I Sold my CD Player!!! Streaming sounds so incredible!!!

A few years back, the younger generation got into vinyl. I told my nephew he was wasting his time. They thought it was the best sound, but they had bottom line rigs. 
I got rid of my cd player 4 year ago soon as I got into streaming. I won’t even rip my collection because since I’m streaming I’m really enjoying new and better quality recordings. I have lost interest in the older music I so cherished. I find my genre keeps changing now. 
 

When you all rip your 4000 cds or 10000 cds, do you throw the files willy nelly into a nas drive (hoping metadata will save you) OR do you organize a folder tree by root folder genre --’>> Artist name folder (alphabetical) ---->> Album names folder?? ....which is how cds or vinyl sits in the racks

If the Metadata tracker fails, why can’t you all simply browse by folder to get to your favorite song bird for the day? Seems like a common sense thought process/solution is getting buried by promise of a failed "Metadata" miracle....
…………………………………………………………………………
I have a standard protocol I follow religiously when I edit the metadata the ripping software produces.

under TITLE I enter the composer’s name followed by a colon. Then I enter the title of the composition. The TITLE entry typically looks like this:

Korngold: Die Tote Stadt <Disc 1>

My streamer organizes my albums as I wish so I organize by TITLE. Along the side of the alphabetical list of TITLEs is a key containing all the letters of the alphabet. To find my Korngold album all I have to do is press the “K” and I am presented with a list of albums that have a title beginning with “K” and scroll through them until I find all my Korngold recordings. Then I look until I find Die Tote Stadt and press the play arrow.. It takes seconds and I would bet I can do that quicker than you can get up to search your albums to find something similar and then put it in your player and press play.

The problem with classical is if an album contains more than one composer it only finds the first composer listed in the title. I have repeatedly suggested that when editing metadata, the software should provide for more than one composer by allowing multiple titles for an album. I’ll probably be dead before that happens so I try to remember those albums that have multiple composers.

To summarize:  I don’t accept the metadata entered by the ripping software.  I edit the metadata so it is in my standard format.  All my metadata is entered in the same way so I can easily find my music albums.

Streaming sound quality extremely dependent on entire streaming chain. Stream sound quality should equal rip quality once you have streaming chain optimized.

As for recording quality, all over the place, this for both physical media and streams. Streams often have the advantage in that there's often multiple mastering/releases of same album, this becoming increasingly rare as cd sales decline. Streaming services have deep enough pockets to allow access to nearly every recording ever made, and its far simpler to transfer these recordings to streaming service. Physical media requires pressings and much more difficult distribution chain.

@fpomposo  ......I've found the same thing.   I have the Eversolo A8.  The ripped CDs on the SSD is the best digital I've heard yet and better sounding than any streaming. So easy now to access the music. And I also found that WAVE sounds better than FLAC on that unit which is controversial but I certainly hear a difference.  After ripping all my hundreds of CDs to FLAC.  Arrrrggghh.

But now with these SSDs we don't even need a CD player.  I use a laptop that has a DVD/CD drive and rip to a thumb drive using dBpoweramp.  The quality of the CD player isn't a factor anymore.  

Streaming is easier than dealing with the physical discs but with them ripped it's now so much easier.  Gotta love technology.  

rbstehno

Which Sony CD/SACD player is in your collection?

Happy Listening!

This is great if you don’t mind someone else choosing the mastering / release version for you. I’m VERY picky about my cds, and of the half dozen versions out there of ’Captain Fantastic’ the only one I care to listen to was mastered in the 1980s.

And before you ask: the correct mastering makes a HUGE difference.

I like having a CD library. Streaming does sound great and gives almost unlimited music choices. . But having it on a hard drive uncompressed is really nice for critcal listening. What I like best about streaming services is you can take it anywhere, it’s easy. With video it seems streaming services have taken over with many choices. It can get expensive. I like having my favorites handy. The same goes for CDs. They are mine, I get charged one time and it’s mine. Steaming gives you more choice, but it’s never yours and you keep paying.

Yes, advances over the last ten years have completely eroded the advantage of vinyl or physical media based digital. With high resolution low cost streaming like Qobuz the unbelievable restrictions of owning physical media have been laid bare.

For generations people interested in musical fidelity have had to focus on carefully assessing and buying a tiny amount of music and listening it to it over and over again. Once the sound quality advantage goes away it is simply shocking the freedom is to explore all music. A completely new paradigm. Having 10 million plus albums at your finger tips. At first you listen to the same old stuff… then start opening up to the huge world of music you have not heard. It is overwhelmingly compelling. I seldom listen to anything that was in my 4,000 album collection. If I do, I stream it.

