Old phones as streaming sources

That is a nice piece by archimago, almost exactly what I was looking for except it would have been better if he could have measured output from one or more of the high end devices he mentions at the start of the piece, as well. It is difficult to agree with his blanket dismissal of them without actually including them in the test. In the end he measured several devices that many would consider sub-optimal streaming source and concluded they were all the same.

One can also wonder if there could be a better technique than measuring the dac outputs. Conceivably the dac exerts a leveling influence so that it could be argued it is making all digital streams look the same to the measuring instruments.  I am not techically astute enough to say but I wonder if it is possible to measure the digital output directly from the streamer and be able to say anything meaningful. Perhaps one of knowledgeable forum mates can say.

It's strange. While it is understandable that the perception of sound quality is subjective, it cannot deviate too much.

@lanx0003 Sure it can.  I’ll mention that power supplies consistently are reported to have a significant impact on the sound of a streamer, and I never listened to my ZS without the iPowerX so I suppose that could account for at least some of the differences we heard although there are obviously numerous other variables involved.

@lanx0003 Well I'm open to the notion that it could all be fictitious. Personal experiance suggests there ARE differences between streamers BUT I have never been "blown away" by those differences as some profess to have been. My experiance with subjective listening is that my judgement is clouded by all kinds of influences. I like it when measurement backstops perception and vice versa, but we don't get that all the time in this hobby. And then there is the vexing question when listening subjectively whether different=better. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I like the term that I think Archimago used somewhere in his blog arguing that some of us a Euphonophiles, meaning we like the sound what we like, not necessarily the most faithful reproduction. I think that is true. Me, I try to have it both ways. I have some equipment that leans toward accuracy and others that produce very pleasing distortion. Both are ok.

you should check out streamer reviews on hifi news.paul miller does a measurements section at the end of each.  in some cases, he shows the inferred jitter and snr of the streamer, and the impact on different dacs. cross walking that to the archimago piece, you might be able to compare cheap streamers to more expensive ones.  

@mdalton Thanks. Was not aware of hifi news. The really do have a who’s who of high end streamer tests!

So lets assume that frequency and noise floor are pretty much settled issues with differences that are pretty much below the human level of detection in any competently designed streamer (at least that’s my opinion), and focus on jitter which seems very likely to be able to impair things like coherency, image and sound-stage. so here is the chart for the Grimm mu1, a very nice $10,000 streamer, Grimm Mu1

and here is the similar chart for the four "working class" streaming sources in the Archimago blog article, Working Class streamers

Taken at face value the "working class" group seems to surpass the aristocrat.(for  the benefit of anyone reading this I looked at the measurements of several aristocrats on the HIFI site and their measurements were strikingly similar) Now I know enough about testing and charts to know there are variables that may not have been equal in the setup and testing from these two different sources so I would not say that this is a rock solid conclusion, but at the least it does argue that there is not much difference insofar as this measurement relates to perceived sound quality.