My point is really that we should hold the PC/Streamer/Server manufacturing to a higher standard than we currently do.
I’ll not be content and stop experimenting until I can get my Streamer/PC system to sound as good as my Transport/DAC system.
I sure love the ROON Streamer solution best as it is so convenient. And the sound quality is of course excellent but just not what it could be.
Gee. Mine is really noisy. What brand is yours?
They say that brand will keep iced tea cold, too.
Liars!
I filled it half with iced tea and half with soup, and tea got warm, and the soup got cold.
Even worse, it hardly picked up any dust at all.
I find posts like these humorous. I have tried numerous CD transports and CD players on my 2 channel setup using my DAC and not using my DAC and compared them to my streaming setup. The streaming setup has been Roon used with and without HQPlayer using an ultraRendu as an endpoint.
The streaming setup has always sounded as good or better than the CD transports and CD players whether or not my DAC has been bypassed. The best sound is attained using Roon with HQPlayer and that setup sounds better than any other I have tried.
The idea that a CD transport using a laser mechanism to read them, various other mechanical parts to spin them, and a power supply to power them could be better than an SSD or spinning hard drive at getting the digital data cleanly to the DAC using an Ethernet based streaming solution is baffling. Why? The CD transport is sending the data directly to the DAC either via USB or via S/PDIF. The streamer is isolated from the music server over ethernet. The CD transport is a noisy device with a laser, a couple of motors, and a power supply to power all of them. A streamer like an ultraRendu is designed to be ultra quiet with no moving parts. The ultraRendu is going to send the same data to the DAC the CD transport would but it going to be electrically much quieter.
I like the Jay’s Audio CD-transport CDT2-MK2 output via i2s to the DAC for red label and the McIntosh MCT-500 transport via their proprietary cable for SACD. But those may not be transports that people value.
I still use ROON, Tidal, and the system alluded to at least 99% of the time. It is just so darn convenient.
I suspect you could eliminate most of that stuff and not tell any difference in SQ.
Err, I don’t like your timbre 
It sounds much clearer to me with the Convolution DSP to do room correction.
For more amusement, why don’t you tell us your theory on why these CD transports connected directly to the DAC sound better than streaming?
Let me discount some things first:
A laser reading from a CD is NOT better than a SSD or HDD being read.
A CD transports generates more noise than a quality streamer.
Using a network provides better isolation, not worse.
I can’t wait to read what you have to say…
One theory is perhaps that the CD/Transport builders used the best analog for their inspiration. That’s what they were trying to out do. Of course they never beat the best analog rigs. But they worked hard at it.
I’ve found that too but with headphones. Using the convolution filters (from Github) for Sennheiser HD650 is better than anything I managed to achieve with parametric eq.
bye deleted
Yes, wrote about that in my initial post, the PEQ in Roon is not as good as it could be, and using convolution is better. But since I posted this, I discovered that convolution in HQPlayer sounds slightly more clear than in Roon so convolution in Roon isn’t perfect either.
What does “best sound quality attainable” mean, though? Most transparent? Most like the recording? Most like the original performance? Most pleasing?
Best sound quality obtainable.
Hmm
Easily heard to be as good as in most audiophile categories and clearly better in others. I can listen for certain characteristics but I can usually hear two versions of something and know which is musically the best. I try to compare to one version to another and then think about which was sounds most like the real thing. As compared to what instruments and voices sound like live.
@Speed_Racer Why such hate of CD Players and transports? It’s not the technology but the way it is implemented that matters. My old Accuphase CDP still outperforms my Roon/PSA DSD streaming setup but I am just too lazy to use it most of the time.
Plus, pretty well every CD transport uses a (usually) well implemented SP/DIF interface, while the SP/DIF interface on many streamers is an afterthought, so depending on the DAC the CD transport may give it an easier job to do and thus sound better.
I don’t hate them. If people want you use CD players and CD transports, more power to them. I am saying that quality transports aren’t better than a quality streaming setup. There is no technical reason why a transport would be inherently better than a streaming setup.