Wow…that was quite the thread. I gather that most of the A’gon community has converted to a streaming platform… not my cuppa tea but I wish Peace, Goodwill and Audio Bliss to you All.

@Kennymacc

i also think steaming is awesome. I use an Esoteric N01 XD SE streamer, Shunyata Sigma Ethernet cable, and Audioquest Thunderbird XLR interconnects to my preamp. I also have an Oppo 203 order to play Blu-ray audio, and a Clearaudio turntable (which is awesome), but I am in audio heaven while streaming.

I would argue that streaming has been a positive development for musicians

that's not what musicians say

Well I will listen to my Vinyl albums and cds .I'm not into streaming and like to look at the cd inserts or check out the Vinyl cover...Hope your streamer doesn't crash...It's all about the music so how ever you listen to music Enjoy....that's what it's there for....

incorrigable

Streaming is the nexus between wealth and luck in America. You need the luck of access to hard wired fiber optic service ...

If we’re talking about streaming audio, that’s simply mistaken. Hi-res audio such as Qobuz needs no better than 10Mbps for smooth, reliable playback.

Streaming is the nexus between wealth and luck in America. You need the luck of access to hard wired fiber optic service and the wealth to express the data on a fancy system, like the person who began this thread.

Coaxial cable was invented in the 1840's and it is in the lion's share of American households. A coax modem is a digital sphincter that does a mediocre job and wears out in a year or two. The cable tech in my old neighborhood told me he had a job for life replacing coax connectors under the side walk. They fail like clockwork. Streaming was misery.

I find the same thing as fpomposo.  On my Eversolo A8 the ripped CDs on the internal SSD - in my case FLAC - sound markedly better than anything from Tidal and Qobuz,  even the high res stuff, and even the downloads.  There is more substance and depth with the local rip.   And I agree with the technical reasons he stated as reasons for it to be so.  And vinyl sounds even better still.  

I'm surprised at this though

"When I listen to a CD at WAV resolution it’s anywhere from 500 to 800 megabytes of data, if you stream the same album it is going through lots of compression algorithms and you are downloading maybe 50 to 80 megabytes.".

....it seems like others would have seen this also.  Seems too obvious.  I'll have to compare the file sizes of downloads to the ripped if possible.  

@carlsbad it's not that I don't believe in flac or aac, I have half my music collection ripped in aac because many years ago I need to save disc space, so I have heard lots and lots of "lossless" audio, and I have  extensively compared albums in aac vs WAV and WAV sounds superior, again it's a drastic difference.

The entire point of flac and aac was saving space back in the day, but now there is no point, I have maybe 800 CDs ripped and it's under 1 TB, my Aurender has a 2 TB SSD hard drive in it, my computers all have 2 TB SSD, my entire library is backed up to Dropbox which I have a 6 TB limit. I have no use or need to try and save disc space by using "lossless" compression formats that actually sound much worse than just doing bit for bit copies of the original CD without ditching half the bits using flac or aac. 

@fpomposo Sounds like you don't believe in FLAC.  I've never used an Aurender and I hope they don't have conversion problems making FLAC back into WAV. 

I upgraded my Innuos with onboard drive and a nice ripper to a grimm with onboard drive.  I don't use the drive much since it offers no audio benefits.  

Sounds like you really believe your WAVs are superior so that is what you are hearing. 

Enjoy the music.

Jerry

Suppose you want to compare his phrasing at a particular point such as 9 min 48 seconds on one vs 9 min 30 seconds on another.  Nothing but your physical media will let you do this
 

Actually you can do this with streaming quicker than you load a CD.

Last week I tried to find Sviatislav Richter RCA recording of Bach Well Tempered Clavier Books I and II on my streamer.

Roon finds 2 versions on both Tidal and Qobuz in about a second.
Obviously this doesn’t work for some obscure recordings that are not available on streaming services.

Since using Roon, I’m buying and playing more vinyl than ever. Although 75% of my listening is streaming simply for convenience.

@carlsbad2 not sure what your getting at but your statement that there should be no discernable difference between local ripped files and streamed is incorrect.

When I listen to a CD at WAV resolution it’s anywhere from 500 to 800 megabytes of data, if you stream the same album it is going through lots of compression algorithms and you are downloading maybe 50 to 80 megabytes.

