Point of higher priced streamer?


Hello,
Assuming I have separate DAC, and I just want to play songs from iPad by Airplay feature.
In this case, I need a streamer to receive music from my iPad -> DAC.

What’s the point of high price streamer? I’m bit surprised that some streamers are very high priced.
From my understanding, there should be no sound quality difference.
(Streaming reliability and build quality, I can see it but I do not see advantages in terms of sound quality.)

Am I missing something? If so, please share some wisdom.
128x128sangbro
PSAudio’s digital guru, Ted Smith, has some interesting thoughts on digital theory versus actual practice and listening experience. He posts frequently on their forums. No one is perfect, but he seems to have the knowledge, experience and practical expertise to explain many phenomena and the humility to shrug his shoulders about others. I hear what I hear and I am merely fascinated by what we discover as we learn more. There was a time when people doubted that minor firmware changes in DACS could result in clear changes in audible performance. Ted knows why. I heard those audible differences before I ever heard him explain it. My ears are my ultimate authority for what I purchase. I respect the scientific expertise necessary to build those products. I do not need to fully understand the science to enjoy the results. Nor am I troubled by those who doubt what I hear. All streamers are not created equal. That is what my ears tell me. If they all sound the same to someone else, I say, “Be Well and Prosper.”
it is our own fault and weakness when we give the trolls what they seek -- our energy and our response to their prodding...
@rhg88 This streamer thread has diverged to room correction. However, I am in total agreement with you on the room correct issue. I have an acoustically treated room and my software based room Digital Room Correction is very important piece in my system equation. I have perfect sound now in a really tiny crappy room with big speakers.

That altered digital stream of DRC bits from my ROON Server is sent via my streamer, a microRendu, to the USB input of my DAC. I think the content inside that stream is way more important than how it gets to my DAC. Why do I say that? Well, I just go into my ROON Server and toggle the switch to add DRC to the stream. When DRC is turned on the sound is glorious when it is turned off the room dominates with problems. The quality of my stream (subject of this thread) is a much lower concern until my room was dealt with.

BTW - I actually do not need to use the physical room acoustic treatments with the software DRC I am using. I kept them because I already had them in place before I did the software based DRC. My DRC runs on ROON Server.

More info on what I did is here.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/room-correction-roon-rew-room-eq-wizard?highlight=Room%2BCorr...

Except those are not minor changes. They are significant changes in the digital reconstruction filters that have direct impacts on the output. They are intentional modifications of the signal.

There was a time when people doubted that minor firmware changes in DACS could result in clear changes in audible performance. Ted knows why. I heard those audible differences before I ever heard him explain it.
@jaulbrich The streamer is just conveying the digital content. A CD transport can vary based on its ability to correctly read a CD and manage errors. The streamer is just taking the ones and zeros from the source (e.g. Tidal) and passing those data, verbatim one hopes, to the DAC. Are there errors to make up for? I don’t know, but I should hope there would be error correction that doesn’t rely on the streamer. This is computer data. Qualitative changes can happen in the DAC, sure. But not before, I’d think. But maybe I misunderstand how this works?