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Sound Quality or Convenience?

OK, asking this question to audiophiles might seem inane, but I have read enough threads (not to mention For Sale ads!) that make me think that we sometimes feel ok sacrificing sound at the altar of convenience.

Would like to hear your experiences, along with perhaps some theoretical quantification... such as how much SQ can be let go for how much convenience, etc. For those who chose this path, was it a keeper or did you want that SQ so much you went back to it?

My own is a probably a familiar one: Maggie 3.6, which were not just visually er, challenging, but also required a lot of work to yield that magic. I gave up on the magic in favor of much easier speakers, and then did it again a couple of years later. I now own Zu Druids, which are as diametrically opposite to Maggies os one can get. They look and sound great (to my ears, this is NOT repeat NOT a Zu thread) and are easy to work with in terms of space, weight and amplification.
kck

Showing 2 responses by kthomas

kthomas
911 posts
 
Convenience at the source - a HD-based system with a fantastic interface and, to my ear, as-good-as-or-better sound than from a CD player.

For the rest of the system, SQ, as the system requires dominating a whole room.
kthomas
911 posts
 
Shadorne - I don't know how big your music collection is, but I have to believe hard drives are big enough now to do that now. WMA files in lossless compression get you approximately 2:1 compression. At 300 CDs per 100Gb and 500Gb drives costing $250, it only costs about $500 to store a 3000 CD collection on a music server.

Couple that with removing the need for a transport and being able to use a USB DAC and you've got both convenience and, likely, the best sound quality from your CDs you've ever enjoyed. I have a little small-form-factor PC that is ultra quiet (no fan), with two external HDs (1TB storage) also ultra quiet, all controllable through a flexible and intuitive user interface I can operate from my laptop anywhere in the house. I don't think I've sacrificed much, if anything, in sound quality to get ultra-convenience, at least for red book source material.
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