To begin, I am a physical (digital) media guy. I prefer owning my music as opposed to renting BUT it became apparent that if I wanted to listen to music - especially mixed in Dolby ATMOS - I had to stream music. I’m looking at you Apple Corp!!! Anyway, I have an Amazon cube that I purchased about 6 months ago running HDMI to my Marantz AV preamp (AV 7706) which does the digital “decoding” from the Amazon Cube via HDMI. I am now streaming Amazon music which detects what they AV is capable of and will play either the ATMOS or 192/24 stereo versions if available. The question of “streamers” as a stand-alone unit comes up because I see these in audiophile rags and higher-end stores. I just don’t understand what they do to justify the thousands of $ to spend on them that my current set-up doesn’t do. Is it the DAC? If so, running it HDMI to my Marantz would defeat that - if have to run it analogue out with a crap-ton of cables if I want the sound in ATMOS. Can someone educate me on the benefits of a streamer vs. streaming in the way I’m currently doing it?
With better streamer (pure digi transport, not talking about DAC’s or other functionalities that may be integrated), you may get the following benefits that may (or not) contribute to better sound quality potentially:
Better optimized software / operating system / firmware for audio playback
Higher quality inputs / outputs
Higher quality power supply
Higher quality isolation from interference sources
Higher quality clock signal - depends on your connection, but it’s important for example for SPDIF outputs