My local source file is traveling from the SSD hard drive in my Aurender a few inches to the USB output then to my DAC, when you stream a album it is going from a server farm somewhere in the world through thousands of miles of fiber and copper lines through multiple computers and devices in the chain of your ISP, then to your modem, then to your router, then another run of patch cord coppper cable and heavily compressed and decompressed many times along the way.

Proclaiming that they should have no discernable difference doesn’t make it so, it’s very very obvious by using the ear test that uncompressed local files are superior to Qobuz streamed music, and I will admit Qobuz sounds pretty good but not even close to local files on the HDD.

I recommend you get a streamer with onboard hard drive and hear for yourself , I love my Aurender but there are others that have onboard storage.

PS - My Aurender is hard wired, Aurender doesn’t even have Wi-Fi you can only hard wire it and I use a high quality shielded Cat7 patch cord to go to the double isolated LAN port on the Aurender. I do plan to get a audiophile network switch at some point and maybe try a audiophile expensive patch cord, but I haven’t spent the money on that just yet.

@fpomposo not sure what is wrong but there should be little or no discernable difference between your ripped and streamed sourcefiles.  Indeed you need a  high quality hard wired input to your streamer.  but my streamed music quickly revealed weakneses in my CD playing system and I had to upgrade my transport.  

Maybe you are happy the way you are doing it and that is fine, just thought I'd point this out in case you want to work on it.

Jerry

I don’t know how to evaluate the environmental impact of the competing technologies. Yes, physical media has to be disposed of in some fashion, and may end up in a landfill. However if someone listens to their physical media repeatedly having amassed a large amount, they may not consume as much electricity going forward as someone who relies upon streaming.

Or the employment issue. LP and CD pressing plants employ, or used to employ, individuals. Then there are those who were employed in the distribution chain, and finally the shops. Streaming services don’t require much employment; I subscribe to one boutique service that has 2 full time employees. I would not include the people employed by ISP , because I suspect most of them would still have jobs if music streaming services were to disappear.

In relation to impacting negatively on the Environment, Vinyl LP, CD and Streaming are without doubt presenting differences and some of which there should be careful considerations prior to making Purchases that come from production being created today.

The Crux of the overall issue is consumption and Music Produced to be Recorded on Vinyl and CD were as a Sale Item, never in their history going to generate the volume of Hires that the Streaming Industries are able to generate.

Additionally for the streaming industries to be a viable operation and afforded as a Hired Service by the multiples that use them, there has to be substantial range of Space available to be Hired covering a multitude of interests to the Hirers.

Data Centres are the Industrial Structures to enable Substantial Storage of content to be hired and the Streaming of the varieties of content to be sent from. 

As a result of a Growth of consumers over a relatively short timeline, Data Centres have been abandoned to be superseded by Structures that are now of such a footprint they are able to be seen from space.

Building the Structures is one Negative Impact on the Environment, not repurposing and abandoning the Structures for New Structures after very short usage periods, has further impaction.

 https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2020/09/largest-data-centers-world/

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center

Streamed Music from a Hire Service, used as a means of one entertaining themselves, to be a cost effective Hire Service, must have attachments to other services available from the Data Centre Source.

Everybody to day with the Knowledge they now have, there is no longer ignorance able to be pleaded, if one smokes they know the risks. In relation to producing C02, each individual is well versed on how to make a conscientious effort to reduce their overall impact. The idea that being amused is the subject, maybe obscures ones thoughts on what might be a betterment as an the alternative method for ones choices made for amusing themselves?                

My mistake. I thought you said you owned all the music you needed. You can find new music on those sources, but if you give it a try, I think you’ll find that streaming is a much better way to find and listen to new music. To each his own, though.

When you play an album by streaming, your streaming app will give you recommendations for other albums you may like and you may really like some of them. To each his own.

I guess I've been using Youtube, Band Camp and FM jazz radio to encounter new music. Amazon throws up some good recommendations too. I always try to buy the CD, which amongst my music choices, is virtually 100% available.

That’s plenty of music, especially since the music I’ve collected I really want to listen to over and over again. Streaming? Why?

Nothing wrong with sticking with what you’ve got. I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong, but there are tons of great music available that you can’t listen to.

When you play an album by streaming, your streaming app will give you recommendations for other albums you may like and you may really like some of them. To each his own.

That's plenty of music, especially since the music I've collected I really want to listen to over and over again. Streaming? Why? 

It's a thing. All the kids are doing it. 😄

All the best,
Nonoise

Even with 6k to choose between both formats and virtually all genres I ended up in repeat mode, familiar with everything, no surprises.

