2. digital
  3. 164764-11588

CD or Streaming... am I missing out?

I listen to CD in my headphone office system. Use a Theta Compli transport and a very nice and pricey tube 16/44 DAC. Have thought about a streaming capability and all its benefits but am both limited by SPDF and by 16/44 only. I also love the analog sound of my tube DAC. Does streaming sound far surpass CD? Am I missing out?
mglik
headphonedreams
523 posts
 
Are you comparing Spotify Premium and Amazon HD with Tidal Standard?

I have both Spotify Premium and Tidal Hifi/Master and the latter is clearly much better. I have not tried Tidal Standard so I can't say how it compares.

Regarding the original question if you are missing out I think you are missing a lot of good music if you stick to cd. The sq is probably the same or very close (when you use 16/44 or better).
2psyop's avatar
2psyop
1,503 posts
 
Two guys have two different audio systems. One is not better that the other since they have been individually selected for personal preferences.
Both these guys have high quality CD players and have also invested in a high quality external DAC. Both like to explore music and have several hundred plus CDs.
One guy Gus, decides to buy a streaming device. He buys a Bluesound Vault. He starts to rip his CDs to the HD in the vault because he wants to back up his CD collection. Now he has a near perfect FLAC file of each of his cherished CDs. He decides to listen to Tidal, Spotify and various other music service platforms that his Vault allows him to access. Now he hears albums he would like to own. Some of these CD albums he buys and some he finds at his local library and he can keep listening to these new CDs on his CD player but now can also get a bit perfect copy by placing them in the Vault. If he sells his cherished CD player and buys an updated DAC, he can connnect that DAC to his Vault to take advantage of the new DAC while listening to both streamed music and his Vault copies.

The other guy, Glen keeps things simple and continues to enjoy his CDs.

No problem with either situation at all. But music and technology
allows us to explore and that can be fun.
llarry
41 posts
 

I recently replaced my Theta Miles CD player with a Bluesound Vault 2i and have loaded all of my CDs onto it (over 1000.) Note that I demoed the Vault against my CD player (attached to a Krell KAV 300i integrated amp and Thiel CS2.2 speakers) for several weeks before I purchased it, in addition to having many friends and family do blind testing between the Vault and the Miles CD player. The bottom line was that there was no discernible difference in sound quality. The vault sounded every bit as fantastic as the CD player did. The advantage of having all types of access to all of my own music as well as the all the music available on streaming services, at the touch of a finger, is simply superb!


georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
llarry

Correct me if I'm wrong but looking at what you said sounds like the same dac wasn’t used in this A/B so how can anything be establish?  

Cheers George
bezmania
11 posts
 
So here's the weird thing... This thread got me comparing stuff. I run Qobuz hi-res through a Cambridge Audio Azure851N streamer/DAC. Today, I hooked up an old, but good CD player (Linn Classik CD, integrated CD/tuner/amp). Not a really upper-upper-high-end device, but not garbage either. I use it as redbook player only, feed SPDIF into the same streamer/DAC. 

Now for the weird bit: the CD player sounds substantially better than the Qobuz FLAC at the same sample rate. Beter soundstage, better definition. How? Why? If i assume that Qobuz doesn't f*ck up the ripping proces, why is there such a difference?

</puzzling>
More to discover