Which sounds better streaming or dig out?

Posted by: Tog on 12 December 2010

Many recent posts have championed very different ways of getting digital music into our Naim kit.

Lots of comment about the best ways to use UPnP servers/renderers/streamers and just as many extolling the virtues of using PCs like the Mac as a digital transport via USB or optical.

Do we know which one sounds best?

I've ended up using both - partly because the quality of control software is better for dig out and because I suspect that for my own ears, streaming may sound better.

Linn clearly think so and Naim seem to be following the same path...

What do you guys think...?

Tog

Posted on: 05 January 2011 by JanÅ

quote:
Originally posted by Tog:
@AMA Good point - well made

It will be difficult for companies like Naim and Linn to keep up with upstarts from Europe and China who will produce Dacs that can rival even the nDac very quickly.

Tog

Why?
during 20years of making CDplayers nobody managed making better players than Naim/Linn.
It's not about components used, it's about implementation!!

Posted on: 06 January 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

quote:
Originally posted by likesmusic:
Streaming has no inherent jitter; there is no clock signal embedded in the data, so no clock signal to recover, so no jitter. The DAC itself can (must) introduce some jitter of it's own, but how much or how little it does is entirely up to it.

There is implied clock in the UDP word stream, which is the sample frequency of the digitised audio data. The jitter does exist in streaming but is in the timing of the reception of the UDP packets however as the sample value in each word is assigned in to it's own slot of time, the jitter can be eliminated by buffering. This only becomes an issue when you need to keep latency down such as with IP telephony. For music playback latency has no issue and so buffering is used. Of course all the issues of jitter can again surface when turning the received samples into an SPDIF bit stream, and as you say with the accuracy of the clock loading the data into the DAC chip.
Simon

Posted on: 08 January 2011 by Tog

quote:
Originally posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:
quote:
Originally posted by likesmusic:
Streaming has no inherent jitter; there is no clock signal embedded in the data, so no clock signal to recover, so no jitter. The DAC itself can (must) introduce some jitter of it's own, but how much or how little it does is entirely up to it.

There is implied clock in the UDP word stream,
which is the sample frequency of the digitised audio data. The jitter does exist in streaming but is in the timing of the reception of the UDP packets however as the sample value in each word is assigned in to it's own slot of time, the jitter can be eliminated by buffering. This only becomes an issue when you need to keep latency down such as with IP telephony. For music playback latency has no issue and so buffering
is used. Of course all the issues of jitter can again surface when turning the received samples into an SPDIF bit stream, and as you say with the accuracy of the clock loading the data into the DAC chip.
Simon

Lost you after " there is .."

Tog