In one year, this translates to 16 albums per day to rotate all of the collection.I personally, at best, can concentrate on, and completely enjoy maybe 5 albums maximum per day. With vinyl and CD, I have about 900 titles. To rotate my collection at 5 per day would take six months. That's plenty of music, especially since the music I've collected I really want to listen to over and over again. Streaming? Why? 

Something, I don’t think mentioned so far is that the recording of music has been radically democratised in recent times and that’s been complemented by musicians’ access to streaming platforms.

If you’re the average musician, there’s no money to be made from it, but at least your music gets a chance to be heard remotely.

In any event, the vast majority of professional musicians have always made their money by playing live gigs and not from recording, so in the aggregate, I would argue that streaming has been a positive development for musicians.

rbstehno

PM sent.   Happy Listening!

@baylinor

"Au contraire"  --  Very nice.  I love the French.  I took it in high school, 2 years.  I can't read a word, but I liked the comment.

I went a step further and went voice-controlled. Talk about convenience. I sold off most of my CDs a while ago. The LPs have been long gone. Even though I'm older I'm certainly not what I see typical for my age, and for most older generations ... people desperately trying to hang on to the comfortable past. I want as much useful technology as possible. My current obsession is Artificial Intelligence, mostly for investment purposes, but what it has taught me is that within 5 years you won't be able to tell whether music is human or computer. Musicians will no longer be needed. Then you're really going to be hearing the complaints from the older generations.

Here’s a great article from someone who knows over at Audiophilestyle.com. When taking the dive into streaming and storage, please be aware of the maintenance involved. Good discussion in the comments section as well. All the best,Nonoise

Dude in the article is worrying a bit much....I keep backup drives in my bank lockbox in case my house caught fire or a tornado took it to the clouds.

Solid state NAS drives should be around for a 100 years easy, if stored correctly. Legacy software is just what it is...software...can be written again to access a legacy drive 60 years later, if needed (AI will be writing any software 20 years from now)..

Umm, the costs may not be what you think they are..

"Listening to an album via a streaming platform for just five hours is equal in terms of carbon to the plastic of a physical CD, the comparative time for a vinyl record is 17 hours."

Vinyl records generate approximately 2.2 kg of CO₂ per unit, CDs produce around 172 grams (0.172 kg) of CO₂ each, and cassette tapes emit roughly 2.8 kg of CO₂ per tape. In comparison, streaming music has a lower carbon footprint, estimated at about 55 grams (0.055 kg) of CO₂ per hour of streaming.Jul 15, 2024

Those carbon footprints for CDs and Vinyl are for the manufacturing process and are a one time thing. Streaming continuously adds to it. 

See here, and here for more info. 

All the best,
Nonoise

I abandoned hard media a few years ago and never looked back. Very happy with the sound, convenience, and ability to access new music. I’m over 70 and when I was young the radio was a viable source of exposure to new music and if I liked something, I went out and bought the album. Music on the radio is now for the most part, unappealing to me, so streaming is the main the way for me to discover new artists and music I like. Love that!

Also, no one has brought up the manufacture and distribution of CD and vinyl. Not a very environmentally friendly process compared to streaming, I suspect.

New music doesn't appeal to me, so that aspect of streaming is a non-starter. I like having the physical disc in my possession and not have to fool around with some app on my phone. The services with quality audio cost too much. And, frankly, have never been that impressed with the sound of streaming, even on high-quality systems. I'll stick to my vinyl and CD's, thank you very much.

Here's a great article from someone who knows over at Audiophilestyle.com. When taking the dive into streaming and storage, please be aware of the maintenance involved. Good discussion in the comments section as well. 

All the best,
Nonoise 

@irjones Streaming is very solid. The worst case you loose your internet connection for a little while and access to the 10 million + albums for a short time.

When you guys loose your renting service/sitting without internet, I can still stream all the thousands of files (that I permanently own) from my nas through the local LAN.

(na na na boo boo)

I have over 5000 CDs, SACDs, XRCDs, blu ray audio and DVD audio discs. 

They are loaded into a number of 400 CD carousel players. I would never part with them. It is like offline streaming. If the internet goes down you will be screwed unless you have ripped all of your CDs. I will be happily listening in my offline digital world!

I agreed until today. Roon was updating and it was taking a while. Vinyl it is. Oh boy, I forgot how great vinyl sounds. I'm not knocking streaming by any means. It does sound incredible, but vinyl, mmmmmmm. 

