Sonore Streamers

[Hifi_swlon]

My hunch is a tiny purpose built computer will be able to blow away expensive streamers, but that's purely based on my understanding of the theory and what I've read.

That is a bold statement!  I must admit I'd be impressed if such a thing simply matched AIR for SQ.  Time will tell once a few folk have had the chance to test.

True, it is. And maybe renderer would have been a better term.

But seriously, it seems to me all it has to do is receive data on a network interface, and re-send it via another interface, adding as little noise as possible. Ok there's a bit of processing but by today's standards and cpu designs, it's nothing. Assuming a well designed device and OS with a half-decent power supply, it should be easy. I think up til now a lot of the effort has been trying to take hardware/software that wasn't really ever right for the purpose, as well as a lot of r&d to work it all out, so things were getting overly complicated = expensive.

The new generation devices start from an incredibly simple approach, separating all computationally intensive stuff into one box well away from the hifi, and having an incredibly simple device at the end of the chain - which is all that's really required. Beyond this it's heavy, expensive looking but empty cases, and not a lot else.

I think the next few years will be really interesting as a lot of pieces of the puzzle regarding why digital audio does or didn't sound good have been understood and addressed so the next wave of products cut straight through these issues.  

Whatever happens there will always be people that still pay the price of a sports car for an audio source that's 'the best' and can 'extract that last ounce of airyness', but I gnuiy think the rest of us will be enjoying similar levels of quality with small, relatively cheap devices.

Like you say though, the proof will be in the listening - and I'm working on hypothesis only.