Sound quality of MinimServer

[simoncn]

There could be a number of reasons for this sound quality difference. These can be categorised into things that affect the bits received by the renderer and things that don't affect the bits received but can affect the sound.

From what I have read on the Audirvana website, Audirvana does some before sending it to the UPnP renderer (SoTM). I don't use Audirvana and I don't know what manipulations it is doing. Any such manipulations would affect the bits received by the renderer.

Also, you are running Audirvana on a Mac and this can change sound quality because a Mac is likely to produce a different level of electronic noise/jitter (probably lower) transmitted over the Ethernet connection along with the audio signal. This noise/jitter does not change 1 bits to 0 bits or vice versa but can adversely affect the ability of the renderer to prduce optimal sound quality.

It is possible that some manipulation of the audio data might be happening with JRiver depending on what JRiver options are selected in your setup and what file formats (FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, WAV, DSF, M4A, MP3, etc.) you are using for testing. What are the file formats of your test files?

As others have said om this thread, MinimServer performs no processing of audio data by default but delivers exactly what is in the files in disk. This sounds good but actually might not be optimal for sound quality because it pushes all audio processing onto the renderer/player device (SoTM). This is why MinimServer provides the optional MinimStreamer extension to enable server-side transcoding and convolution, which can reduce the load on the renderer device. By not using MinimStreamer, you are limiting the ability of MinimServer to produce the best possible sound.

Also, MinimServer supports a large number of platforms including the most popular NAS brands QNAP and Synology. This is important because it enables you to store your music library on a NAS and run MinimServer on this NAS rather than running Minimserver on a PC which is an electrically noisier device and in your case is reading the music files from an external hard drive using a USB connection. Again, by not taking advantage of how MinimServer can best be used, you are limiting MinimServer's ability to produce the best sound quality.

Edit: The above should not be taken to imply that running MinimServer on a NAS instead of a PC will always improve sound quality. This might depend on other components in the system, as discussed in this thread.

I hope this helps to provide a broader perspective on how optimal sound quality can be achieved in a MinmimServer-based system.