A/B Comparison On A Pair Of Moderately Priced Streamers

My buddy works for a local dealer.  His advice to me was that the Auralic was a better sounding unit.  That being said, the sound comes mainly from the DAC.  The DACs mentioned here IMO just standard mid-level DACs.

Happy Listening.

Talking about moderately priced streamers, has anyone tried the Ifi NEO Stream?  It’s relatively new and I haven’t seen many reviews 

So ... what you’re saying is that, given the same (uncompressed) source file, different streamers send different bits and bytes to the DAC? I can’t believe that to be the case.

@rudyb You’re free to “believe” whatever you want, but there’s more to it than just sending “bits and bytes,” not the least of which is the elimination of noise, which is the mortal enemy in streaming.  Most people here will tell you streamers make a big difference in the ultimate performance of a streaming system, and I suggest you try it yourself instead of relying on a belief.  

Let me rephrase ... I know that not to be the case. A 'high end' streamer still streams the same digital data to my DAC as my tablet or PC or Bluesound Node does. If I suffered from noise, I'd invest a little in an optical cable, or a galvanic separated USB dongle.

 Let me rephrase ... I know that not to be the case. A 'high end' streamer still streams the same digital data to my DAC as my tablet or PC or Bluesound Node does. If I suffered from noise, I'd invest a little in an optical cable, or a galvanic separated USB dongle.

@rudyb What streamer are you using, and how exactly do you “know” you’re performance isn’t being compromised by noise (I think the more accurate descriptor here would again be “believe” rather than “know”)?  I started streaming from my iPad and upgrading even to a modest iFi Zen Stream brought my streaming to an entirely higher level in every way.  And streaming from a PC is fraught with noise and if you think that’s a suitable way to get good streaming performance, well, I think we know what we have here.