Point of higher priced streamer?

@yyzsantabarbara, I introduced fiber into my streaming solution a few weeks back.   I skipped on using the Optical Rendu as I didn't want to limit my DAC input to USB.   My NAS and Roon server (Intel NUC running ROCK) are two stories away from my listening room; I connect two switches using MoCA to bridge that distance and then run fiber from an equipment closet in the basement into my listening room that connects into an Uptone EtherREGEN.   Then a short CAT8 cable connects to my streamer a Bricasti M5 and another short SPDIF and USB cable connects to my DAC.

I heard a small improvement switching to fiber from copper on the A side of the EtherREGEN, but relatively speaking it wasn't near as large as what I heard by replacing my Pi with Digi+ SPDIF out to the Bricasti M5 SPDIF out.

If you really want to debate 1s vs 0s, checkout the forums on audiophilestyle where some folks already running fiber mention the differences they hear by switching SFPs :)

@yyzsantabarbara
Thank you for your response to my question regarding room correction. I will read the threat that you have pointed me to.

Regarding your suggestion of replacing the USB connection by optical to prevent analog noise contamination riding along a digital signal in your microRendu, it appears that an important enhancement to decrease noise  in the microRendu is to use a linear power supply to power it, instead of its original switching power supply.

There is an interesting post in audio science review (ASR) which shows how the performance of the microRendu improves significantly when you power it with a decent linear power supply.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-review-and-measurements-of-sonor...

I think that some of @Audio2design posts and comments are quite insightful. Perhaps the rest of the contributors can lower the level of personal attacks.

@yyzsantabarbara 
Thank you for your response to my question regarding room correction. I will read the threat that you have pointed me to.

Regarding your suggestion of replacing the USB connection by optical to prevent analog noise contamination riding along a digital signal in your microRendu, it appears that an important enhancement to decrease noise  in the microRendu is to use a linear power supply to power it, instead of its original switching power supply. 

There is an interesting post in audio science review (ASR) which shows how the performance of the microRendu improves significantly when you power it with a decent linear power supply.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/hardware-review-and-measurements-of-sonor...

This just reinforces what I was saying earlier with respect to streamers. With given bit-perfect output, which all streamers are capable of, and low jitter levels, if they even matter these days, the biggest difference unknown affecting streaming sound quality is electro-magnetic noise and interference. i.e. clean power and minimal noise transmission on cables. Isolating the heavy processing upstream via optical will provide incremental improvements, but the biggest improvement will come from a clean power supply. Linear power supplies are almost requisite in this regard. And if you are using USB then having a DAC that does not draw it's power over the USB 5V power bus will also help. 

In my case, I found the most (cost) effective solution is to run the heavy processing Roon core upstream on the network, and then use the highly optimized and lightweight OpticalRendu to isolate the input from noise. With LPS's across the board of course. If you think that the optical isolation only provides marginal improvements then you could go with an Allo USBridge Signature or Digione Signature (SPDIF) as a network endpoint - superb value for those devices. Powered by the Allo Shanti LPS, which is also a very good value. Regardless, you are talking about roughly $1000 or so for a good network endpoint solution that will sound every bit as good (if not better) than a $10k streamer. I have done an A/B comparison of my opticalRendu + upstream Roon Core vs a Lumin streamer and the isolated optical endpoint solution sounded better. It's important to note that the Lumin was just being used as a streamer and I am not talking about their built-in DAC's, which are actually pretty good. But that's a separate conversation if one is looking for an all-in-one streamer/dac combo.

Can we list some  LPS for the streamers. I am ready to buy ne today if I can get a list streamers to consider. Something for the microRendu would be ideal but for this thread any LPS.

Allo Shanti - https://allo.com/sparky/shanti.html