated with decompression processing can stand in line with all the rest.
But the format itself does not correlate to sound quality in general though. Lots of other crap can go wrong and chances are it does so differently because of different hardware and software processing scenarios for different formats. The devil is all in the details. But not in the source format itself. If processed properly, teh results are the same. That can be a big if though.
Personally, I prefer .wav. Probably lower risk in general but not inherently better or worse otherwise.
Roku, Logitech, .wav, flac. It all sounds essentially the same and quite excellent to the point where if there is a difference it is not an issue at least for me.
FWIW, I can change most anything else in my system and hear a clear difference, including ICs, but none at all with any combo of Roku, Logitech, .wav, FLAC.
It also doesn't matter what kind of computer I use for the server. I've used various notebooks over teh past few years. They all sound the same witht eh network player approach. The only issue is if they have enough memory and CPU speed to stream in real time without rebuffering at the network player occurring and how fast library scans and such take. Squeezeserver on my current 8 Gb Gateway laptop can completely reload its music library from a USB disk drive in about 10 minutes (1700 albums, 18000 tracks, 99% .wav, 1% flac and mp3 downloads so far).
Roku Soundbridge is an older and curently poorly supported platform, so I do not recommend that these days, but otherwise the sound quality through a good DAC is top notch as is Squeezebox Touch through the same DAC (I've used several....DACs make a HUGE sound difference, so worry about that first).
With this approach there is no audible difference.
OTherwise, there are many factors that can come into play that affects sound with any source type for that matter. Power/jitter issues associated with decompression processing can stand in line with all the rest.
But the format itself does not correlate to sound quality in general though. Lots of other crap can go wrong and chances are it does so differently because of different hardware and software processing scenarios for different formats. The devil is all in the details. But not in the source format itself. If processed properly, teh results are the same. That can be a big if though.
Personally, I prefer .wav. Probably lower risk in general but not inherently better or worse otherwise.
Roku, Logitech, .wav, flac. It all sounds essentially the same and quite excellent to the point where if there is a difference it is not an issue at least for me.
FWIW, I can change most anything else in my system and hear a clear difference, including ICs, but none at all with any combo of Roku, Logitech, .wav, FLAC.
It also doesn't matter what kind of computer I use for the server. I've used various notebooks over teh past few years. They all sound the same witht eh network player approach. The only issue is if they have enough memory and CPU speed to stream in real time without rebuffering at the network player occurring and how fast library scans and such take. Squeezeserver on my current 8 Gb Gateway laptop can completely reload its music library from a USB disk drive in about 10 minutes (1700 albums, 18000 tracks, 99% .wav, 1% flac and mp3 downloads so far).
Roku Soundbridge is an older and curently poorly supported platform, so I do not recommend that these days, but otherwise the sound quality through a good DAC is top notch as is Squeezebox Touch through the same DAC (I've used several....DACs make a HUGE sound difference, so worry about that first).