Streamer observation / question to those who know

I use a Schiit URD (it does only Redbook) USB to Schiit's own "Nexus" input in a Bifrost 2/64. It works.

@mahler123

Most new DACs have standardized on I2S even though their is no standard???

Laiv Harmony supports 8 different formats internally

Holo Audio includes I2s even on their entry level Cyan

Sonnet DACs have it but use RJ45 not HDMI

Lamizator’s flagship Poseidon

Denifrips

PSAudio

and many others.

All I’m sayin is yes I understand that quality of build, isolation principles, power considerations, software interface are all factors but the worlds best buggy whip can be admired for it’s craftsmanship but it has become a relic not really a factor in today’s transportation industry.  Are today's high end streamers tomorrows buggy whips?

To return to your OP, in the last paragraph you query whether a high end streamer can best a PC.  My answer, as someone who has compared them, is an unequivocal yes.  PCs simply aren’t optimized for sound reproduction.  They don’t have the power supply that dedicated streamers have, nor the quality of parts, and they isolate sound from the noisy environments that PCs live in.  Perhaps they might have less processing power-I don’t know if your assertion is correct- but all that processing power is dedicated to receiving a signal and passing it to a DAC.  It doesn’t have to worry about interfacing with a printer, or being able to do video processing, which takes a lot more firepower than audio

Thank you

I seems that many have compared PCs to streamers and based on their experience streamers have come out ahead and I respect and don’t deny that. I don’t have that experience so I’m relying on the AGon community to share and you have and I do appreciate it. Just for clarification what level of PC did you try?

But (There’s always a but)

While it’s true unoptimized computers do have overhead that competes with resources but streamers bottom line, are still computers just specialized. There are optimized OS for today’s computers that minimizes the overhead. Today’s computers no longer have parallel or serial ports so printing is just a driver that sends signals over USB or Ethernet (a digital signal like sound) and no longer compete with the motherboard’s physical resources. As far as video goes it can actually benefit sound quality as there is software that offloads processing to the much faster video GPU to upsample to frequencies unobtainable by most of today’s streamers. Specialized PCIe USB or I2S cards exist that further isolate the signals. Computers have three distinct voltages 12v, 5v and 3V and their are linear power supplies that can feed the proper voltages to the motherboard. As far as isolation it’s even possible to feed a linear powered device a fiber optic Ethernet signal and it feeds the DAC completely isolating it from any electrical noise generated by the source. None of this is plug and play yet. It requires computer knowledge of both hardware, software and networking. From what I’ve read this all works with Roon which is known for its interface but setup is pretty advanced. I was really hoping to hear from the HQplayer or the Optical Rendu guys who ether succeeded or failed at this. Thanks for allowing me to put this out there and icomments are encouraged so please help me as I’m wanting to learn.

I am not denying that streamers are networking computers optimized to play audio, and encased in a box to make them look more like an audio component than a PC.

I used Apple Mac Minis, Apple Mac Books, and bog standard Dell laptops provided by my employer back when I was using computers as my streamers.