Point of higher priced streamer?

Streamer does one thing, instruct DAC how to create the audio.

@pc997 Yes, and if you bothered to read through my technical explanation about how different streamers can and do provide DACs with varying "instructions" dependent on multiple factors, you'd be able to comprehend how the streamer itself is just as important as the DAC.

But then I see why you can't hear the difference - your amplifier is applying a filtered buffer in it's gain stage from the upstream components. Your system sounds like your amplifier designer intended it to.

For both, outputting at the same volume I could not hear any difference at all. This even though the external laptop is upsampling to 192K while the direct connection from the 2008 Macbook Pro via its optical audio is not.

That's not surprising, since the receiving interface in your DAC (Toslink which is SPDIF) is treating the incoming data stream the same. Sample rate may have no affect if the internal SRC on the DAC itself overrides what it is receiving from the interface. I'd imagine Schitt go through some great lengths to reduce jitter (word clock timing variations) on the SPDIF/Toslink interface, which is why there's no perceptible difference.

If you compared the Toslink to the USB interface though, my guess is that with the same source (MacBook Pro and Audirvana) you might hear some different results.

When you talk about your understanding, I assume that is based on your understanding of the electronics involved.   There is clearly sonic differences between different streamers (I have both blue sound and lumin).  The question becomes the quality of the overall system and what you are looking for.   The blue sound is perfectly fine where we use it to fire up a loud 4/4 beat in our workout room.  But it would be sub-par in our main listening rooms where critical listening matters 

How the data got from source/cloud/drives/whatever via streamer to the output is somewhat moot. All streamers are going to deliver bit-perfect digital audio output.

With respect to your knowledge of TCP/UDP, I offer the following consideration.

I'd suggest delving a bit more into computational theory and architecture before making this claim. I.E., "the network is the computer" and processes within the computer are analogous to/similar to the OSI layer system used to deploy WANs/LANs.

I've mentioned it before but people seem to think there is no difference between the content of the data from a server.

If this were true then why do companies like Kaleidescape write proprietary file systems to store specific types of data (movies and music) on their servers?

Further, why do we have different file formats for audio in the first place? If it's all just 1's and 0's shouldn't everyone be using the same exact file type, conversation done, over?

To break this down a bit more, consider what I mentioned about Spotify.

If I happened to be an insider beta tester for lossless FLAC streaming (I'm not but I've heard rumors of those who are) from Spotify, the App I would be using would include the necessary code to tell the server that the client API was authorized to receive a FLAC encoded file.

A "normal" Spotify use requesting the same exact file from the same server on the same exact network would receive a 320kbps OGG file because the FLAC files are being transcoded before they leave, for use within the "normal" Spotify API.

In other words, not only can the server API and subsequent processes change the data through encoding/encapsulation/delivery on a particular bus, but the client API and how it is integrated with the server can also affect the data, while still remaining "bit-perfect".

In either case, if I sent the signal to a DAC, the signal is arriving bit-perfect.

Bit-perfect does not preclude that something has not happened to the data further up the chain. It's a misconception amongst digital audio "experts".

I can prove this on a smaller scale. I could set up two identical network streamers (I'll use UPnP) on the same exact network. I can configure a NAS device with multiple LAN ports to operate on two different VLANs with two different IP addresses. I can assign each UPnP network streamer to it's own VLAN.

I can then configure the UPnP/DLNA server software on the NAS with a huge file library of FLAC files, and tell the software to send native FLAC over one LAN while transcoding the FLAC to MP3 or OGG over the second VLAN.

If you tested both UPnP streamers with a DAC that can indicate "bit-perfect" output, they would both show as bit perfect after the streamer performs the necessary decode of the encapsulated file. 

It's this encode/decode process which seems to befuddle audio guys from realizing that yes, the file data can indeed (and sometimes is) be altered by the server/client in many more ways than one.

The rest of your post is otherwise spot on, I'd just encourage people who really want to enjoy their music at a higher level to keep an open mind with respect to some of this stuff and realize that yea, better hardware and software can provide better results in the right circumstances.

Well said. Spot on! Good things happen to those who try.

I'd just encourage people who really want to enjoy their music at a higher level to keep an open mind with respect to some of this stuff and realize that yea, better hardware and software can provide better results in the right circumstances.