I used to think the DAC was 90% of the sound. This sub-$300 DIY project proved me wrong

[James_I (The truth is out there but not necessarily here)]

I suggest part of the issue is that subjectivists use scientific sounding explanations without using scientific methods and it feels like a perversion to objectivist engineers.

Here was my attempt to bring the camps to the table together:

How can the shaman talk to the physicist?

I think it’s ironic when people don’t admit, or realize, they’re being religious. Or perhaps superstitious is the better word. Audio debates around tweaks – snake oil versus life-changing sound improvements – are the paradigm case. Skeptics often roughly dismiss an asserted tweak that isn’t accompanied by measured improvements and/or established science and engineering, and tweakers often expect everyone else to take their word that they clearly heard an improvement and that’s proof. Scienti…

@David_Snyder

That same weekend, friends and I compared my DIY build against a $7,500 commercial streamer, and the two little Raspberry Pi computers running AudioLinux and Diretta were clearly better.

Is it possible that the 2 Pi solution is actually better than the $7500 streamer because the $7500 streamer is totally against what RAAT and the recommended Roon solution is supposed to do? In other words, if the $7500 streamer is one of those overbuilt PCs with huge configuration contortions to try to create a powerful yet electrically quiet machine (kind of an oxymoron), it may simply mean that a Pi is a better streamer in the Roon server-streamer configuration?

I have noticed that many of the folks who assert that Roon/RAAT doesn’t sound as good as another software solution on the same box have these overbuilt server/streamer combos that go against what Roon recommends (powerful server on one end, simple and quiet streamer on the other) and why Roon was designed as it was.

Just a thought. So many people like to argue over configurations without even stating what theirs is. You have to compare apples to apples, not just fruit to fruit, as it were.