Part of the value of using physical media is the rediscovery process. If one has a larger collection (2k+ titles) and spends the time (10 plus hours a week) listening, at least for me part of the enjoyment is combing through and rediscovering titles. That's not easy to do (for me) with streaming....

@irjones I run NAS in RAID configuration, so 2 HD with identical data, I have backup of these with USB external drive. Chances of three HD failures is virtually nill. And I still have my 3k plus cd's, not worth the hassle of selling and cd's don't take up that much room in any case.

And how come you couldn't transfer the HD in dead computer to new computer or at least to an external drive then to new computer? Unless it was infected with virus of OS in old HD corrupted this could work. Still, best to backup to external HD, I always go for at least 2 backups for the music files, ripping 3k plus cd's is time consuming!

@irjones 

Streaming is very solid. The worst case you loose your internet connection for a little while and access to the 10 million + albums for a short time. 

My last computer died. When trying to have it repaired, I was informed it was not repairable!  I lost so much data, I was close to tears. Now every 3 months I download all new files to my collection of USB's. Which is in a dedicated draw.

Are your music files securely backed up against such a failure?

Or am I living in the past? Or do you believe that the new technology is (perhaps) fail proof? I am close to buying a new SACD player. If it dies, I still have my CD collection. And by the way, I don't have a TT, and never will.

Thanks for reading this, I'm new.  IAN.  

I’ve been streaming for almost 20 years, using Apple iTunes, amarra, pure music, audirvana, lightning DS, Lumin, and now Roon. 5 years ago when I upgraded my dac that uses i2s and Ethernet, running dsd and MQA, I sold all my vinyl and all my analog gear that cost me $20k, and haven’t regretted it 1 bit. Running pure music and audirvana back in the middle 2000’s, I sold my $3500 Classe cd player. Still have my Sony few thousand $$$ sacd player but haven’t turned it on for over a decade if not longer

Here’s a true example of how musician’s are used and abused by the music biz:

In the late-60’s Bill Graham held auditions at The Fillmore Auditorium on Monday nights. Numerous bands played a set, and those chosen were given an opening slot on a regular night. The Fillmore was a union house, so to perform there you had to be in the Musician’s Union.

I knew the guys in one San Jose band who joined the Union just to play the Fillmore audition. They were paid whatever the amount was that Graham was paying, and waited to hear if they would get a regular night gig. They instead heard from the Musician’s Union, who informed the band that all the members were being fined for paying below union scale.

So Graham let the band members know they had to be Union members to play The Fillmore, then paid them less than union scale for doing so, presumably knowing they would then be fined.

Another Bill Graham story:

When Graham was closing The Fillmore he booked all the San Francisco bands that had played there over the years for a grand finale. Dan Hicks inquired as to whether he would be included, and was told by Bill no, that Dan & His Hot Licks Band did not "assault the senses" of the audience.

Speaking of San Francisco bands: Jerry Miller of Moby Grape passed away a few weeks back. I went to a Portland club about a month earlier to see him live, glad I did.

I still have 100% of my vinyl and about 95% of my CD collection. I sold off a few CDs years ago knowing I would never listen to them again (mostly CD singles). I stream about 95% of the time as well.

I still have a ton of DJ only/promo CDs that I will not part with and still listen to them on my vintage system. These promo CDs will not end up on any streaming services---they're too rare. They're still fun to listen to and they have a lot of good memories to me. And even if they did end up on Spotify, I'd still keep them. Glad you're enjoying your streamer.

I thought old Linda had run out of money...I could be mistaken. Oops. I should have asked her myself but I lost her number.

mahler123,

Your last post is the most relevant on this thread for me.  You may remember me as a violinist, classical music lover.  Take your experience with Richter and Bach Well Tempered Clavier.  Go further, try to find a particular recording of Richter of an obscure piano concerto with various conductors and orchestras, on various labels.  Suppose you want to compare his phrasing at a particular point such as 9 min 48 seconds on one vs 9 min 30 seconds on another.  Nothing but your physical media will let you do this.  Youtube is good for doing this, although many recordings aren't available on YT, and of course sound quality is poor.  But for old master violinists like Kreisler of 100 years ago, although sound quality is poor, for musical satisfaction Kreisler is better than any violinist of today.

I have only CD and LP in my collection.  I have never gotten into streaming, and many here may say that I am incorrect.  Outside of music listening, I don't like internet instructions.  It is all geared to people who think that human customer service is obsolete.  I do business mainly with companies where there is live customer service, and not in chat boxes whose AI is primitive.

So, thanks for your post, which will keep me away from getting involved in streaming.