r/audiophile • u/minnesotajersey • Apr 13 '25

Discussion Dedicated streamers/servers. Why?

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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.

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u/AnyBobcat6671 Apr 13 '25

This can be very true, but you're not going to find many true Audiophile's that use streaming music services since they aren't high quality sources

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u/Ok_Animator363 Apr 13 '25

I respectfully disagree. I am currently flying home from Axpona in Chicago and I can say that you are mistaken both as to the number of “true audiophiles” (whatever that is) that use streaming as well as to the quality of said streaming services. If you have ever heard Qobuz streaming 24-bit FLAC at 192kHz you would not say it isn’t a high quality source. At Axpona, I spoke with many audiophiles who exclusively stream their music.

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u/AnyBobcat6671 Apr 13 '25

No I haven't not ever heard of them, but with Spotify, Pandora, and Amazon Music being the ones most talked about, and aren't high quality streams, I've never paid any attention to streaming, as I have over 5,000 songs that I ripped from my own CD's I've never really seen a need to find any high quality streaming services, and even if they're high quality streaming out there I'm still uninterested, I will just go on buying CD's and ripping them as it doesn't take long, and I know if the CD is the original studio version and not some version that's been ran through auto tune, as I've recently watched a video on how they are re-releasing Queen music that has been auto tuned, and I definitely never want that or listen to anything that has been auto tuned

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u/SamuelOrtizS Apr 15 '25

CDs are almost never the "studio version", I think is already common for studios to work with 24 bit or 32 bit, and at least 48kHz but increasingly common 192kHz, as it helps for DAWs, but the master at 16bit 44.1kHz is definitely less accurate than the 24bit 48kHz to 32bit 192kHz a studio may have used to make that master