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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
larryi
4,051 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
3,298 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
sd40
40 posts
 
My layman's understanding is that compression clips the peak volumes so the overall volume can be brought up, resulting in a flatter ("compressed") sound.  It's necessary for music to be heard on earbuds and in noisy environments.  When I look at the way some high-quality artists have lowered their dynamic range over time, I imagine there must have been some interesting discussions between them and the mastering engineers, wherein the latter argued that if you want this to sell, you have to let it be mastered for the devices the customers increasingly use.  Either that, or the artists did not understand the issue.
The recording industry has not made it easy for the customer to figure it out either.  It's a lot of trouble to find out which version of a title is the best-mastered--or a lot of fun if you enjoy the chase.  I overhauled my collection a couple of years ago and ended up with a much-improved group of about 800 CDs and SACDs.  The loudness-wars database is just the starting point.  They don't always have the data you're looking for, and dynamic range is only one consideration.  A search on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums was often required, and often led to hours of reading multiple threads to try and discern some consensus.  Then there's the whole business about trying to identify used CDs, down to reading the letters and numbers faintly stamped on the inner part of the disc.
midareff1
182 posts
 
The issue with the comparisons is that they are rarely apples to apples. Is your CD original issue, 10 years ago, 30 years ago? Was the CD an original transfer? AAD? ADD? Is the streaming service offering you a digital copy of the original? the first remastered reissue, the second the third and so forth? Saying you have a certain chip set in a player doesn’t speak to anything more than that....and certainly not to power supply, cables and many other things that all count. I have and still occasionally use a Sony XA5400ES CD/SACD player. It was a Stereophile A+ recommended component a few years back so it should be pretty competitive today. My streamer is a Cambridge CXN v2 which, along with the Sony’s digital output feeds a Benchmark DAC 3b, also a Stereophile A+ recommended component. I subscribe to both Qobuzz and Tidal.and also play many digital radio stations for content discovery. Some radio stations are inferior to CD, some are not.
Where I have an original issue Jazz CD from 25 or 30, or more years ago it will be more musical and natural sounding than any version either of the streaming services has libraried. This is especially true with early 60’s - 70’s Jazz CD’s, especially noticeable with Mosaic reissues, which are better than anything else in comparable digital playback.,,, at least the 40 or 50 I have are. Too many masters spoil the broth, so to speak.
Properly set up digital streaming, and that starts at the wall, connected via Cat 6 or better Ethernet, and run through a good to great DAC should be every bit the equal and more of a typical CD through a consumer grade or mid-fi type player.

If you have not taken the time to shoot out speaker, interconnect, tubes, power and digital cables on your system, you may not be in position to make a meaningful evaluation of anything else.
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