Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

“Buy a good USB isolator and a good DAC and the streamer becomes 0 importance unless it is intentionally modifying the sound.”

@audio2design,

What did you buy to accomplish above? Please list brand names so we can replicate and learn from your experience. 

I have Intona 7055-B and Coolgear USB 2.0 high speed isolators. I run them with home brew supplies for the output to keep switching noise out.

I have Chord Qutest and Benchmark DAC3 for main usage. Have a DAC2. Also picked up an RME ADI-2 based on a recommendation here. The Chord and Benchmark are almost impossible to tell apart if level matched. Not sure I could reliably. Have had other DACs from friends, some much more costly in system. Can't say any were better. Different, obviously intentionally, but not better.   Picked up a Topping E30 to play with. With the isolator it is very good. Gave my son my Node2i. I would say the isolator and Topping is quite a bit superior but that is off memory.

I pretty much agree with the ocd video. A music streamer/server are computers: period. Most run proprietary operating systems but that doesn’t make them better, and personally, I wouldn’t want a 1 off operating system. These server vendors have some people convinced that you need a lot of hardware to perform a simple, or basic task, like reading a file. Is running a proprietary Linux OS better than running OS X for a simple task for a music server/streamer, I’d say no. For running complicated software and or for large commercial servers, I’d run Ubuntu or another proven Linux over other OS’s.
There are quality applications like Audirvana, pure music, and Roon that will run on a small nuc or Mac mini that doesn’t require a large amount of hardware. My Mac mini running Roon as a server uses around 10-12% of the available hardware, and the server is 8 years old. I also don’t buy that a certain machine is built to output a certain way for a certain dac. All computers are built the same way whereas all music has to be read into memory and all output to a device comes from memory. So, the real difference is the program/application that is used to process the data before it’s placed into memory to be sent out to the audio device. Since there are some very good applications to do this task very well that run on simple hardware, what else do you actually need?

For me, in my experience, systems that are assembled with the belief that everything sounds more or less the same, will almost always result in systems that do just that.

But as always an open mind is important here, so if anyone is in the GTA Canada and wants to do some comparisons (while maintaining social distancing protocols, of course!)  We could try some different servers/streamers on my system, which is very musically resolving, or yours if you would rather.

You can bring your server here, or I will bring my Laufer Teknik Memory Player to your place.

I think it is very difficult to not hear differences in this context....;-)  BUT I am totally open to be proven wrong.

Have a great week guys and try to be humble and kind to everyone.

Is Laufer even in business?  Looks like their website has not been updated in years and still looks like a highschool project. I love the claims of studio use, but no one I knew who did studio work had ever heard of them. The claims made are quite something ... impossible, but quite something none the less.