Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

Your comments are always tinged with a bit of healthy scepticism. Keep following your nose and like many others you might discover that in audio, price in not always a good indicator of product performance especially in digital audio.

“price in not always a good indicator of product performance especially in digital audio.”

Very true, different strokes for different folks. Some people are happy with raspberry pi 4 in their closet, others are ecstatic with Taiko Extreme 😊

To the OP, you can buy a watch that will keep accurate time for $20, or you can pay $20k for a watch that also keeps accurate time.  Pride of ownership is a powerful consumer motivation.  The expensive watch will look and feel really nice, but it won't keep better time and that's entirely besides the point.  You don't have to spend gobs of money to get good audio performance, but the best will cost you serious coin.

thought that with all I had read about jitter, and clock timing, etc. there might be something to very expensive streaming/serving

Jitter and clock timing are solved issues and have been for about 10 years. If there is anything you need to take with a grain of salt it's this. Raspberry Pi 4 and a competent built $200 DAC will perform beyond the threshold of human audiblility. 

Points taken. He’s talking about units with $5k worth of parts that get fancy chassis that then charge $20-$30k. He says in the video he’s ok with charging $10k for such units and that he’s not dogging people who want to buy for chest-thumping reasons, but he’s pointing out that for those who don’t know (like me) there’s no $$s going toward anything audio related up that high. While it's true that "the best will cost you serious coin" I think we'd agree that it should cost "serious coin" because it is designed and built with serious skill and parts all the way through.

There is a way of commenting in audio that takes the easy way out -- to bash the rich or luxury goods. And I agree that’s too easy and not really of interest to people interested mainly in sound and value. I don’t think that’s really his game, overall, here, but it’s kind of his hook. (That old, "Hey, kid, I’m going to let you in on a secret" gambit.)

I’m not really that taken with this guy, but he makes some interesting points. Hans Beekhyzen, Darko, seem much much more rational as educators among the video ’casters. Kind of regret posting this thread.