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

@romanesq 

You bring up a solid point. Amplification quality is crucial because it directly influences how well the entire system will perform, especially with speakers. A high-quality amplifier can bring out the best in a set of speakers, ensuring the nuances and dynamics of the sound are accurately reproduced. In contrast, a mediocre amplifier can bottleneck even the best speakers.

As for DACs and streamers, while improvements have been noticeable in recent years, I believe they’ve reached a point where further upgrades provide diminishing returns for many users. The differences becoming less perceptible to the average listener, especially when paired with good amplification and speakers.

That being said, finding the correct (synergy) amplification with speakers, is often the most tangible improvement and solid foundation for a system. After that, the incremental improvements from DACs and streamers easily more noticeable. 

As far as fiber optics or conventional copper LAN, whichever path one chooses; I recommend some kind of filtering ahead of your streamer or server can pay huge dividends, IME. 

Copper->Fiber->Copper didn’t work for me. Glassy and artificial in my system. 
I agree on the amplification being almost as critical as the speakers. Amplifiers make a huge difference. But…GIGO. You will hear all the upstream nasties better. On the other hand upgrade the source with a crappy amp and you have a bottleneck - you wasted $ and you’re unable to realize your source components full potential. It’s an endless loop but getting the amp right is still the most important piece (once your speakers and room acoustics are addressed). 

“Copper->Fiber->Copper didn’t work for me”
@audphile1 

To my earlier post on your Aurender thread, if you eliminate the use of fiber optic cable between transceiver, you’re likely to hear much more organic presentation. It’s the darn conversion between the transceiver robbing the dynamics, IME. 

I had a Lumin U2 and experimented with fiber direct to its SFP port from a GIGE switch also with SFP fiber port; Researched the heck out of it and ordered all the parts from DigiKey. Let it settle for a week. To my ears it did not sound as good as copper CAT8 cable from the same GIGE switch. The magic was gone. I’m guessing that it’s system dependent as many users love fiber. 🤷‍♂️

@lalitk yes. 
couple of things for the benefit of clarifying the unit you’re referring to…

Telegartner Opt Bridge 1000M Is an optical isolator. Copper in, all optical conversion takes place inside the unit, then copper out…please correct me if I’m wrong. We can think of this as an optical Ethernet filter, similar in concept to Network Acoustics but uses active approach that leverages high quality copper to fiber optic to copper conversion. It is a high end audio purpose built unit. I’m intrigued I admit but at the same time $2,900 is kind of steep at least within the contexts of my system.  I still have room to grow with DAC for example. I am keeping the Opt Bridge in a back pocket for further consideration.  Thank you for bringing this up to my attention!