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Is Pretty Good Good Enough? Listening Habits In The World Of Streaming Services.

I'm a recent subscriber to Tidal and Amazon Unlimited.  The sound quality of the cd quality music is surprisingly good.  I find myself listening to more music because of it.

I've also found myself in a situation when I come across a very familiar recording that I find it missing some of the inner details of the recording that I'm very familiar with....overall, the recording is good, but I noticed the missing elements.  Though I found it not as good as it sounds on my cd player, it was good enough that I didn't stop the song and went and got my cd and played it.  In other words, I settled for pretty good.  Interestingly, as I moved up the chain in the world of audio, it was always in pursuit of better equipment to extract better sound from the recording.  I was always looking for better than 'good enough'.  Well, 'good enough' has gotten a lot better than it used to be...and much more convenient.

Sadly, my critical listening time with my cd player and turntable is a lot less these days because of the streaming services.  I've just started to fiddle around with burning wav files of my cd's to a hard drive to make copies of those recordings where nothing but the original file will do. 

How have your listening habits changed since the higher resolution services have arrived?

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Showing 1 response by arcticdeth

arcticdeth's avatar
arcticdeth
1,572 posts
 

CD, SACD, SHM-CD, SHM-SACD, DVD audio, etc etc. 

  dedicated CD player, descent cables, quality preamp, power amp(s)

Way above and beyond downloading, streaming, Amazon, apple downloads , etc etc. 

bought a handful of Apple Music, and songs,through,Amazon, etc,….there is no comparison in quality, CD, and hard copies wreck streaming, downloads, the music I’ve downloaded, bought highest quality available, will burn to cd, it is filled with audible hiss, sometimes a slight loss in some Freq’s compared to playing the same song on cd. Not bad if your not listening for it, we have a very revealing and accurate system, and shows flaws in audio sometimes. 
 

I did run the songs through audiolab 3.0, lower the high freq’s and upper midrange freq’s just a “dab”. Then burn again with 96K on a taiyo yuden cd-r. 
 

  Much better, but I should not have to do so when spending money on “air” or buying “nothing”. 
don’t buy much music this way, only a handful of download only bonus stuff, or bonus tracks from a,specific album on apple or Amazon. So when I add the downloaded song to the hard copy rip to iTunes, there is a fairly noticeable dip or increase in volume, or audio quality. 
 

  

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