I need help to select a music streamer

@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. 

Does the Bluesound have the capability to play MQA?  Would the Bluesound sound better or as good as the Bel Canto if I added expensive digital coax cable like Chocolate Audioquest?  This would cost $1,000 less than the Bel Canto.

Bluesound does a partial decoding of MQA, if I recall correctly.
FWIW, I find higher resolution to be just as good or better than MQA.
That 'secret sauce' recipe is something that I don't want to touch.- Like Dolby.
B

Is there really much of a difference in sound quality between different music streamers?  A Bluesound costs $499, a Bel Canto eOne costs $1,600 and PS Audio $6,000.  Does it all have to do with the quality of their processors?  So far, I think Roon to be gimmicky.  If I used either a Carbon or Coffee Audioquest digital cable using the Bluesound, wouldn’t this sound good enough and better than steaming TIDAL through my Apple TV using Coffee Audioquest HDMI cable?

Does the Bluesound truly stream MQA.  If so, how much difference in sound quality will I hear?