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?
As a digital transport, no network audio player is worth thousands of dollars, especially since performance like the following could be had for $35USD:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/google-chromecast-audio-toslink-jitter-and-noise-using-roon-and-topping-d50-dac-measurement-png.15620/
That’s a Chromecast Audio’s digital output feeding a well engineered DAC. However, even it’s analog output is transparent:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/google-chromecast-audio-analog-output-dashboard-measurement-png.15645/
Beyond a CCA, RPi or WiiM Mini, one is paying for additional features, support and aesthetics, because high fidelity is inexpensive to obtain with digital audio. So high fidelity in fact, that many people totally satisfied with nothing more than one of the three I’ve mentioned in systems costing thousands. Ex. CCA has been my choice since '18 and will continue to be well into the future barring an equipment failure.