Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

a music server is just another computer application. Has nothing go to do with making sound. Just serving up files from storage like any other program.


The streamer is where things start to get interesting. The streamer takes the data from the files served up by the server and produces the digital electric signal that the DAC then uses to produce the music in real time. Streamers can have an effect on the sound quality but in practice it may be hard to tell.

The DAC is by far the biggest factor in practice regarding the end sound quality in the digital streaming pipeline.
Keeping jitter to a minimum is key for good sound quality. The wire connection from streamer to DAC can also play a part in regards to jitter levels into the DAC as a result of signal reflections.

Also noise in the circuit that makes it into the signal from streamer to DAC may also have an effect. I like wireless connections from server to streamer for that reason...isolation for the music making components from the wired computer network. Wired circuits can be very prone to noise. Won’t hurt the computer programs that run on it but might hurt the music making process if it makes it’s way into the circuit between streamer and dac.

Last year I decided to replace playing CDs with storing them on a hard drive and playing them through a server connected to my vintage MSB Platinum DAC. The salesman persuaded me to get a Bluesound Vault 2i which copse CDs to its hard drive and corrects detectable bit errors in part by reading a CD more than once. I ran onto some difficulties which included extreme complication whenever I added a new CD or download and the impossibility of listing each piece of music by its composer. With help I got a copy of the library stored in the Vault 2i onto a folder in my laptop. My complete entire collection took up a little more than 30 gB, something that could easily fit a 50 gB flash drive. I made a separate folder for each composer and I use the flash drive rather than the hard drive. The Vault 2i can get near HD for any classical music station though for four classical music stations when the weather is right I still use an FM tuner for the better resolution than HD has to offer.
I suspect there might have been a cheaper way to do this but I do not think far more expensive servers have anything better.
On the subject of rationalization dismissing extremely costly components I have some skepticism. Cables costing 5 figures advertise such expedients as litz or ribbon construction to ameliorate skin effect at high frequencies. If you calculate the effective loss of cross sectional ares of an 8 gauge speaker wire in series with a 4 Ohm speaker, the difference is only a few hundredths of an Ohm resistance increase at 20 kHz over DC resistance, which could cause a few hundredths of a dB attenuation at frequencies we can't hear. This the junk science used to sell such speakers does not get you what you pay for. How do we know what other deceptions might be in the audio industry.
There is another reason I take extreme prices with a grain of salt. There is a $350,000 pair of monoblocks which can be built for approximately $2000. I do not know whether the $350,000 model even uses polypropylene filter capacitors in the high voltage power supplies instead of the inferior electrolytic kind you see in "high end" amplifiers costing $20,000 or more. This is why I design and build my own amplifiers.   

Well given the extreme density difference between electrolytic and film caps, if I want 100,000uf and film caps should I forgo the washroom or kitchen.

There are certainly several logical fallacies in the video. Those inclined may have a field day but I choose to take the good and throw away the bad. To that end, I hear him say to **dive deep** before investing large amounts of cash unless you are at/near audio nirvana - which is excellent advice for those into music and audio gear.

OCD Mikey doesn't criticize spending exhorbitant sums for gear. Rather, he reps several very high-end ($$$$) brands such as Rockna, Jeff Rowland and Playback Designs. He also sells what he portends is a high-value/high-end AudioByte DAC (if a $4k DAC can be considered a value.) He tells what he believes makes AudioByte a value (uses latest proven technology FPGA clock and DAC.) He also states that their soon-to-be released HUB streamer (est. $2,000) will be worth the money and the wait.

Is the Taiko SGM Extreme Server a compromised design? I have no idea. But it certainly is remarkable that the motherboard and USB subsystems are non-proprietary. The Taiko Extreme is undeniably a "statement piece" - so shouldn't its internal design make a stronger statement? The Rockna and Playback Designs servers he reps use proprietary motherboard designs with comparable aesthetics/build quality. He is certainly ripping Innuos - and perhaps unfairly - although surely some of their dense product line is overpriced.

I think what he is getting at here is that far more audible system improvements are possible using other gear ((such as DACs)) - and that high-end servers/streamers are reserved for those reaching for the final few drops of audio goodness. He happens to sell some killer DACs - and the same companies also make high-end servers - so, if you're going for the best, high-end, luxury system, you may also want the physical design of the DAC and Server to match.

On a personal note, if I had that kind of scratch to spend on audio systems I would go for MSB, dCS, or Meitner DACs that, unlike Mikey's brands, also support MQA. :-)

Wow.

First I find the logic that SOTA music servers are "just computers" is akin to saying that a state of the art CPU or power transistor, is just a few pennies worth of silicon, copper and plastic; or that a capacitor is just a bit of metal and a dielectric. 

Pulease.
  
At some point we must all pay for some form of human endeavor in the form of technology.
If you don't believe that servers are more than the some of the parts assembled, then buy a desktop, better yet put one of your own together.  So easy a child of 12 could do it.

Not only the aesthetic, but more importantly (to me at least) the sonic differences between many servers from DIY $500 dollar units to cost no object devices is not only real but also SUBSTANTIAL.  This truth is no different here than it is in absolutely EVERY OTHER audio component!!!

If you don't think that custom power supplies, custom I/0 solutions, and custom software solutions make any difference, then don't buy a custom server, and while your at it, sell your entire existing system and buy a 60 dollar solution that has EXACTLY the same functionality from E-bay.