Audio2design, You're right - that's probably what he was talking about, otherwise it doesn't make any sense. He says "My system uses fiber optic cables. These go all the way to the dac", hoping that optical connection, shielding DAC from electrical noise, makes incoming music always the same. It is not why it is the same. Streamed music doesn't come in real time. It is just plain data that is pre-buffered. As long as it is the same data in the same format everything depends on the hardware that creates S/Pdif stream/timing (and I assumed he uses different hardware for different providers). What makes different streaming providers sound the same is the fact that they send data only. Asking them why it sounds the same (with the same hardware and the DAC) is like asking different bookstores why the same book looks the same.
It should sound the same, assuming same internet provider and hardware, same data, same data format, same streaming hardware, same DAC etc. "Should", because there might be something else that I'm forgetting.
I looked at Toshiba Toslink drivers. There are some, perhaps older generation, that go only to about 5 Mbit/s, but they have newer drivers that go over 100Mbit/s. Such Toslink devices should suffer less from the system noise. Jitter induced by slow transition time and noise at the receiver's (DAC) end would be reduced as well.
It should sound the same, assuming same internet provider and hardware, same data, same data format, same streaming hardware, same DAC etc. "Should", because there might be something else that I'm forgetting.
I looked at Toshiba Toslink drivers. There are some, perhaps older generation, that go only to about 5 Mbit/s, but they have newer drivers that go over 100Mbit/s. Such Toslink devices should suffer less from the system noise. Jitter induced by slow transition time and noise at the receiver's (DAC) end would be reduced as well.