Showing 7 responses by ghdprentice
@texbychoice …”The more you mess with a signal, digital or analog, the more likely to corrupt the signal. “ You ran into something here. “… I have done side by side comparison of a streamed track vs same from a CD. There is a difference.” Yes, that is virtually always true depending on the quality of the player vs streamer / DAC is and how much they conform to your values in sound.
Also, Qobuz is regarded as the best sounding streaming service followed closely by Tidal, the rest are not in the same league. However, Qobuz has over half a million high resolution recordings… while Tidal only has less than ten times less, making Qobuz the overwhelming best choice for streaming.
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Just a word of caution. Optical connections tend to be poor. Typically they are add in functions and the component manufacturer just sources an inexpensive electrical to optical converter to do it. In general, these are not the connections people serious about sound quality would use. So, it is very possible what is coming through is more of how well the optical converter was integrated. I would use SP/DIF or AES for sound quality comparisons. Of course, then it is a question of how well the streamer and CD transports manufacturer designed and built their components. |
@ossicle2brain …”But CDs sound better than any high end streamer right? Assuming the same DAC.”
Definitely not. While all is equipment dependent. My streaming sounds better than an exact same red book CD, while very slightly… and Qobuz has one half million high resolution albums… so those sound better.
I was pretty convinced that my streamer and CDs of the same recording sounded the same. Xfinity recently knocked out my internet during an upgrade and I listened to CDs for a little over a week. I did notice the background noise floor was higher on the CDs. My CD transport / DAC is the same. The best I have heard, an Audio Research CD9SE… and the streamer a Aurrender W20SE. So, the streamer is providing a quieter signal than the internal CD player. This can be true at different levels of investment. But there is nothing inherent that makes spinning a local data source (CD) better sonically than the file coming in through the internet.
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A slight hardness and very slight fatigue when the notes are sparse. The noise floor was higher, it must be in the higher registers or it would not be fatiguing. I am very sensitive to this and it is very small… but I listen to music three hours a day. I did not notice it before (my system has been stable for about three years). This is absent with streaming… the background is completely empty. |