Streaming vs Physical Media

It simply depends.

I have a fairly modest digital front end, but actually it sounds pretty good. iFi Zen Stream > Denafrips Aries II via USB. An exterior 4TB hard drive connected directly to the iFi Stream via USB as a streaming server & an Audiolab 6000CDT CD transport > Denafrips Aries II via COAX digital for CD play.

Before I bought the Audiolab 6000CDT, I would say my streaming set-up was better than CD’s with my old Yamaha BluRay/CD player as my transport. Once I installed the Audiolab, my CD’s, once more, have bettered the streaming rig overall, but not by a tremendous amount. But it is better SQ overall.

Lots of good posts.

So much of streaming is listener dependent. What I like, you might find awful.

@mdonda ,

A CD will play only Redbook(44.1khz), streaming might offer the same track at higher resolutions. And, much of the playback quality will be due to your DAC.

Border Patrol is one of the highly rated DAC's, so you should be good to go.

If you do want to compare, I would suggest finding a Rega Apollo CD transport. It is not very expensive, and does a very good job, and you can insert your DAC, if you wish.

bob

@bkeske 

It simply depends

The truth. This is a repeated topic on this forum. The answers do not change. Setting up a good streaming system is very doable but can (Potentially)  be finicky and sometimes complex with numerous digital signal path pieces and cable hookups. 

Depends on individual effort and commitment, Streaming I'll concede can be utterly convenient and offer vast library access to all music genres. In terms of sound quality I'd readily put up a very high quality CD transport like the Pro-Ject RS2T or Jay's Audio CDT 2 or CDT3 against any streamer option mentioned thus far.

These transports are not cheap but they offer very high sonic performance from Redbook CD. Very high. My stance is you can achieve excellent sound quality with either digital source option tied  to a good DAC. CD transports and streamers can peacefully coexist.

Charles

OP,

”Would a CD transport sound better than a streamer of similar quality/price? “

It depends.

The important thing is that a streamer can sound better than a transport. Knowing that… it is critical to work on the streamer… once achieved, it will give you a nearly infinite library for almost no cost, and it is the future… no comparison… work on streaming.

I have spent decades trying to get digital to sound as good as analog… in my system it does. It can in systems of different values. My systems are shown under my USERID.

no comparison

If this is referring to sound quality I could not disagree more. Simply not true. It is however an open discussion forum so certainty all opinions are welcome. Up to the OP to decide for himself.

Charles