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CD v Streamed



Uncompressed CD audio will take about 10.6mb per minute to play, to stream that takes big space and dollars to stream an album, see what your streaming company’s takes mb per minute to stream, find out and post up here.

I hear CD’s are better, I get better dynamic range from CD every time it’s A/B to me, now that could be that the streaming companies are using the "later compressed re-issues" of the same albums, you can find that out here https://dr.loudness-war.info/
Or that the streaming process itself compresses the music to save "streaming size" to save big dollars even if in small amounts.

Here’s a video from the CEO of Disc Makers Pty Ltd, yes he probably also biased because he manufacturers CD’s and vinyl, and is a very bad dancer.
https://youtu.be/YHMCTUl2FQo?t=1

Cheers George
128x128georgehifi
rikkipuu's avatar
rikkipuu
278 posts
 
I decided a while ago that ripping a CD to a music server sounded better than the CD.  I do not have an uber CD player- maybe that's the issue.  There is no question in my system that music played from the server is much better than Tidal or Qobuz ( and I agree Qobuz is easily better than Tidal).  The Hi-Rez streaming is better than 16/44 and I am undecided on MQA as my DAC doesn't unfold it and I am not convinced Roon is helping with what it does.
I have 3 switches Etherregen, SOtM with clock, English Electric 8Switch and a Mutec clock on the ER and SOtM and that has greatly improved the streaming but it doesn't bring it to the level of the server files.  I have an Antipodes Core server and Innuos Statement.  I use Roon in Experimental (squeezelite) mode.
There was a time I thought Roon was better with the Core on the Antipodes and Endpoint on the Innuos but after adding the Mutec I went back to Experimental mode.  I still don't understand why, it doesn't make sense to me.  Maybe it unmasked some nasties from the network traffic or the Antipodes.
rixthetrick's avatar
rixthetrick
1,060 posts
 
@daleberlin - yeah FLAC sounds no different than a WAV ripped from a CD. At least on my system, I find your claim to be the case for me too.

@relaks - I don’t stream my FLAC files, they are local on a purpose built fanless PC music server. The SSD the file is on had it’s own linear power supply.
And as I said to daleberlin, for whatever reason, my system resolves the information in such a way that I cannot distinguish a difference in quality between FLAC and WAV.
My DAC is not one you will know of, it sits somewhere between a PS Audio DirectStream and Denefrips Terminator in SQ, well at least in the system the meeting where it was reviewed.
This is just my experience, of which I can only account.

@sns - "I’m also agnostic about superiority of high res vs 16/44, quality of studio mastering is the biggie!" - I agree on that for certain.
alfa100's avatar
alfa100
221 posts
 
CD is better. All the time. No contest in my system. 
coltrane1's avatar
coltrane1
801 posts
 
Compression? How about cd vs vinyl. 
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi OP
10,312 posts
 
Compression? How about cd vs vinyl.


If you look at the dynamic range data base https://dr.loudness-war.info/, vinyl has the better DR figures also, just like the early versions of older cd issues before they get compressed.

Where cd kills vinyl is in the channel separation, with vinyl you’ve got at best 30db of channel separation and that’s at 1khz at 16khz and at 50hz it’s much worse, almost mono. Where with cd you have 120db channel separation right across the audio band 20hz to 20khz

Cheers George
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