Apple TV Streaming Sound Quality vs Streamer?

audioengr | steve

Why do you say FLAC will never sound as good as WAV? My understanding is FLAC is 100% lossless. If a device were to decompress the FLAC input and place into a memory buffer which then feeds a DAC, shouldn't FLAC sound as good?

And regarding ethernet, it would seem the fix to all of this crap with sync/async would be to standardize on a protocol for audio that is similar to TCP/IP in that it features error correction built-in which feeds into a memory buffer (memory is cheap nowadays) which would then feed the DAC section. I have no idea why the audio community hasn't figured this out already.

Since adding the Benchmark Dac, I really enjoy the added detail but it seems to be a little brash in my system or at least to what I’m used to.  Would the synchro mesh mellow it out a little?  Or am I better off getting a more laid back dac? If so what are some good ones in the 1-2k used market?

HDMI is not hi-res, but Toslink can be depending on the source. Not sure what you are saying here.

Steve, what means "HDMI is not hi-res"? HDMI 1.3 by its spec is a Dolby TrueHD / DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream compatible if devices support it. And even if we suggest that HDMI doesn't pass a bitstream hi-res signal, but using it instead of ATV's AirPlay with 16/44.1(-->48) is a huuuge difference, even for my non-perfect ears. And the signal is already PCM/88.2 on AV.

I'm also sorry if I speak incorrect details here, please correct me.

Benchmark DACs are known to be razor sharp. You're better off replacing it with something else, such as a NAD M51, or something from Chord.

Why do you say FLAC will never sound as good as WAV? My understanding is FLAC is 100% lossless. If a device were to decompress the FLAC input and place into a memory buffer which then feeds a DAC, shouldn't FLAC sound as good?

FLAC and wav contain the same data, however every DAC I have tried with every playback app that I have tried shows that on-the-fly decoding of FLAC impacts SQ.  The image and soundstage are affected.  You need a good system to hear this, but it's there.

And regarding ethernet, it would seem the fix to all of this crap with sync/async would be to standardize on a protocol for audio that is similar to TCP/IP in that it features error correction built-in which feeds into a memory buffer (memory is cheap nowadays) which would then feed the DAC section. I have no idea why the audio community hasn't figured this out already.

Packetized data with Ethernet works well, however the signal integrity and rise-time still impacts SQ with Ethernet.  Therefore, it is still important to have a fast driver in a Router or Switch and low-loss, high-bandwidth Ethernet cables.  Adding an isolator also helps with the capacitive leakage across Ethernet transformers.

The bottom line is that there is no panacea.  Every interface and protocol seems to have deficiencies.  The deficiencies with Ethernet seem to be the easiest to overcome, but at a cost of course.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio