If you had to start all over again in this day and age

That's fair - that "ownership" versus "renting" aspect is a hurdle for some.  If you're happy enough without the streaming then just keep on with what you're doing.  Surely not for everyone.

Did exactly that one year ago, starting from scratch after a 20 year dormancy in audio. Decided to go digital streaming only as to sources with streamer/dac, with a SS integrated amp, floorstanders and sub in main system. Did the same in secondary and third systems except used bookshelves and sub for bedroom and at work office. I’m probably done for another 10-15 years. Except I will look into room treatments in a year or two for the main system.

OP,
I can identify in some ways with leery to digital streaming, because one year ago I was there, albeit for different reasons.

I’m into a lot of different things but I guess as I look back I have about five primary hobbies that recurringly dominate segments of my life. Usually one or two are obsessively active and the other three are sidelined but will re-emerge eventually, typically in near obsessive fashion until I lose interest and cycle to the next...

Music and hifi is one of the five, but as I mentioned was kinda dormant for most of last 18-20 yrs since my last big purchase of 2 ch and HT at that time.

Today, music/Hifi is dominating my attention span for the last year since I upgraded, like it hasn’t since I was a kid.

I started thinking about why that was, and concluded that for me it is all about quote-unquote unlimited access to music and variety.
Why do I say that? The only other time I was this enthralled in music and gear was way back in the 80s as a kid. Columbia House and the other one (forget name now - started with B I think) offering 12 albums for a penny! Wow!

All of a sudden, not only did I have 25 new albums which exponentially broadened my music view, but concurrently so did all of my friends, so between us it was virtually unlimited music in our world as we swapped and traded, and it led to massive (its all relative) investments in gear for home and eventually car, all because of the music awakening that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

Fast forward 15 years to having some money and buying first hi-end system in 2000 and playing the cds I had and it was good, but it died out fairly soon to be replaced by the other hobbies vying for my attention. I never got into the Napster file sharing and detest headphones/buds so never owned an iPod.

Well to wrap up a story that’s already too long, enter digital hi quality streaming and its 1985 all over again for me with limitless access to any and seemingly all music, and I’ve dropped the other hobbies for last year and plowing all of my $ into getting three separate systems up so I always have access to it.

I didn’t have the huge tranche of LPs or CDs or even digital download files so streaming was an easy decision for me a year ago, and it has been awesome.

It’s funny on the media ownership vs streaming decision. Funny because I myself am in conflict when it comes to music v movies on the issue.

With music, I have blissfully moved to digital streaming, acquired a relatively modest (in this company) but supremely capable streamer/dac (Teac NT-505) and I think nothing of the hundreds-ish cds gathering dust.

With movies, I’m not there. Yeah the kids stream Disney+ thru tv using tv speakers and I’ve spent hours trying to get the sound thru the ht AVR and it just isn’t meant to be for some reason. I’ve had it dialed in once or twice and tried explaining the procedure to the kids but of course the next time they do it themselves it’s all mucked up so I’ve given up. They’re satisfied and life’s too short. 

So for HT still buying the 4K Blu-ray disks and playing them thru my Atmos 5.1.2 system and its all good.

Perhaps it comes down to I have less curiosity in deeply exploring new movies versus deeply exploring new music?

Haha, OP, yeah that’s true. But I’ve been tested for the audiophile virus, and, sorry to say, I did not test negative. I’m guilty of wanting better sounding components and despite just upgrading the three systems and dropping well into five-figure land on the combined projects, I’m already thinking the bedroom system could sound a lot better if maybe I got that top Luxman integrated for my main system and moved my used circa 2010 ARC integrated to my bedroom........so yeah, I’m no pure white dress bride (ha!) in this consuming hobby (sickness?).

But it is all fun and I am enjoying it, the music and the gear.

