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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?

mitch4t

Showing 1 response by larry5729

larry5729's avatar
larry5729
1,016 posts
 

I must be deaf because I stream Tidal on my BlueSound Node 2i and I am able to listen to hi-res music (higher than CD quality).  Since I purchased my BlueSound, I have not played a CD in my OPPO 105.  Since when does a 16 bit CD have better quality than lets say 24/192?  I am not as knowledgeable as many of you and if you can explain why a CD plays higher quality please explain.

One of the tech people from The Harmon Luxury group lives in Denver and he stopped by to trouble shoot a few things.  While he was there he demoed a comparison between Tidal and Qobuz.  It was very easy to pick Qobuz every timee because the detail was noticeably better.  He even tried to trick me and I picked Qobuz every time.  I am checking out the Qobuz library to see how it compares to Tidal before switching.  However, I prefer the graphics and thee interface Tidal has created.

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