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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 reidfleming

reidfleming
5 posts
 

Bought a subscription to Quobuz back in February and I have nothing but good things to say about streaming. I don't think I have the critical listening skills that most on this forum has so I wan't speak to the quality of the sound. What I can say is having that kind of a library at your fingertips can significantly change your listening habits. I spend way more time listening now compared to when I was streaming my iTunes library, Pandora or listening to CDs. In fact, I've become a bit of a music whore. I'll literally give anyone a half hour of my time. I find myself listening to genres I never would have considered in the days of physical media. 

One of my favorite ways to spend time now is to settle down with an issue of Sterophile or The Absolute Sound and playing every song mentioned in the issue as I'm reading it. I've discovered so many artists doing this. It's made me realize how little I really knew about music before I started streaming.

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