But I can’t help sometimes thinking something that I’ve seen MillerCarbon state one way or the other several times over the last year (I’ll paraphrase): "Blessed are they who cannot hear the differences in equipment [like my wife and my kids, for example (parenthetical is mine, not his)], as for them life passes blissfully without the worries of how one’s system may be somehow deficient"

(apologies to MC if that isn’t close enough but that’s kinda what I took from your renditions)

As I type this, I’m at work. Not working, mind you, but because it’s early on a Saturday and the building is mostly empty, I can crank the budget system and listen to differences in the three (yes, it’s true) bookshelf speaker options I’ve collected and rotate thru .... just because. Audio sickness, maybe? Or is it pushing the boundaries and exploring a passion? Depends which network you watch I suppose, so to speak. My wife thinks for sure the former, I’m arguing the latter but, you know, she may have a point.

So alas, I’m not there. : )
But it’s all good. Enjoy the music, and stay safe.

It’s sooooo true that it’s important to find “your sound” right from the beginning as mentioned above. Before my upgrade I listened carefully to over two dozen speakers over six months to find what I liked. Not 5 minutes, ten minutes. Minimum of half hour to one hour each, over six month period. With the finalists probably at least 2-3 hours over several sessions with different electronics.

Figured out that a Spendor D series was what made my toes curl, and its all been fricken musical bliss since. Put the D7’s in my reference system and the D1’s in my bedroom!

On streaming, tech wise it’s really painless. Of course you need internet access. Ethernet cables access to your modem is best, but some streamers like the Bluesound will also work over WiFi. 
The three streamer dacs that I currently use are the aforementioned Bluesound in my budget office system, Cambridge 851n in my secondary system and Teac NT-505 in my main system. 
There are big sound quality performance increases at each of those steps. The Teac is still relatively affordable at $2k and sounds amazing, but it requires Ethernet (no WiFi ). 
The Bluesound is the easiest to use and has the best user interface app of the three, but it’s dac is wanting IMO. Ymmv

Generally, no, streaming services to the types of streamer dacs we’re talking about here for home 2ch listening always require an internet connection to play the songs. So you do not "own" the songs if that’s what you mean - but so long as you keep your subscription you can play anything from their vast catalog. I think some services do allow download (e.g., to your phone) and play without an internet connection, but your subscription must still be active (once it expires, those songs won’t play). It’s just that most of the types of streamer dacs described above don’t have way to store. (I hope I’m right about this - if I’m wrong someone will correct.)


I like streaming because it gives me access to vast quantities of music, and it curates them by genre. So, for example, I like blues. I listen to a lot of Albert King, Muddy Waters, Keb Mo, Taj Mahal, Luther Allison, Buddy Guy -- all pretty well known artists. But with Tidal, I go to "Tidal Recommends" for blues and I have access to tons of blues artists I’m not familiar with, and I can listen to any of them any time. It leads to infinitely more time spent listening. That’s the best benefit of streaming, IMO. And it’s CD quality or better if you use Tidal/Qobuz and have a decent player. With Hi Res (different services call it different names) you can do better than CD quality. Will it ever better a high-end vinyl setup? Maybe not today. But down the road, who knows. What lots of folks who have hi-end vinyl setups do is use streaming to identify those albums they want to purchase on vinyl.

Not all streaming services are created equal. Spotify has a free version but the quality is low (resolution). Tidal and Qobuz are the two high-quality leaders, and Amazon has become a new contender, but is not supported yet by many players (Bluesound an exception and maybe couple others).


Establishing an account with a streaming service will involve creating an username and password, that you’ll enter once into your streamer initially, and thereafter it’ll find it automatically each time you power on.


Also, not all players (streamers, dacs, or combo units that have both) obviously are created equally. Not all will play at the highest resolutions supported by the streaming services.


Regarding the dac in your cd player, depending on how good it is you may be better off going with a combination dac/streamer. Besides convenience and fewer cables, everything in digital domain runs off clocks and when you have more devices (like streamer and cd dac) involved there is more opportunity for jitter to degrade the sound quality. That said, if your cd dac is decent, it may outperform the dac in the Bluesound node 2i. Dacs/Streamers improve quickly, as in audio terms/timelines this is a pretty fast moving technology (compared to speakers, for example). The dacs 5 years from now will be markedly better than what we have today. That’s a good thing.



Yes, like everything in audio, prices go from low to nosebleed high. You can find dacs costing $100k if you look hard enough.