I need help to select a music streamer

The main problem I see with blind tests is that negative results from a single test have very little meaning or significance since there are so many things that can go wrong with a given test. E.g., the tester could be all thumbs or the system could be miswired.

Positive results for a single test, on the other hand, are more credible since positive results were obtained in spite of any problems or errors that may have occurred in the test. As tests are repeated in the same system and are performed in other systems independently results begin to have more meaning and credibility.

I know you said budget is $1500 and I don’t have a recommendation at that price, but if you can stretch to $2k then Teac nt505 with dual ak4493 dacs is best value out there. 

@geoffkait not quite, it is also possible for bad test design or mishandling to effect one component and not another, so a positive can also be false.

Positives, whether false or not, are awfully hard to find.  That has to mean that it is difficult to demonstrate audible differences (for amps, cables, digital sources/resolutions) in a controlled environment. If it was easy, cable and amp manufacturers would be yelling it from the rooftops, no?

On a related matter - there are very few speaker distortion comparisons as well. Yet speakers, I'm told, introduce the majority of the distortion in the chain. That's also interesting.

ahofer
@geoffkait not quite, it is also possible for bad test design or mishandling to effect one component and not another, so a positive can also be false.

>>>>But that case would be a negative result, not a positive one, for the component that was mishandled. That falls under the heading “error in system.” It wasn’t a false positive, it was a negative. I only gave two examples of things that can go wrong. Obviously there are many others such as operator error, unfavorable weather, system not revealing enough, cables or components not broken in, etc. In any case, this highlights why it’s important for multiple blind tests to be performed on multiple systems by multiple testers.