Records and CDs

Me too. 😊👍

I try to get up and play an album every week. But sometimes I don’t get too it… so I stream for the 20 hours I listen to music.

Happily the album art is becoming available in streaming. Qobuz now will have a pdf attached to the on line album, so you get to see it on your iPad or laptop while listening. So, hopefully that lack of art will go away and in future albums art will be created for new albums expecting on-line streaming.

Remember we are in a rapidly changing audio time in the analog vs digital arena. Fifteen years ago analog sound simply exceeded digital at all price points. At that time vinyl was considered to have “an intrinsic” sound. Which is now clear that it does not. “The sound”, is the result of the playback equipment. At some point the increasing resolution levels possible with digital will surpass analog and a gap will begin to develop.

The relative sound quality has been changing as first, the mid tier audiophile became sound quality competitive (say around $20K - $50K for analog ((tt and phonostage)) and the same for digital ((streamer and DAC)) ), but at the low end and high end vinyl still was better than digital… IF you did a good job of choosing your components and matching their sound qualities to your taste in your system. Even when this was the case. You could end up by poor or good choices with the reverse situation.

Over the last five years the sound quality of DACs and now streamers have gotten notably more competitive at lower price points allowing digital to equal or surpass analog at relatively low investment levels. As evidence, this thread! You would not find this number of digital advocates five years ago.

I am sure in the next five years the conversation will continually shift to the majority scratching their head as to why anyone thought vinyl was good in the first place.

@signaforce 

I don’t see anything even remotely in the minority here. You had an old model lower tier streamer… not saying it sounds bad. I still have a Aurrender N100… but upgrade that to an N200 or N20 and bet the situation flips. 

Wow, I completely forgot about the stacked record changer. Hmm, I was thinking about VTA… then remember I used to have to tape a penny or a nickel to the tone arm to hold it down… yeah… nice warm tubes, but terrible record players.

OP,

👍