Point of higher priced streamer?

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.

@ironlung

A.You are talking about something different - upstream services/clients *intentionally* pulling a different resolution or transcoding/decoding to a different format/resolution/shaping/whatever. Of course the data output from those processes will be different. I think most of us know this. What I was talking about was that any streamer set to a baseline setting of not modifying a file and simply sending that data to its output, is usually referred to as “bit-perfect” output and will have identical 1’s and 0’s with the same source file/stream. Bit-perfect implies that the source data has not had a single bit modified. If you can’t compare two streamers in this same apples-to-apples way then it’s pointless.

2. With all due respect the file format stuff makes no sense. Of course a lossless FLAC and a lossy MP3 file will be different and thus sound different. And different file types exist because they serve different purposes - compression formats like FLAC exist to save space at the expense of encoding/decoding time. Most compression formats allow one to specify the level of compression. Even a zip file can compress the same original file at different levels - the result is that the compressed file will be different. But once uncompressed they will again be identical. Another aspects of different file formats are security and recovery. Regardless I assumed that this was a given to the discussion. I will guarantee you that any given source file that is compressed with any LOSSLESS format like FLAC or ALAC will result in an identical bit-perfect output from 2 streamers if they have no additional settings to modify said file/stream. (A stream and a file basically the same thing to an application reading them btw - they are usually wrapped in buffers and the underlying process deals with pulling the bytes off of disk or off an http stream respectively).

As for proprietary storage formats like Kaleidoscope, they do this to optimize the performance of and add features relevant to their domain. But the same source file will be bit-perfect identical when read off a Kaleidoscope disk or a ZFS disk array or raided windows NTFS or whatever. Unless they are intentionally modifying the data, which includes lossy compression like MP3 or JPEG or MP4.

I wondered how long it would take to see through the apples to oranges comparison. At any rate take the apple 320kb Mp3 and orange FLAC through identical streamers to identical amps and speakers and I wonder how many could tell the apple from the orange without knowing which was which of course. 

Obviously nobody can tell apples from oranges if eaten in a blind test controlled environment 🙄