Sound Quality of red book CDs vs.streaming

Analog is largely a medium problem--how good is the vinyl cutters, the vinyl stampers, the needles, tonearms, turntables and preamplification?

Digital is a data and compute problem, although the CD is a pretty flimsy piece of crap to put the data on.  If you eliminate the CD, then "data is data" and it's not that hard to get it to the DAC for computation.  Streaming eliminates the piece-of-crap CD from the equation.  So does playing the data out computer memory.  CD will be buried next to floppy disks, cassettes, and 8-track as necessary evils eclipsed by technological progress.

rvpiano
stick with your dedicated cd player. Streaming...etc., still has a long way to go, IMO.  Happy Listening!

@georgehifi

+1 re Linn CD12 cd player. I had the CD12 in the past and it was excellent and was probably one of the most musical sounding CD player back then and even by today standard the Linn CD12 is still considered a reference CD player but limited to CD resolution or CD quality.

If you compare the Linn CD12 to Linn Klimax DS, especially the latest generation of the Klimax DS with Katalyst DAC architecture, the Linn Klimax DS, with the latest Katalyst DAC architecture, outperforms the CD12 by large margin. Not to mention that with the Klimax DS you can access to high resolution downloads. Even when playing cd quality (16/44.1) download files the Klimax DS outperforms the CD12 by large margin. Even the previous or older gen Klimax DS with non Katalyst DAC architecture still outperforms the CD12 player.

@jafant,

“Streaming...etc., still has a long way to go”

Would you mind sharing your streaming setup? 

Streaming services such as Spotify and Apple have huge catalogs.  I listen to Classical exclusively and generally am able between the 2 to find any recording, provided it is in print.
  Several caveats apply.  Both services have search engines optimized for non classical.  There are many times that the Verdi scenario you described happens, even if you type in the names of the Conductor, performers, etc.  with repeated search attempts you will hit paydirt, but it can be frustrating.  And don’t even think of having Siri find the correct recording; Apple voice recognition is god awful.  Amazon might be better with Alexa, but somehow I doubt that it will be attuned to the subtleties of navigating a Classical catalog, and I have found Amazon Music to have less depth of catalog for Classical compared to Spotify or Apple Music.
  The next caveat is sound quality, as all the services mentioned are essentially MP3 quality. They can still sound pretty darn good, but pale in comparison to High Rez Streaming.  If you live in the U. s., High Rez Streaming means eithe Primephonic, which has a very limited catalog, or Tidal, which is poorly organized for Classical and doesn’t begin to approach the breadth of catalog of Apple or Spotify