Rbstehno, your comments are totally odd. A network bridge is doing exactly the same thing a server is doing. A per USB being somehow inferior it all depends on implimentation of the cable, the dac and the server.
The Audioquest Diamond is not state of the art in any way, we started with the Diamond as it was really the first high end USB Cable, and then we graduated to the Wireworld Platinum which was even better sounding, then we moved to the Enklein pure silver, which was better still than the Wireworld and then we found the Light Harmonic cable Lightspeed, which has a Femto reclocker built into the cable and this is the most remarkable USB cable we have yet tested.
A Network bridge is taking packeted audio from the Network and then in the case of the DCS then outputing to the Dac via AES or SPDIF or USB.
If you are looking to do the highest sampling frequencies of Quad Rate DSD a standard AES or SPDIF cable will not pass those frequencies nor will the DCS bridge.
Now it also depends on which servers you were using before the DCS bridge, the Innuous sounds way better tha the Aurender we sell both.
You may have had decent but not a state of the art server before you moved to the DCS piece.
You are also missing the user experience which Roon brings which makes listening to music a much more exploratory experience.
Uberwaltz, you are missing the concept of upconversion or cross conversion. By emploing a server which allows you to change or cross convert you can create a psuedo high resolution data stream from a 16 bit 44k sample. The actually difference between a true high resolution sample and a reprocessed one may be completely undiscernable.
We routinely take Tidal data stream, upconvert through our Innous server to our Light Harmonic Davinci and listen to all music at Quad Rate DSD and the sound is glorious.
Server with Roon, and the ability to upconvert or crossconvert can dramatically create a much more analog like sound even with a standard Redbook digital data stream.
Labtec the difference between reference servers is hardly neglibile we heard major differences between the Innuous Zenith, the Baetis Reference x, and the Memory Player.
The difference is a combination of hardware, software and implimention of all of the different factors. As per packing a good cardboard box can be very effective, if you don’t think you aren’t paying extra for the fancy flight case that you will never use again you got another thing comming.
We are really looking forward to our new Innuous Statement which employs a totally custom designed motherboard, a state of the art USB output board, a temperature controlled clock, custom software. This will be the best sounding sever on the market, save your pennies at $13k it will not be cheap, but it should set a new reference for a digital front end.
Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