Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

That is an interesting video that does make some valid observations about some streamers and servers.  But, as he noted in the video, there are some streamers with proprietary boards and components in them that are optimized for the task.  As he noted, streamers have to store the digital files and extract those files which is a much more demanding task than streaming.  I also found it interesting that he has found that WAV is an audibly better way to store music files than FLAC; this is an observation made by others as well (my streamer stores in WAV).

There are streamers that are far more than computer boards and generic power supplies repackaged in another box.  The one I have comes in three boxes--one has a proprietary CD ripper and 8TB of storage, another box contains the streamer and the DAC, and the third box is a dedicated power supply for the streamer/DAC.  The streamer/DAC is fed power by multiple separate feeds from the power supply.  Internally, the streamer/DAC employs some fairly extreme measures to isolate sensitive functions form vibration as well as electrical interference.  One section employs a faraday cage, with the digital signal converted to optical in order to pass through the faraday cage before being converted back to an electrical signal.  Do any of these measures matter?  I don't know, but, I do get pretty decent digital sound from my setup. 

Lexicon and Oppo, all over again?

This articles dives deep into what Taiko Extreme is all about...I do realize $26K is lot of money. The OCD guy picks on Taiko but conveniently spares Jeff Rowland’s....maybe he has a vested interest in JR :-)

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/reality-quest-going-to-extremes-with-the-taiko-audio-sgm-extr...

Speaking of extreme....one can buy class D amp for $500 then why one would pay $58K for JR’s 925 mono’s?

https://www.11stereo.com/poweramplifiers

@larryi Very interesting setup. An Italian friend of mine with some lovely Maggies and VTL mono blocks built a nice setup -- two computers he built (kits make it easy) that are as simple as possible -- one is a server and that’s connected to another, which is a streamer, and they’re connected by an optical cable. Both are fan-less and both have linear power supplies. The big cost was the power supply. 

I do believe there is “ some “ merit in what he says. If you breakdown associated costs, you also have to factor in the amount of time and research, parts selection design execution, beta testing, building, marketing, reviewing ,  etc. that goes into these products, and yes, you are paying for that in the price, which I believe may account for 60-80% of the finished retail pricing, yet, I do not have the expertise and knowledge to do this myself, therefore, I try and find something used within my budget that represents good overall value and has taken most of its depreciation already. I rarely, if ever post what’s in my system as bragging rights I am not really interested in much. No matter what I own, somebody will have something better. Bottom line, there is a cost to playing this game and each person must decide what that cost will be “ for them “