Tagged: streamers

The chip inside a DAC costs a few dollars either way. Here's what actually separates a $500 converter from a $30,000 one — and where the money genuinely goes.

DSP room correction and app-based EQ can't undo an amp-speaker impedance mismatch. Here's the actual engineering, and where correction genuinely helps.

Your streamer's output impedance and gain structure interact with speaker sensitivity more than most buying guides admit. Here's how to actually match them.

Bits are bits, but the analogue stage after the DAC chip in your streamer still colours what your speakers do. Here's what actually matters.

Modern streamers now carry crossover and room EQ duties that used to live in an AVR. Here's what that shift actually changes for your subwoofer.

A DAC engineer's take on why speaker matching starts upstream — how digital volume, output stage and streamer choice interact with standmounts and floorstanders.

Splitting out what a DAC upgrade genuinely changes from what only acoustic treatment and correction software can fix, so you spend on the right layer first.

Priya Anand spent years dismissing streamers as beside the point. Here's what changed her mind — and what a good digital source actually does for a valve-based system.

Digital volume attenuation has a bad reputation, but is it deserved? Theo Mensah separates the real maths from the folklore.

The DAC chip is only half the story. What the output stage does to that signal — and how it interacts with your amp — matters just as much.