Discerning a difference between streamers is difficult...only me or common for all?

I mainly listen to classic rock, jazz, r&b and blues so maybe my music taste is also not as demanding.

I tell ya, if all I ever listened to was Jimi Hendrix, or the Doors first album, I probably wouldn’t even have a home stereo- I would just listen to it in the car, the wife’s Sonos, or maybe through the home theatre.

And I do LOVE Jimi Hendrix, he is a musical genius, but the more resolving my stereo has become over the years/decades the worse this music sounds on it.

And one of my all time favourite albums, the Yes album, I don’t listen to much anymore.

There are many excellent sounding other classic rock albums, and blues albums however. I just whipped through this thread @dhite71 so my apologies if I missed it, but when determining changes in your system you are listening to something with a decent recording quality of for example Keb Mo, Guy Davis, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters -Folk Singer, King Crimson, Stevie Ray Vaughan? or the many hundreds of wonderful jazz albums that today’s audiophile can stream?

@mclinnguy 

I do listen to all those artists you listed.  I do not listen to classical and that is what I wondered about as I see where people here and reviewers talk about how demanding this music is to be accurately reproduced.  I don't have a specific song or set of songs....I typically just listen as I normally would and when there is a section of a song that has really nice vocals and separation of instruments or whatever comes across as really nice, I will start comparing.  Regardless, it is always a good recording when doing any comparison.  

@dogearedaudio

I appreciate your engagement with me in this discussion. I’m not a software engineer either, and what little programming I ever did used audio APIs that were a black box that I just plugged in without understanding all the details. My basic understanding at the moment leaves just three options that I can comprehend to explain server software sounding different:

1. Not all the correct bits are reaching the DAC.

2. The bits are all correct but their timing is off enough to cause audible problems.

3. The bits are correct and the timing is also good, but other parasitic noise is coming along for the ride and somehow reaching the analog output stage of the DAC and creating audible noise and distortion there. Or it may be causing the converter stage to perform poorly even though it was getting a perfectly good and clear stream of data. The noise may be EMF transmitted from the server hardware directly to the dac regardless of cables, and of course the EMF is probably different with different music servers as they use different routines to process the data.

If none of those things are happening in any particular system, I’d propose it’s possible that the server software in such a case is working perfectly for all meaningful purposes, and there should be nothing audibly to discern between another server program or hardware bundle that is also working perfectly "to spec."

@asctim

Okay, let’s take a very common example. Many, many digital audiophiles remark that Squeezelite, MPD and Roon all sound very different. When it comes to MPD and Squeezelite, I have the option to use either on my streamer. When adjusting settings for MPD, I can chose to bypass Linux’s internal ALSA mixer, by setting the volume control to "none." Squeezelite does not offer this option, only to set the volume at "100%". So there’s a significant difference right there. A digital algorithm is being bypassed in one player, but is still in the playback chain in another player. Both players are working to spec, that is, they’re sending "bit-perfect" information to the DAC. But one has an intervening step that the other doesn’t. Does that affect the sound quality?

As for Roon, their streaming protocols are proprietary and are obviously designed to produce the Roon "sound," which is one of their selling points.

None of this has anything to do with the source of the music file, but that’s another issue. How does the player software retrieve the music file? How much does it buffer? How does it manage the clocking systems, CPU speed, etc etc. It’s all presumably "bit-perfect," but will it sound the same?