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CD Quality Versus Streaming Quality

I realize this will be a contentious subject, and far be it from me to challenge any of the many expert opinions on this forum, but if I may offer my feedback vis-a-vis what I am hearing, and gain some knowledge in the process.

i will begin saying that my digital front end setup is not state of the art, but i have had the good fortune to listen to a number of really high-end systems. I guess the number one deficit in my digital front end is a streamer server, and no question about it that will improve the sound.

My CD player is a universal player; Pioneer BDP-09fd. It uses Wolfson DACs. It has been modified to a degree. I have bought and sold other players, but kept this one, because it has a beautiful sound that serves the music well.

Recently, i ventured over to my son’s place and we hooked up my player (he doesn’t have one and rely’s on streaming only) We compared tracks / albums of CD quality and master quality streamed on Tidal with ‘redbook’ CDs I have. For example, some Lee Ritenaur CDs and some Indian classical and the wonderful Mozart and Chopin.
His system is highly resolving.

we were both very surprised to find the CDs played on the player to be the better sound. And not just by a little. The sound was clearly superior, with higher resolution and definition, spatial ques, much better and clearer imaging. Very surprising indeed. Shouldn’t there be no difference? This would suggest the streaming service is throttling the bandwidth or compressing the signal?

i am most interested to hear others’ observations, and suggestions as to why this might be? I do love the convenience aspect of streaming, but it IS expensive for a chap like me of fairly modest means. The Tidal HiFi topline service is $30 per month I believe, something the good lady is not too thrilled about. God forbid I should suggest Roon on top of that I may likely get my walking papers. I jest, but only partially LoL. My point is, if I pay this sort of money, isn’t it fair to expect sound to equal the digital stream from the CD player and silver disc?
Thoughts?

AK





4afsanakhan
sd40
40 posts
 
I have stopped talking to my brothers and sister about compression, dynamic range, etc. because if I keep it up they will tune it out.  Three of the five of us play an instrument, and four listen to a lot of music.  Yet when I try to explain how remastering has degraded so much music over the years, and how the dynamic range of new releases by many much-loved pop artists has fallen over their careers, they look at me like I'm from Mars.  One brother understands enough to choose FLAC over MP3, but that's it.

The public has chosen convenience over quality without understanding that they were sacrificing anything to do so.  And when they find out, they don't care.  They have moved on.  Mainly to trading gossip on their smartphones, judging from the number of people I see driving while looking down.
It's odd that no one has mentioned SACD's above.  The true test of streaming would be to compare it to SACD on a good SACD player.  I have been through four of them in the last five years--each one a significant improvement.  The current one is a Denon DCD-A110.  For at least ten years Denon has been tweaking its "AL32 Processing" technology to make redbook CDs sound more like analog.  With the DCD-A110, they have practically closed the gap vs. SACD, in my opinion.  But SACD remains the standard of excellence.
The crowd-sourced database at https://dr.loudness-war.info, mentioned above, is a tremendous resource.  It shows, title by title, what has happened to dynamic range over the last 35 years.  I consult it before buying any used CD.

riaa_award_collectors_on_facebook's avatar
riaa_award_collectors_on_facebook
981 posts
 
These are all SACD or BLU-RAY companies...which is why I mentioned them. Audio Fidelity, Mobile Fidelity, Analog Productions, DCC, Intervention Records, Rhino and Dutton/Vocalion recordings
larryi
4,054 posts
 
About fifteen years ago, a professor did a blind study of the preferences of college students using uncompressed CDs vs. MP3 versions of the same music.  The students overwhelming preferred the MP3 versions.  They had grown accustomed to that particular sound so they preferred it.  

Current dynamic compression is probably liked by the public, particularly if they have to listen in a noisy environment, like in the car, or using earbuds in public places.  Only if there is enough public demand will there be streaming services that will go through the trouble of finding the best, least compressed versions of music to put on their playlist.  
sns
3,299 posts
 
Maximizing streaming sound quality requires optimizing every single link in chain, not a simple undertaking. And then, as others have mentioned, the provenance of recording extremely important. My preference for cd rips or streams is extremely variable.
Ag insider logo xs@2x
cleeds
5,967 posts
 
optimize
A CD drive and a CD disc use many techniques to ensure that the data is error free.
Quite so, and read errors from a CD that has been reasonably well cared for are rare. Data encoded on a CD are redundant, and CIRC allows most errors to be perfectly corrected.
... there is in the red book standard that do not allowed there to be ANY un-correctable errors at all. That parameter is called in the industry for "E32". It must be 0 otherwise it is out of specification.What happens when a drive can't correct a error (that is all happening BEFORE entering the DAC) on a scratched/bad CD disc and get E32.It puts out a error and stops reading/playing the disc.
Oh no, that is mistaken if we are talking about audio CDs. Although read errors are rare, they are not inherently fatal for audio purposes, because the CD standard includes interpolation algorithms to mask such errors. (Such masking isn't used on CD-ROMs, which must always be absolutely bit perfect
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