why expensive streamers


@soix and others

I am unclear about the effect on sound of streamers (prior to getting to the dac). Audio (even hi-res) has so little information content relative to the mega and giga bit communication and processing speeds (bandwidth, BW) and cheap buffering supported by modern electronics that it seems that any relatively cheap piece of electronics would never lose an audio bit. 

Here is why. Because of the huge amount of BW relative to the BW needs of audio, you can send the same audio chunk 100 times and use a bit checking algorithm (they call this "check sum") to make sure just one of these sets is correct. With this approach you would be assured that the correct bits would be transfered. This high accuracy rate would mean perfect audio bit transfer. 

What am I missing? Why are people spending 1000's on streamers?

thx

 

128x128delmatae

I am confused about "no jitter."  When I was looking at different DDCs, I came across this review about the Singxer SU-6 model, that I ended up purchasing.  The reviewer performed measurements and at that time the SU-6 had the lowest jitter of units they had tested, but there was still jitter.

In addition, the reviewer discussed noise and said:

The second issue that a good DDC or Streamer will seek to address is electrical noise. You don’t want noise from your source causing your DAC to perform poorly. Noise can have a direct, audible effect, such as hearing GPU-whine through your headphones/speakers, or it can have indirectly-audible effects. For example, causing clocks in your dac, or other circuitry, to perform sub-optimally.
Some dacs are more immune to this, and some will even have full galvanic isolation to in theory prevent any noise getting through entirely. But many smaller dacs are much more susceptible to it.

mdalton

those are called rhetorical questions ...

I apologize if my frustration came across as hostile.  

Sealioning, anyone?

@cleeds 

Geez, the second comment was an apology for the first.  Doesn’t anyone even accept apologies anymore?