The Emperor Has No Clothes!!

Joining late.

The main worry I have about meaningless or disconnected praise is that it distracts or diverts me away from improving more important problems in my system.

Early on, I kept reading about expensive fuses. I’m glad I turned away from that to spend money on room treatments. It’s not that fuses might not help, but surely they should be lower down on my priority list than other unsolved bottlenecks.

@mdalton 

Some audiophiles here have either diminished or depleted sense of humor and might not understand or take any jokes.

The best remedy for that is just knowing that absence of sense of humor is some sort of mental disorder or incapability. 

Let’s just agree to disagree. 

This is a good step towards mutual respect and a civil discussion (or lack of any discussion) but I suggest it needs to come with the caveat that if someone makes an unqualified statement (i.e. doesn't portray it as an opinion or experience and rather as a fact) that is contrary to science and engineering, that it's fair for others to chime in and say that it's not supported by science or engineering (perhaps best in a non-mocking tone). 

You don’t seem to like servers and streamers and you are convinced they all sound the same.

I can't speak for mdalton but I love both and have built many as a hobby in excess of what I really need. I've also bought them.

I think it's important to differentiate between the server role and the streamer role even if there are combo units.  The server sends digital audio, the streamer receives it and passes it on to a DAC (or its internal DAC).  

Science and engineering say that servers must all sound the same assuming identical software configuration. Streamers can theoretically be different, but in this day and age it takes a poorly built DAC to be sensitive to the theoretical differences (i.e. cannot reject electrical noise if there even is any). 

What I mostly rail against, trying to be respectful, is the server/streamer combo unit. If someone likes the convenience of the specialized software on those units, that's fine, and if someone is interested in units built like a tank for reliability or longevity, that is fine. Or if someone wants a fancy unit because they want the Porsche of audio, bling, that is fine. I have done my fair share of conspicuous consumption. 

But building out a server/streamer combo with the idea that it will sound best because of all the effort to isolate/insulate against electrical noise, that's a waste of effort and money, because you can get the same isolation and insulation by using a separate server and streamer and isolating the streamer with the network.  So a $10,000 combo unit won't beat a laptop as a server and a decent streamer from a SQ perspective (albeit it may be more fun to play with).  

OK I've said my piece on this one.  Peace all.  Enjoy the music! 

This is what my first dreamed stereo system was looking like ( in fact all the pieces of my first system wasin one furniture box) 😁 when i thought that this was the dreamed Hi-Fi upgrade with no knowledge about mechanical and electrical embeddings controls devices at the times and no acoustics knowledge at all ...

Things are not so much different today when people are focussed on gear piece price tags more than on the relation between gear pieces(synergy) and the room acoustic content and your head-ears-brain characteristics..

Then it is not suprizing that the vocabulary used in audio threads revolved around gear pieces descriptions as if the gear own all sound perceived qualities , described as S.S. or Tubes or vinyl like or digital like etc ...😊

 As i said  above there is FIVE vocabularies different dictionaries  in audio, pick the right one and dont conflate them all ...

For the record, I really love my server and all 4 of my streamers.  I almost never participate in the vinyl vs. digital debates because it is all so system dependent.  I am often amazed at how good my digital side sounds, even though I prefer my vinyl.  And I’m willing to entertain the possibility that my preference for vinyl might be a case of confirmation bias.  I’m ok with that.  A good friend, who is a very high-end digital-only guy recently came to my house to listen to some tunes on one of my two better systems.  He made an observation about how much he preferred my vinyl vs. the digital side in that system.  I didn’t say anything, but I did not hear the same limitation he did on the digital side.  It is quite possible that he was experiencing his own case of confirmation bias cuz he knows I’ve spent more energy - and money - on the vinyl side of that system.  Who knows? But it’s certainly not worth arguing about, to me anyway.