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CD Quality Versus Streaming Quality

I realize this will be a contentious subject, and far be it from me to challenge any of the many expert opinions on this forum, but if I may offer my feedback vis-a-vis what I am hearing, and gain some knowledge in the process.

i will begin saying that my digital front end setup is not state of the art, but i have had the good fortune to listen to a number of really high-end systems. I guess the number one deficit in my digital front end is a streamer server, and no question about it that will improve the sound.

My CD player is a universal player; Pioneer BDP-09fd. It uses Wolfson DACs. It has been modified to a degree. I have bought and sold other players, but kept this one, because it has a beautiful sound that serves the music well.

Recently, i ventured over to my son’s place and we hooked up my player (he doesn’t have one and rely’s on streaming only) We compared tracks / albums of CD quality and master quality streamed on Tidal with ‘redbook’ CDs I have. For example, some Lee Ritenaur CDs and some Indian classical and the wonderful Mozart and Chopin.
His system is highly resolving.

we were both very surprised to find the CDs played on the player to be the better sound. And not just by a little. The sound was clearly superior, with higher resolution and definition, spatial ques, much better and clearer imaging. Very surprising indeed. Shouldn’t there be no difference? This would suggest the streaming service is throttling the bandwidth or compressing the signal?

i am most interested to hear others’ observations, and suggestions as to why this might be? I do love the convenience aspect of streaming, but it IS expensive for a chap like me of fairly modest means. The Tidal HiFi topline service is $30 per month I believe, something the good lady is not too thrilled about. God forbid I should suggest Roon on top of that I may likely get my walking papers. I jest, but only partially LoL. My point is, if I pay this sort of money, isn’t it fair to expect sound to equal the digital stream from the CD player and silver disc?
Thoughts?

AK





4afsanakhan

Showing 1 response by optimize

optimize
164 posts
 
Reading digits off a spinning disk has inherent errors up to 5 percent depending on the condition of the disk and the quality of the transport and laser.   Dacs essentially have to guess where the missing information is based on algorithms.   Once you had cheap enough buffers like the original ps audio rom systems the errors were gone.  Now with solid media the digits can be stored without error and served yo an asynchronous dac.  No matter how good your CD player is, the process is flawed and outdated.
now there are data issues when you rip your cds to memory that are probably not audible,
I have worked for 10 years as software developer on making CD test disc equipment, that is for example for CD pressing plants and CD drive manufacturers.

Not many has used the physical Red book or the different orange books, for implementing measurements parameters that verifies the wording in those from Sony and Philips.
So that drive manufacturers can make sure that they can play a disc that meets the standard. And that CD manufacturers can make sure that they make discs that fulfill the requirements/standard. In those books.

A CD drive and a CD disc use many techniques to ensure that the data is error free. Will not bore you with all of the technical details. One small example, there is in the red book standard that do not allowed there to be ANY  un-correctable errors at all.
That parameter is called in the industry for "E32". It must be 0 otherwise it is out of specification.

What happens when a drive can't correct a error (that is all happening BEFORE entering the DAC) on a scratched/bad CD disc and get E32.
It puts out a error and stops reading/playing the disc.

In other words there is not a single bit that is in error from the drive that is going to the DAC. All data is fine and correct. And if the data is not guaranteed to be OK then you don't get anything. (100% correct or nothing.)

So I don't know where the horrible and completely flawed, misinformation in the quote is coming from!
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