Dac-less streamer survey!

[IanG-UK]

I can answer this one as well!  I have a mid price Pioneer Bluray player.  Now this does include streamer functionality.  A while back I set it up with lots of songs on a hard drive and did back to back trials vs AIR Ethernet.  Why should it not sound as good, bits are bits?  I was actually optimistic that it would sound ok.  It didn't!  Nominally it sounded ok, but there was a loss of detail, the biggest issue was with bass.  With AIR the bass was razor sharp and accurate, with my ultra low budget streamer, the bass was flabby.  To be frank, it did not get anywhere near to AIR.  So yes, the front end matters.  Clocking ability, cleanness of the digital feed and a few other subtle issues matter a lot.

Off topic, I know, but were I in this position, I would suspect I would be preconditioned by knowing that the competing product was a Pioneer which cost £500, or whatever. And yet if I'd been sent the identical innards badged using the highly rated TAD brand (which is owned by, but independent of, Pioneer) and told it cost £2,500, my preconditioning would be much reduced, and maybe absent.

The result from me might well have been the same, but I suspect the Pioneer would get to it much more easily!