I need help to select a music streamer

Is there really much of a difference in sound quality between different music streamers?  A Bluesound costs $499, a Bel Canto eOne costs $1,600 and PS Audio $6,000.  Does it all have to do with the quality of their processors?  So far, I think Roon to be gimmicky.  If I used either a Carbon or Coffee Audioquest digital cable using the Bluesound, wouldn’t this sound good enough and better than steaming TIDAL through my Apple TV using Coffee Audioquest HDMI cable?

Does the Bluesound truly stream MQA.  If so, how much difference in sound quality will I hear?

Positive results for a single test, on the other hand, are more credible since positive results were obtained in spite of any problems or errors that may have occurred in the test.

Most blind tests are simply to hear a difference.  So you are defining positive results as one where the user heard a difference and we are sure there was no error that produced an audible difference where there otherwise would not be one.  But if you knew there was operator error, you'd throw out those results, so, if there's error, it's unknown by definition.  

I would describe both a)hearing a difference due to unknown operator error, as well as b) the well supported bias towards hearing a difference* as false positives, and difficult to quantify.  

Anyway, legit or false, positive results (blind tests of cables, amps, hi-res vs redbook) remain vanishingly rare, so there's not much to be credulous over.  

* See the Stereophile tests in the link, particularly the devastating footnotes, for a hilarious read on this.

ahofer.....please include Stereophile link.  Thanks.

Well, for one thing blind tests are used for a number of reasons, including testing a single component or audio device or tweak. So don’t hand me a whole load of horseman knew her. Furthermore, if there is a problem with a component and it flunks the test, the test result is negative, not a “false positive” as you claim. Follow?

In addition positive results of blind tests of cables, tweaks, hi res vs Redbook, etc. are vanishingly rare because of all the things that can go wrong as I already pointed out. There is also the issue of the person’s hearing ability or skill or experience. But I wasn’t going to go there. 😬

Here is the stereophile test I was referring to (It was linked in the head-fi compilation earlier in the thread) -  https://www.stereophile.com/features/113/index.html

It's one of the only tests in the head-fi compilation (or Archimago's many tests) that indicate an audible difference (in amps/cables/resolution), but, as you'll see if you read the footnotes and letters, that conclusion was far from justified, and the null hypothesis (no audible differences) remains unchallenged after properly controlling responses.

But it did suggest something interesting - an overall tendency to hear a difference between options, revealed by the results when the two options were identical. I've observed this in myself.

A good discussion of the flaw in the test design, and how it potentially revealed a bias towards hearing difference is in the letters on this page, particularly the second letter (also obliquely discussed in a footnote):

https://www.stereophile.com/content/blind-listening-letters-part-4

In the absence of a basic flaw in your experiment, the above statistical analysis suggests to me that Stereophile's amplifier test may have neatly pinpointed a key element in the high-end audio business: a propensity (is compulsion too strong a word?) on the part of aficionados to hear differences.

footnote 8 reveals that Larry Atkinson had also realized the problem, but the letter explains best the flaw in the data analysis that invalidates the (badly overstated) conclusion of the main article.