Streaming vs traditional

As I said, I am not sure higher rsolutions, either lossless or lossy compacted as in MQA are audibly better than red book. I think the jury is still out, but we shall see if someone can come up with decisive test data.
I don't do downloads for the reasons mentioned. I buy disks or I stream. The latter is a wonderful opportunity to get access to an amazing proportion of the world's music. I would like these streams to be of high quality, but at the same time better than perfect is obviously not necessary, and wastes scarce energy resources / pollutes the environment / adds to climate change. The scientists in the famous Phlips physics lab (Natlab) decided that 16/44 was the perfect sweet spot, with a resolution that was neither too low, nor unnecessarily high. Never again was such an outstanding team brought together in audio engineering. But if they were right, it was admittedly at the very edge of perfection, that is clear. These days, we would probably prefer to err a bit more on the safer side, i.e. 24/48.

"The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination" 

Peace out! 

willemj, Since you are a scientific guy, I’m sure you know that double blind tests that have not been published in a peer reviewed journal have zero scientific credibility. I am not a scientist, but I can assure you that that study would not survive peer review and would never be published in a peer reviewed journal.

I’m not opposed to blind testing in audio, in fact, I’m for it. It’s just not scientific evidence. It could be used to see who has the best ears or the most revealing system or who is being a little too hyperbolic in their reviews at a given point in time and in specific circumstances, but that’s about it. It can’t tell you which gear or music or format you will like in the long run.

I’m sure that Meridian has double blind tests that show that MQA sounds superior to cds. So who’s right?

I don’t know if MQA sounds better than cds. I have read comments from many people who have heard it and believe it does. I think that streaming is a great thing and right now you can get MQA thrown in for free, so anyone who is interested should check it out and decide for themselves. If you’re not sure, just wait a couple years and see whether they can convince enough people that it’s worthwhile that it survives in the marketplace. We don’t have to wave double blind studies at each other, time will tell.

Since this thread has drifted over to MQA, see my post here of many of the hi-fi brands incorporating MQA into their models.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/dac-streamer-mqa-wireless-besides-bluesound.
I don’t know if it will last, but I thought I read two large record companies are making MQA versions of their entire collections, Universal Music Group (UMG), and Warner Music Group (with Sony Music Entertainment on the fence right now).