Rebadging of Streaming Platforms

Overwhelming evidence is that the devil is in your ‘pockets’ 😈 A ‘massive’ majority would leave little room if any for a debate correct ? But it’s easy BS for all to sling. Irrelevant as an adjective…not connected with your money  Lol 

Hear: can’t here a difference then 

Ben hearing this for  4o + years now yet analog is still here and we convert digital to analog. 

You might have a few Lit, Light, empty pretty cases, bells and whistles and flashey cables to brag about, so all is not lost. Yup we’ve come a long way, 40-50 years learning….What how to listen ? Heard that before Lol

1971 GTO eh? 

About as un-digital as you get. 

Think I will take my Lucid Air GT for a spin. 

@badgerdms 

Indeed, there are a number of streamers anchored by the open source flexibility of the raspberry pi variants. There are others which utilize a more sophisticated cpu setup but Linux seems to be OS of most. I can imagine that many of the manufacturers today are taking advantage of the pi as their core streaming platform and they write custom interfaces for their specific application. Like so many things in life, how the signal is addressed to feed the input, power supply implementation(s), what is done to the digital signal on the output side and how the handoff takes place are where the art of the individual designers is on full display. Noise rejection is also a big deal.

I've been streaming for alot of years and there are distinct performance levels. Some believe it is a matter of minor degrees...and within certain performance bands it is. There is quite a performance improvement from a normal home computer and an optimized mac mini. There is a considerable improvement from a mac mini to a purpose built streamer. Then you have the performance leap from there to the Aurender/Innuos level, then to the Grimm/Taiko level and on up. Is it worth the $$$ to move up the performance band? Thats an individual choice. For many, the entry Innuos level is a terrific stopping point. For those who want more, there are more sophisticated approaches as you move up the $$$ heirarchy.

For those who believe its snake oil or marketing BS, I would respectfully submit you havent heard it for yourself. A healthy dose of skepticism is always good...but to deny the performance improvements aren't available and are figments of an imagination is the equivalent to offering that all phono cartridges sound the same...that all phono stages sound the same....

I'm sorry that no one seems to be able to answer the original question from the OP.  My guess is that this is a similar situation to high end class D amps.  Most of them are based on a few different amplification modules.  Of course, different input buffers & power supplies (and occasionally more dramatic alterations) results in different sounding amplifiers, but the module used is often known and even touted,

Industry sources have suggested to the OP that most streaming is done via a few standard platforms.  As with class D amps, additional circuitry before, after, and possibly even in those modules can result in different sounding streamers.  Yet the identities of those common platforms is clearly not common knowledge.

It is possible that most/all "high end" streamers are the result of completely independent platform designs, and that the sources were referring to the multitudes of AV receivers, HT setups, etc. sharing "streamer on a chip"-type implementations.  The real answer is probably more subtle. 

Going back to class D amps, most of them are tucked away in cars, TVs, etc. and are probably not GanFet, Purifi, Hypex, ...  They're based on anonymous, less carefully designed modules.  It seems unlikely that every high end streamer shares no common circuitry/software, but none of us know if there is a "Hypex" of streamer platforms (not singling them out as best or worst, just noting that it's easy to find multiple well regarded amps using Hypex).  Given that this is Agon, I believe the OP doesn't care whether all the streaming devices at Best Buy use the same -say- Samsung streamer.  They're probably curious if there are reputable streamer platform modules being used in multiple high end devices, and who makes them.

@petaluman 

The "hypex" of streamers is raspberry pi.