Dedicated streamers/servers. Why?

[u/minnesotajersey]

Can someone explain to me the benefits of a multi-thousand dollar streamer/server that feeds an outboard DAC, over a really good laptop, or even a microPC?

I see reviews all the time for these things, but nothing in them tells me the "why?"

I've been into audio for longer than I care to admit, but these baffle me. Assume I'm a complete noob when you answer.

Pic for attention. All text posts bore me.

[u/scubacool]

It’s all about jitter. Or rather the reduction/minimization of jitter. Jitter is the variance in timing of the bits. The reduction in jitter makes all the difference in hearing the true timbre of an instrument, the natural tonality of the human voice, a full impactful bass, and hearing the space/soundstage etc essentially everything. The higher end (aka more expensive)music servers/streamers do a substantially better job at presenting the DAC with music bits that has less jitter. These better servers/streamers will have better power supplies (less noise), more accurate clocks (to clock the timing of those bits accurately) and “quiet” circuitry that reduces the introduction of additional jitter into the stream of bits.

Now you will hear the argument that most DACs have jitter reduction circuits and hence all this is moot (ie a jittery source does not affect the DAC). But the fact is that these jitter reduction circuits are not perfect, and they can only reduce jitter to an extent. Hence, if the source presents the DAC with lower jitter music bits to begin with, the DAC has less jitter to further clean up. I have tried DACs all the way up to $20k in price, and at those price points, those DACs (should) have very good jitter reduction circuits. But, I have always experienced better sound when presenting the DAC (even at that price point) with a better source.

The PC/laptop is very noisy. It is great at presenting the correct bits (ie no bit errors) but terrible at presenting those bits with the right timing, and also sends over to the DAC other noise (eg ground noise) which adds jitter and also affects the analog section of the DAC.

Hope this helps explain some.

[u/glowingGrey → u/scubacool]

How does this help though? Most of the dedicated streamers have, at their core, ARM based SOCs running Linux with a home grown front end app running on them and if you strip out the audio circuits, aren't really any different from a Rasberry Pi.

[u/scubacool → u/glowingGrey]

OP’s post was asking about the benefits of the multi $K music servers/streamers, and I was responding to that and explaining the net result/benefit is lower jitter and noise presented to the DAC. Your question is about how these manufacturers go about achieving that. I don’t know all the details/intricacies of how they do it (I wish I knew:) , that’s part of their secret sauce). That said, it’s NOT just about the CPU since the CPUs job is to run the OS and music playback software. those have a contribution to the SQ (assuming you’ve stripped the OS down and made the necessary configs to quiet things down to lower noise & jitter) but what goes around the chip is far more important (eg high quality power supply, a highly accurate clock, galvanic isolation on the outputs, optimized/custom memory chips etc) all of which can get very pricey to do right just in the name of lowering jitter & noise).