Do I Need a Dedicated Streamer?

@ghdprentice

Clearly you’re a smart person and had a lot of smart people working for you. Here’s something to think about. You say noise is crucial to audio performance. Surely transmitting and storing audio data isn’t as important as the data of the multinational corporations that you worked for. Yet did you ever suggest or did your team ever employ ’audiophile’ servers, switches or cables in a corporate network? I’m guessing no. Commercial, off the shelf hardware is perfectly capable of storing data and transmitting it from point A to point B without errors - whether it’s files, audio or video streams.

Its very doubtful that the average "Director of IT" goes through the rigor of atleast one EE degree from a ABET acredited school (or a computer engineering degree atleast padded with some EE tech electives). The latter kind is usually sitting somewhere else... slaving away in the engineering trenches, not serving as "Director of IT"

If he knew anything, he would know that a kickass audio optimized PC could be built for well under a 1000 bucks in 2023. Hence, he’s thoroughly convinced that as he goes up to 10k, 20k, 30k, etc, magic just descends on him, pours like the Niagara...Well, atleast he gets a beautifully milled chassis and some pretty knobs (jewelry, for sure). As for me, i can drop 20k, no problem (cash’s not the issue). But, i certainly despise the idea of a dumass robbing me/snickering away as he sells me crap that i have beat with a diy solution in my basement.

I intended (at some point) to create a tech talk thread on how to pick some components and do a few minor tweaks towards building a audio optimized PC/"streamer" (make it easier for some diy types who are newer to these things).. But, then considering the sheer amount of accountants and dealers peddling 20k streamers/plaguing this forum, i decided against it. If enough guys with ulterior motives gang up on ya, even a sincere knowledge share effort can turn ya into the "bad guy".

Some of these guys buying a 20k streamer must also have thoroughly incompetent DDCs/DACs, i suppose!!

"Bad Guy" out.....😁

deep_333

If he knew anything, he would know that a kickass audio optimized PC could be built for well under a 1000 bucks in 2023. Hence, he’s thoroughly convinced that as he goes up to 10k, 20k, 30k, etc, magic just descends on him, pours like the Niagara...Well, atleast he gets a beautifully milled chassis and some pretty knobs (jewelry, for sure).

Once again, a measurementalist feigning objectivity tosses logic to the wind and resorts to an ad hominem, the perhaps laziest of all loigical fallacies:

Ad hominem  ... Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

Once again, a measurementalist feigning objectivity tosses logic to the wind and resorts to an ad hominem, the perhaps laziest of all loigical fallacies:

Again... some of you guys apparently have completely incompetent distressed boxes for DDCs and DACs that only a 20k idiot box streamer can save them.

Ad gibbergibberinum....

deep_333

Ad gibbergibberinum....

Baby talk? Is that the best argument you can offer?

toro3

268 posts

12-21-2023 at 07:41pm 

Interesting conversation. @benanders @yage what streamers have you owned/used? Yage it looks like you’re using a Raspberry Pi in your main system - I’m assuming this is still the case, yes? 
 

The last streamer I owned was the Oppo Sonica DAC with a company-approved power supply modification. It’s still a fine DAC, but once the parent company killed the disc player lab in CA, the Sonica app and streamer functions failure rate became increasingly problematic until I was spending far more time dealing with freezes than listening to music. The DAC works and tests well enough that a used one can still sell for what I paid for the “whole package,” if not more - how often does that happen for audio kit, eh!?

Anyway, the Sonica “streamer” was supported for less than a year post-release, then every buyer was largely SOL. Since then I’ve had a few “loaner” streamers visit my system (purely for the curiosity of others - not for feeling need myself), some of considerably more cost and sophistication than the Oppo Sonica all-in-one. Blind testing didn’t result in anything consistent for the device owners, so I consider that there wasn’t [noticeable] audible difference in what various streamers were doing in my system. I purposefully omit brand/model names to prevent anyone online feeling need to dogpile to the contrary. To each their own on that matter.

Presently, I use a RPi for streamer and USB-to-DAC (have used one of the coax / TOSLINK-out hats too, which also was fine). I have a couple of 4b’s lying around but haven’t taken the time to swap out the 3b+ I started on. The 3b+ by design does have (minimal) USB bus issues in my use case, but a few split-second glitches here and there between tracks apparently aren’t enough to trigger my “FIX IT!” response. Another project for a holiday someday!

I should have said “freeware” not “open source” for the streamer OS, since there are many of the former for the RPi platform. If whichever service I’m using is discontinued, all I have to do is reformat an SD card. There are some very impressive streamers / processors on the market that use the RPi as the device’s computer. There’s probably something to be said for that ;)

Let’s not forget the intention here is not to argue whether streamers’ quality scales with device price (zero evidence for) or if there is audible difference between streamers (zero evidence for; limited evidence against). My point was there are more demonstrably sensible ways for OP to get audio kit performing better… as long as OP knows what “better” would be in the particular setup.

I think music source files of known parameters and/or DSP would be the most logistically sound (pun!) options here.