why expensive streamers
@soix and others
I am unclear about the effect on sound of streamers (prior to getting to the dac). Audio (even hi-res) has so little information content relative to the mega and giga bit communication and processing speeds (bandwidth, BW) and cheap buffering supported by modern electronics that it seems that any relatively cheap piece of electronics would never lose an audio bit.
Here is why. Because of the huge amount of BW relative to the BW needs of audio, you can send the same audio chunk 100 times and use a bit checking algorithm (they call this "check sum") to make sure just one of these sets is correct. With this approach you would be assured that the correct bits would be transfered. This high accuracy rate would mean perfect audio bit transfer.
What am I missing? Why are people spending 1000's on streamers?
thx
@grislybutter What I meant was from the source (Spotify, Quoboz, Tidal, Apple, etc.) to the endpoint: you and your system. Those here who have/use local files on their own storage they stream from have commented on how much better it sounds compared to some online sources, going even further to say it sounds even better on their CDPs but it's getting really close to practically indistinguishable nowadays. All the best, |
that's because of the business rules. Playing via streaming (putting packages together as they come in vs having it all at the door) is different because of their algorithms for how to cut corners - to deal with missing/delayed packets. It's not because noise creeps in along the way. That's my understanding |
What algorithms do you imagine exist? Services such as Qobuz and Tidal use TCP/IP protocol to send bit perfect copies of files provided to them by the record companies. It's as simple as that. |
As @cleeds said most streaming services use TCP/IP protocol which delivers bit perfect data/files. Now why streamers sound different (if they do) is another story. |
