Another post about a streamer upgrade

@benanders

You are simply speaking from a lack of experience and a strong unfounded sense of skepticism.

Many of us here have decades of experience in high end audio and have constantly listened to the digital technology as it has developed over the the last thirty plus years. I have listened to streamers on PCs… optimizing them, MacBooks… running on batteries, inexpensive streamers, $3K, $5K, $10K, $13K, and $22K streamers. The thing that absolutely stands out is the sound quality differences… like night and day.

For most of us here our primary concern is sound quality and the big deal is the sound quality of different streamers. While their control apps are a question of convenience. Most get the job done and once learned they are not the primary function.

Sorry you cannot understand the logic. 

Again, I’m not saying more expensive streamers can’t be better-sounding. I’m just saying I have never been able to understand the logic for how they offer higher fidelity, in the absence of demonstrated perceptible difference (accounts of satisfied buyer feedback doesn’t count for this in any industry).

@benanders may I recommend you research various design and implementation of streamers and DACs. How each design influences the final product. I mean a thorough research from power supply and inputs to outputs and everything in between. If you’re sitting around twiddling your thumbs and expecting the community in this forum to present their arguments to you trying to prove streamers and cd transports make a difference, you will be wasting everyone’s and your time and effort.

@2psyop and ​​​​@hilde45 I agree - emphasis on the streamer to improve sound quality without even identifying what sound quality “issue” there is, is an inefficient place to exercise one’s upgrade-itis.

Right. That's the point. It's not -- @lalitk  -- a lack of desire for the best performance or being discriminating. Rather, what I've noticed is that people often jump to a "better" product without doing due diligence about where the improvement is needed. Without really taking the time to discern whether a streamer is the answer, I suspect that *some* people just go for product first and then justify it later. And dealers love to affirm that kind of move because they provide the customer with a good feeling (and confirmation bias).

I'm not saying that you did that or that anyone else here did it, but I suspect that doing the hard work of really testing things and eliminating variable is time consuming and onerous. And not as fun.

@audphile1 thanks, indeed the source of my skepticism over broad applicability of the stance that greater cost = greater quality: there’s no robust study to support this, just many anecdotes and opinions. That will not change until design schematics / fabrication costs vs. fabrication / transportation costs are made available for low end to high end streamers. Until then, no evidence of streamer quality scaling linearly, or otherwise, with price.

Now to be extra clear, again, that’s not me saying “absence of evidence [of a difference in sound between streamers] = evidence of absence [of said difference in sound between streamers].” Anyone who suggests that is as unscientifically anchored as one who touts an opinion as evidence.

@ghdprentice thanks, conversely, I’m not sure you understand what “logic” would be in this case. I’m not looking to offend but rather clarify. Logic would have your reasoning based on evidential support, something that can be replicated by others. IOW, describe the process, not the pattern. The pattern is spend more and more and more money, hear more and more and more difference. Never mind the tangle from bias - the assumption most other folks will, too, is the issue. Your anecdotal experiences, numerous and over years, are still not robust enough to constitute the next guy’s predictable experience should that person try to replicate them. Consequently, your suggestion that your impressions are transferable is not particularly sound (pun!), but it’s an Internet forum so type as ya like. I don’t need to elaborate on how the differences between personal experiences and the opinions they help form cannot reliably serve the same purposes as results from a controlled investigation free of bias. But given the latter, it would take just one controlled listener preference study (a real one), similar to those done to greater / lesser extent in amps and speakers. If such an investigation showed linear scaling of preference for streamer brand/model based on unit retail price, the relative lack of testable difference in how digital transports work with what’s downstream of them would quickly become a less relevant hole in general knowledge, and the popular stance on the matter would be supported by more than anecdotal opinion. 
Opinions are fine for individuals, but their transferability to other individuals and situations are simply not predictable. YMMV being the four magic letters when sharing about effects on others’ systems you aren’t familiar with, but of course, that is just my opinion, man ;)