Point of higher priced streamer?

@rhg88 This streamer thread has diverged to room correction. However, I am in total agreement with you on the room correct issue. I have an acoustically treated room and my software based room Digital Room Correction is very important piece in my system equation. I have perfect sound now in a really tiny crappy room with big speakers.

That altered digital stream of DRC bits from my ROON Server is sent via my streamer, a microRendu, to the USB input of my DAC. I think the content inside that stream is way more important than how it gets to my DAC. Why do I say that? Well, I just go into my ROON Server and toggle the switch to add DRC to the stream. When DRC is turned on the sound is glorious when it is turned off the room dominates with problems. The quality of my stream (subject of this thread) is a much lower concern until my room was dealt with.

BTW - I actually do not need to use the physical room acoustic treatments with the software DRC I am using. I kept them because I already had them in place before I did the software based DRC. My DRC runs on ROON Server.

More info on what I did is here.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/room-correction-roon-rew-room-eq-wizard?highlight=Room%2BCorr...

Except those are not minor changes. They are significant changes in the digital reconstruction filters that have direct impacts on the output. They are intentional modifications of the signal.

There was a time when people doubted that minor firmware changes in DACS could result in clear changes in audible performance. Ted knows why. I heard those audible differences before I ever heard him explain it.

@jaulbrich The streamer is just conveying the digital content. A CD transport can vary based on its ability to correctly read a CD and manage errors. The streamer is just taking the ones and zeros from the source (e.g. Tidal) and passing those data, verbatim one hopes, to the DAC. Are there errors to make up for? I don’t know, but I should hope there would be error correction that doesn’t rely on the streamer. This is computer data. Qualitative changes can happen in the DAC, sure. But not before, I’d think. But maybe I misunderstand how this works?

Of the eight or nine streamers I have auditioned in my own system, I hear the biggest SQ differences between streamers whose manufacturers take power management and design seriously and those who do not. Additionally, vibration damping and build quality of digital outputs appear to have some impact on the SQ I have heard. That said, I’ve never found the SQ differences between competently constructed and designed streamers and DACs to be nearly as dramatic and obvious as, say, phono cartridges or even between high quality versus poorly made vinyl record pressings. But I’ve only heard a small portion of the devices available for purchase.  That said, any product that reduces “digital listening fatigue” is something I’m willing to pony up a bit of cash for...within the limits of my budget and priorities. Suffice it to say, getting the entire digital recording and playback chain “right” is no walk in the park. My hat is off to any designer or company that manages to make digitally reproduced music more faithfully resemble the original sound that was recorded.

I should add that one way that I am thinking of improving my streaming quality, now that I have the room tamed, is using Fibre Optical cable. One way that streaming can degrade in quality is when analog noise goes from Ethernet to the DAC. My microRendu should have this issue, though I don't know if that is the case since I have not compared anything "better". My understanding is that Fibre Optical cable (I do not mean  Toslink) cannot carry analog noise from the 1's and 0's being transferred on the Ethernet wire.

The cleanest solution to this that I know is the Lumin X1 DAC which has a Fibre Optical input. You get a network switch like this,

https://www.ui.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-8-150w/ ($200)

and connect a Fibre Optical cable ($50) between the 2. Likely the best streaming quality you can achieve. Unfortunately the Lumin X1 is $15K. However, if what I am saying is not BS (I have not tested this myself yet)  then I expect more DAC manufacturers to have this as an input. If they can have I2S as an input why not Fibre.

I emailed Alvin of Vinshine (Denafrips) about this (and other topics) and he said they were aware of Fibre's benefits but it is not the highest priority at the moment.