[robfine]

I am going to reiterate something Puma Cat has been preaching on. I am also in a position of being budget conscious- not as much as some and way more so than others but I digress. A dirty record played on a $100,000 totally tricked out turntable isn’t gonna help that TT sound its best. The signal coming into your streamer is what contains the music. If it is a “dirty” signal your streamer is going to have to.. well, you know the saying “garbage in garbage out”. Now good streamers can do some cleaning up but the cleaner the signal the better whatever goes from your streamer to your dac all things being equal. I just got myself an Uptone Audio EtherRegen switch and 2 Wireworld Starlight Ethernet cables, 1 meter and 3 meter(the WW courtesy of Ivan right before the price change— great deal, great price, great service- great transaction— and within a vey tight budget at that moment). The 1 meter goes from the ER to my Bryston BDP-3 and the 3 meter to my 65” LG OLED tv. I didn’t know really black blacks could get noticeably blacker (the TV) and this really crisp picture crisper but not in an artificial way. The music- not to be cliche, but blacks blacker- listening to something like Jen Chapin or Sinne Eig and Thomas Fonnesback, the spaces between notes are noticeably quieter and the listener (me), more there- not so much like the performers are more in my room but It is more like I am in the performance space. You can get certainly get your signal cleaner where it makes a significant difference using Shunyata Sigma or Omega caliber cables, etc.. But if you can’t afford that like me (and I am not pleading poverty here, I just have two adult kids who are not fully independent yet), you can still get a great headstart on cleaning up your signal by running that fiber Puma Cat mentioned to an EtherRegen (about 600 bucks) or running Ethernet from an Airport Express to an EtherRegen, and then from the EtherRegen a meter of WW Starlight or Shunyata Venom if your budget can handle it… and you won’t have difficulty noticing the difference. If you drink really good single malt with one ice cube, do you make your ice (to have for drinking the scotch) with tap water?