slartabartfast
...it seems like they are saying that the digital audio stream delivered from different drives are different. That would seem to be possible, even plausible.

No.  It doesn't matter if the (for example) mp3 file is read from a USB drive, streamed wirelessly from a NAS box, encoded by a (very fast) human using morse code along telegraph wires, or even by data-transfer carrier pigeon.
 
You could even have a line of people shouting "zero" and "one" at each other (although buffering times would be in the order of months) as long as nobody said "one" when they should have said "zero".
 
Computers do not say one when they mean zero; any such transmission errors will be flagged by the frame/packet level CRC checks and retransmitted.  If you have binary identical files sitting on a multitude of different storage devices and transfer them to a computer (for decoding, playback etc.) then they will arrive binary-identical.
 
This thread is really about exposing techno-babble Snake-Oil BS for what it is.  If your capacitor is +/- 5% tolerance, then it doesn't provide you with warmer tones in an audio circuit just because it contains beeswax or has been made by hand-impregnating unbleached papyrus.  If you ask a computer to read an identical binary file from 500 different storage media, then you will end up with 500 identical files, not 500 different ones; the digital decoding of those files will be identical.
 
Don't even get me started on those 'audiophiles' who try to tell you that vinyl is a better media because it's analog...
 
The only exception to all this is of course my tone wood USB drive enclosures   Even non-musical files such as word documents or spreadsheets stored on them take on a more musical character.
 
This is perhaps the best example that I know of:
 
http://www.theregister.co...onkers_ethernet_cable/
 
Which is an article relating to this:
https://www.audiovisualon...j-e-ethernet-cable-12m
 
I honestly don't understand who they're trying to kid; there is no chance at all that the company are not aware that they are 100% lying.  Even a reasonably smart four year old will know that an ethernet cable is neither 'audio' nor 'directional'.
 
 

Yes, I get that. Nonetheless the digital audio stream bit A arriving at real world time B directly from two drives is not always identical. Bits almost certainly (failures do occur) but times would be variable. That is the purpose of buffering in all of its various forms. Normally bits arrive and are held in a buffer from which they can be called and coordinated with the clocking of the device that plans to use them. If operation 2+3 is called, and 3 is not available, the operation will wait until 3 arrives and the result of 5 will be generated when it does. The timing of that kind of operation is not critical. But audio data is very dependent on an accurate clock in the final output stage. The only way I can see that these guys could have actually produced a difference is if they somehow managed to defeat the buffering and accurate clock that should be built in to a D/A converter. If they are using the clock from the NAS or the unbuffered data delivery from storage to generate the sound, it is theoretically possible to produce a stream that has the same data bits but delivered at slightly different times. What the purpose of the oversampler in their routing is escapes me. 

I only made it to 'Press play'.
 
Life's too short, frankly.

stonThis is perhaps the best example that I know of:
 
http://www.theregister.co...onkers_ethernet_cable/
 
Which is an article relating to this:
https://www.audiovisualon...j-e-ethernet-cable-12m
 
I honestly don't understand who they're trying to kid; there is no chance at all that the company are not aware that they are 100% lying.  Even a reasonably smart four year old will know that an ethernet cable is neither 'audio' nor 'directional'.
 

In response to this someone did a rather amusing test where they had someone stream audio from Europe using whatever (non-audiophile) trans-Atlantic cables are there and demonstrated that the measured results were pretty much identical to streaming across the room.
 
 
I'm hesitant to distinguish a level of stupidity here any worse than anything else. These very forums are full of people who believe equally ridiculous stuff simply because it sounds plausible to them and they don't have enough of a technical understanding to see why something is really quite ridiculous.

drewfx1
I'm hesitant to distinguish a level of stupidity here any worse than anything else. These very forums are full of people who believe equally ridiculous stuff simply because it sounds plausible to them and they don't have enough of a technical understanding to see why something is really quite ridiculous.

Like how some think there's a major sound improvement using super-expensive, nitrogen-free Monster cables in the indicated direction versus using a thick, copper wire?  (Blind tests proved these so-called audiophiles couldn't tell the difference.) 
 
(Note that I own a LOT of Monster cable, but I bought it at 20% of it's normal cost.  )