Is Pretty Good Good Enough? Listening Habits In The World Of Streaming Services.


I'm a recent subscriber to Tidal and Amazon Unlimited.  The sound quality of the cd quality music is surprisingly good.  I find myself listening to more music because of it.

I've also found myself in a situation when I come across a very familiar recording that I find it missing some of the inner details of the recording that I'm very familiar with....overall, the recording is good, but I noticed the missing elements.  Though I found it not as good as it sounds on my cd player, it was good enough that I didn't stop the song and went and got my cd and played it.  In other words, I settled for pretty good.  Interestingly, as I moved up the chain in the world of audio, it was always in pursuit of better equipment to extract better sound from the recording.  I was always looking for better than 'good enough'.  Well, 'good enough' has gotten a lot better than it used to be...and much more convenient.

Sadly, my critical listening time with my cd player and turntable is a lot less these days because of the streaming services.  I've just started to fiddle around with burning wav files of my cd's to a hard drive to make copies of those recordings where nothing but the original file will do. 

How have your listening habits changed since the higher resolution services have arrived?

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I get a lot of enjoyment from my stereo other than listening.  I love the look of it.  I love the beauty of P8 turntable.  I enjoy handling the cover of an LP, the artwork and liner notes.  I enjoy the process of selecting a record (or CD), removing the dust cover, mounting it on the turntable.  The "process" of getting ready to listen.  I doubt I'm the only one.  I have always preferred to own things.  I like to take care of my music collection and have a sense of pride that LP's I have played for 40+ years are still in great condition.  Streaming would just diminish so much of the enjoyment I derive from my stereo.   Just saying......

As far as vinyl is concerned, it’s strictly mono for me because I collect vinyl from that era. It sounds very good and I am not bothered by the limitations. Where digital is concerned, I very much prefer my local music collection to Qobuz or Tidal. Streaming services are fun and convenient  but to me, they don’t sound as full or as rich. I do occasionally stream WDR 3 whenever I miss Cologne but of course, it sounds just like MP3 should. The important thing is being true to self.

There's no "right " way to listen to music.  Turntable, cd, or streaming is all good.  I personally love discovering new music with streaming and find keeping my turntable up more of a hassle than I'm willing to out up with, but that's me.  The music discovery is just more important than the other stuff.

I must be deaf because I stream Tidal on my BlueSound Node 2i and I am able to listen to hi-res music (higher than CD quality).  Since I purchased my BlueSound, I have not played a CD in my OPPO 105.  Since when does a 16 bit CD have better quality than lets say 24/192?  I am not as knowledgeable as many of you and if you can explain why a CD plays higher quality please explain.

One of the tech people from The Harmon Luxury group lives in Denver and he stopped by to trouble shoot a few things.  While he was there he demoed a comparison between Tidal and Qobuz.  It was very easy to pick Qobuz every timee because the detail was noticeably better.  He even tried to trick me and I picked Qobuz every time.  I am checking out the Qobuz library to see how it compares to Tidal before switching.  However, I prefer the graphics and thee interface Tidal has created.

No, near enough is not good enough. I listen to music to get the greatest enjoyment I can. I do not look at equipment for the sake of looking at equipment.