Streaming vs Physical Media

Matching clocks is another often overlooked issue with clocks. Sine wave vs square wave, what freq. running at. I recently experienced what I presume this issue in rather recent negative experience with audiophile switch. I believe John at Uptone has another white paper discussing these issues.

Yep, ripped better than my last cd transport. Access to so much more music via streaming vs. cd makes streaming a no brainer to me, and I have at least 2500 cd's. Streams  Qobuz and Tidal via Roon also pretty much on par with rips, so sound quality should be of no concern.

Certainly, comparing a single transport to a single streaming solution will bring about many different results. It seems to me, SOTA cd transports today limited to just a few. Streaming solutions are extremely varied, and so many reportedly getting great sound out of all these variable solutions. So, between far greater choices in equipment, and the music, allied to so many preferring streaming sound quality, preference for streaming a no brainer to me.

Many avenues to great network performance, ethernet or optical, just one more variable. And then you have the variable as to how each is implemented. I've chosen optical as my preferred path, but optimization here includes running every FMC off lps, quality power cord into balanced transformer PC. The generic FMC can be bettered with Sonore optical, I'm also beginning to see optical enhanced devices from other companies.

Also, optimizing network both prior and after server is critical, anywhere noise has opportunity to enter and contaminate has to be isolated, and no switching power supplies.