Thoughts and suggestions please


I only stream and have spent 3 years building my playlist. I have recently been thinking about purchasing my playlist on Qobuz in the event something happens (they go out of business or some major crash) that would lose what I have spent so much time building. Is this a concern for others as well? If I do decide to purchase my list I would need a new streamer with storage capacity. I am looking for suggestions for streamers. I have an N130 node now with Teddy Pardo LPS. I like the BluOS app and am considering a new Node with storage but with all the positive feedback with Innuous and Aurrender I will strongly consider those too. Do their apps compare favorably with the BluOS app? I’d like to stay in the 3-5k cost range.  Thank you for your thoughts. 
 

Ron 
 

 

 

ronboco

@limomangus  I was like you — I had a good collection of CDs and PCM titles and albums, and I refused to pay for a subscription. But sometime last fall, I gave in and subscribed to Qobuz simply because the abundance of streaming sources gives you a kind of freedom everyone should have — the freedom to listen to anything you’re interested in, right at your fingertips. No fuss, no muss, and it works out to literally about 35 cents a day. 

Remember, your collection might be large too, but it’s still only a tiny fraction of what’s available from streaming services. I mostly listen to classical and jazz, and even within classical alone, think about how much you could possibly have in your own library to compare different versions by conductor, performer, and orchestra.

Whenever and wherever I travel, the music is always there for me through my iPhone and earbuds. I think that’s worth it.

And when Wi-Fi drops, I still have thousands of titles to fall back on — though that only happens maybe once or twice a year at most.

I understand that streaming has millions of songs and artist...but I'm happy playing my lps, 45s ,cd,cassettes n reel to reels.To I need to hear new stuff or from an artist I never heard of....nope....lol.

@goodlistening64 

"Guess you are either bearish or bullish on keeping a hold of your physical mediums, but in the end, streaming is throwing money away while throwing pennies into the pockets of musicians. Those that choose streaming services are the ones who choose not to support musicians."

+1 to that

It’s sort of like "well everyone’s doing it", which isn’t the case, everyone has a choice.  Some just double down on it which is really f’d IMHO.  Justify it however you want.  None of what I'm referring to is in the context of SQ. 

Yeah, buying multiple versions and the numerous catalog reissue are of the corporate marketing ilk, but I guess one just has to weigh the pros / cons and be diligent of those (re) purchases.  Some can be great and many are crap. 

The Bluesound streamer is a good product. I own both a Bluesound 2i streamer and an Innous Mini Mk III.  From a sound stand point, I like the Innuos product over the Bluesound. The application for the innuous has come along way from 3 years ago and is comparable to the Bluesound. Bluesound has a very slight edge for simplicity, and both are great. I pick the innuos Mini Mk over the Bluesound  for fidelity, clarity of details in music. Both in my opinion are excellent. The Mini Mk has a hard drive, now an SSD in newer models than mine. The one I have has a Western Digital Red drive which is a server drive. Since you can store your own CDs on the innuos and stream, it’s a winner. I think the sound of innuos is a notch up in sound from the Blusound. I tested at home the Blusound all in one with the built-in amp. The sound was not acceptable for my taste. Not rubust or accurate in my opinion. Plenty of power for 100w speakers, but instruments do not sound like the real thing. Both products get firmware update from the manufacturers. I hope this is good information for you.