Discerning a difference between streamers is difficult...only me or common for all?

I'm using HDMI out of my computer into a receiver. I'm not sure what brand it is. Some very basic HDMI cable that costs about 12 bucks and can handle 8 channels of audio at 24/96 along with a 4k HDR video signal. So I'm definitely not saying my system is one that might reveal issues with cables and streamers, although it definitely does concerning the HDMI cable from the Blu-Ray player to the TV, whe I can see and hear static sometimes when the cable needs to be jiggled to make it go away.

On better systems, where cable time smear might cause easily audible issues, what time scale are we talking about? Millionths of a second? Is this smear that would cause data errors? From what I've seen in testing it's not hard for a cable to get up to a million hertz while still maintaining excellent phase and amplitude fidelity. 

Only if you use coax from streamer to DAC where jitter begins to matter. Otherwise all PCs are identical. CPU does not care if power is linear or switching. Internet does not tell of this is audio, video, jpeg or a Word file, all sent the same way. USB optical isolation may come handy in some cases. 

@dhite71 any plans to post your system pictures? 

@asctim 

"If the server software or the cables are delivering the digital file information to the dac in a different enough way to make the DAC sound different, then some or all of them aren’t working correctly. Or the DAC isn’t working correctly. Or none of them are working correctly. Or there’s some incompatibility. Or they’re creating different sounds on purpose through processing."

Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? ;-)  In the analog realm, audiophiles spend tens of thousands of dollars on turntables, cartridges, tonearms, preamps, etc etc, all seeking "ideal" sound, when all we really should be worried about is hearing the darn record, right?  I mean, "grooves are grooves," right?  Is one person's system "broken" because it sounds different from another person's system?  Of course, in the analog realm it's generally accepted that various "macro" mechanisms will affect the transfer of sound waves from the grooves to the speakers.  When it comes to digital, there's a stubborn belief that "bits are bits."  But a lot of people would argue that the "micro" mechanisms involved in *how* those bits get turned into music make just as much of a difference.  An OS that uses a different kernel or tweaks the operation of the CPU or system clocking devices appears to have an effect on the end result.  Is that "processing," or just an attempt to improve the quality of not only the digital-to-analog conversion process, but the way the information is shuttled from one device to another?  Is it "processing" to upsample or change filter parameters to bypass a DAC's internal filters?  No one seems to dispute that in purely analog systems, there are many ways to skin a cat, so to speak. ;-)  When it comes to the digital world and it's less-readily observable processes, suddenly "bits are bits" and if one algorithm sounds different from another, it's "broken." ;-)

@dogearedaudio add to everything you mentioned the differences in clocks between different streamers.

In the OP’s example an ARC DAC 8 was used with 2 streamers - BS Node and Aurender N10. To the best of my knowledge the DAC 8 isn’t compatible with the Linux based Aurender N10 so that takes using USB out.

We’re now comparing N10 vs BS Node driving DAC8 via SPDIF coax cable. In this case, the Aurender’s superior OCXO clock is being leveraged. BS Node clock is nowhere nearly as good. This alone would make a pretty big difference. But the OP doesn’t hear enough to appreciate the change. Add to this the Aurender signal processing that caches the data onto the internal drive. This results in much cleaner data feed to the DAC. Compared to BS Node that uses small buffer area.
Another key difference between the two streamers.

Same applies to using DAC 9 now when comparing the next level up BS to Aurender W20

And the outcome is the cached digital files clocked by the super precise OCXO in the Aurender didn’t sound any different than the buffered data stream out of BS Node? Or the difference was so subtle that it wasn’t enough to appreciate?

I’m not going to call 🐂 💩 but I will question this.