Why Do ~You~ Still Play CDs?

Classical music is a dreadful fit on most streaming services. Classical does not comprise songs and albums, nor is it driven by artists. Most classical stuff comprises works written by composers. Works usually have several movements. Before Presto started streaming classical, we had Primephonic (I think) which was bought by Apple and promptly shut down.

CDs were outclassed by SACD about 25 years ago. I don’t know any streaming service which even matches 5.1 channel DSD.

I still buy lots of SACDs and CDs where there is no SACD version. If there is a high-res download (not stream!) I will consider this.

I buy 4k Blu-ray disks because streaming simply cannot match the bandwidth.

My disks are always available!

@jayctoy 

"I did not know classical is you say dreadful on streaming? I listen to classical 50%. I have not heard classical on streaming even at axpona"

I was being a bit provocative!  If I pop into a HiFi store they can almost always find my classical 'test pieces' on a streaming service, but only in two-channel PCM form.

Really, it is the organisation of the catalog that makes classical so challenging for most streaming services.  It is done very well by Presto at www.prestomusic.com.  There is an equivalent subscription service which allows downloads as well as streaming.  I usually download as a prelude to ordering the silver disk, if I like the music and performance ...

@latik

Congratulations on an excellent reply to a dubious challenge!

The earliest Philips CD players used 4 times oversampling (obviously, on playback) and sounded better than other early players as a result.  Oversampling allows much more gentle filters to be used in the analogue domain because the digital hash is at four times higher frequency.  Philips, who invented the format, also did not bother to implement the last two bits in their early players.

You did not include Direct Stream Digital as a high-res format.  Maybe 1-bit at 64 times oversampling is a stretch too far for some, but Philips and Sony introduced it as a far better alternative to CD format.  Apart from anything else, it is so much simpler in principle for playback

@lalitk You mentioned that DSD "is currently only available as downloads".

I guess that was a reference to streaming!  There are over 6,000 SACDs listed at Presto Music if you like classical and jazz.

I find it interesting that PCM bit-depths are multiples of 8, as in 16, 24 and 32-bits. This is more to do with computing than audio.  Around about 1970, computer designs started to coalesce on 8-bit bytes.  An eight bit byte can take 256 values, sufficient to hold a character from upper- and lower-case Latin alphabets, numbers and many other symbols.  

Fast forward 20 years and the need to incorporate Asian and other language symbols forced an expansion from 8-bits - amazingly it was lifted to 16-bits!  This immediately doubled the storage, processing and bandwidth required for text, but meant 256 times as many symbols could be represented. 

Similarly, each eight bits added to the PCM bit depth in theory gives 256 times the number of distinct sound pressure levels that can be encoded, and conversely need to be decoded.  In my opinion, many DACs struggle with 16-bits, in particular ensuring that each recorded increase in sound level results in a monotonic increase on playback.  This is particularly difficult when several bits switch off and a higher bit switches on.

One solution is the delta-sigma approach which in effect locally converts PCM into DSD.

@lalitk

"as natural as DAC’s that uses Sabre ESS Pro Chips"

I would add that some AKM DACs also handle 32-bit PCM and DSD natively.  To my ears, Marantz uses these chips beautifully.

I always suggest looking at the data sheet for any embedded DAC to see what it is designed to do, If it doesn’t mention DSD, it is London to a brick that DSD is not natively supported!

DSD can be converted to PCM, and only loses high frequency timing,  Going the other way requires interpolation (guesswork).

The only noise shaping required for DSD output is a gentle low-pass filter in the MHz range, unless you particularly want to fiddle with what the sound engineers recorded! Contrast this with the many filters on offer for PCM.

Happy listening ...