Streaming is just one more arrow in the quiver. It doesn't disqualify you from being an "audiophile".
Yes, the sound quality of my turntable is noticeably better than streaming. Yes, when I want to listen intently, the majority of that listening is done with vinyl.
On the other hand, the cost/performance and selection that streaming delivers is hard to beat. The music I discover streaming, often leads to vinyl purchases. And contrary to the beliefs of some, it can sound really good. There are a lot of variables, the quality of the recording, mastering, etc., file quality, how that file gets to your streamer/dac, and the DAC itself.
Streaming leads to vinyl purchase that are sometimes disappointing because they were made from the digital copy and poorly pressed onto the vinyl which is warped and has a lot of ticks and pops and takes up a lot more space in my house than the digital version. A lot of new vinyl is crap, and a lot of good old vinyl is hard to find and expensive.
For me, it's not an either/or proposition and both formats have their pluses and minuses.
I also have a lot of CD's and have ripped a good many of them. You don't need a fancy box to do that, your computer should be able to do that and using your computer makes it easy to make a backup copy. I rip my CD's to an external hard drive using foobar2000 and backup that drive to another external drive and also to the cloud. Just share the hard drive on your network and you can access it with a number of apps. I use both the Lumin app and BubbleUPnP.
Yes, the sound quality of my turntable is noticeably better than streaming. Yes, when I want to listen intently, the majority of that listening is done with vinyl.
On the other hand, the cost/performance and selection that streaming delivers is hard to beat. The music I discover streaming, often leads to vinyl purchases. And contrary to the beliefs of some, it can sound really good. There are a lot of variables, the quality of the recording, mastering, etc., file quality, how that file gets to your streamer/dac, and the DAC itself.
Streaming leads to vinyl purchase that are sometimes disappointing because they were made from the digital copy and poorly pressed onto the vinyl which is warped and has a lot of ticks and pops and takes up a lot more space in my house than the digital version. A lot of new vinyl is crap, and a lot of good old vinyl is hard to find and expensive.
For me, it's not an either/or proposition and both formats have their pluses and minuses.
I also have a lot of CD's and have ripped a good many of them. You don't need a fancy box to do that, your computer should be able to do that and using your computer makes it easy to make a backup copy. I rip my CD's to an external hard drive using foobar2000 and backup that drive to another external drive and also to the cloud. Just share the hard drive on your network and you can access it with a number of apps. I use both the Lumin app and BubbleUPnP.