CD Quality Versus Streaming Quality
So, if you have a CD player costing 5000 dollars and want the same from a streamer, look to spend around 15-20,000 dollars. Still got the problem of what ’s being streamed to you is very well the compressed later re-issues vs the uncompressed CD early issue. Same album different issues https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Traveling+Wilburys&album= And the majority of new music today is compressed too, only a few artist/bands are saying "NO to Compression" . Cheers George |
I’ve run into sound quality issues recently running Qobuz. I posted about it here. It caused enough grief that I signed up for a 3 month Tidal trial. I have since tested multiple albums to compare Qobuz and Tidal and in 99% of the cases I prefer Tidal. Qobuz sounds flat with glaring mids that results in an uneasy overall presentation. Vocals are more recessed and are set further back, details are more subdued. With Tidal the music just flows easier with better overall clarity and more relaxed, more inviting presentation. Acoustic bass has better texture. As I’m reading comments on this thread I see majority prefer Qobuz over Tidal. I’m wondering is it really that system dependent? I don’t dispute what others hear but at the ssme time I know what I hear as well. As far as CD vs streaming…few days ago I had an opportunity to test a $550 CD transport driving my DAC via SPDIF cable and it bettered Tidal, Qobuz and CD Rips ( FLAC/WAV) files on the hard drive that’s connected to my streamer. It was just more engaging, more real sounding with better detail retrieval and better sense of conveying the emotions in the music with layers and textures that aren’t as apparent with streaming. Listening to streaming after listening to a good old original redbook CD sounded lifeless. Now don’t get me wrong…streaming sounds good on its own but not immediately after I heard the same material on CD. System: Auralic Aries G1 streamer (Audience AU24se USB cable) Bryston BDA-3 DAC Rogue RP-5 pre Rogue ST-100 amp Martin Logan Montis speakers Interconnects: Acoustic Zen Matrix Ref II Acoustic Zen Absolute Copper Sp. Cables - Audience AU24sx |
Hi Audphile1, Your experience mirrors mine. For my ears, I can always hear better sound, because it is less forced even at higher volumes, more engaging - i can listen for long periods without fatigue - and the sound is just, well, more beautiful to listen too. When streaming is bad, my music-lover brain switches off to the music. I listen for perhaps 15 minutes then switch the amp off. Unfortunately, its been my experience of streaming from cloud services such as Tidal Qobuz or Apple, that as of late, the sound is too often unsatisfactory for longer listening. I believe the reason Tidal sounds sometimes acceptable and sometimes better as a high-quality source than Qobuz is their space algorithms. Apple has implemented this ‘space’ algorithm in their streaming service too. I am of the opinion that streaming a digital file, unadulterated, over today’s networks that are capable of high bandwidth, can yield results on par, or perhaps even better than CD. However, the problem is the file is not sent and received in ‘native’ pristine fashion. It is compressed then de-compressed - what have you - and the result to my ears is smearing, vague sound that is most obviously compromised in terms of imaging, with homogenization and distortion. In contrast, I pop in a CD and more often than not the sound is clearly better, more resolved, and precise than the streamed version of that music (George;s point is well taken here). Notably the sound is less smeared with better imaging, more tone color and better texture. The sound presentation is more resolute, more defined and more present. This isn’t always to be the case. Sometimes it seems to me a switch is flipped and the the cloud stream sound is so much improved. I just wish it was more consistent. For now, I am considering giving up on streaming, as this is frustrating. |
I forgot to mention in my post that I also used Roon for over a year. It is just flat out impressive when it comes to managing your streaming services and local HDD/NAS music as a database that puts everything at your fingertips. It also has this amazing feature to auto play similar music after you’re done listening to a song or an album, and I discovered tons of new music that I never heard before. The convenience and this Roon “radio” feature managed to temporarily conceal additional levels of sound quality degradation introduced by Roon alone. I canceled Roon after I compared streaming using my streamer as Roon end-point vs streaming using the streamer’s native app and forgoing Roon altogether. I felt that with Roon the dynamic range was further reduced causing the music to sound even more lifeless. I never looked back. But…I wouldn’t totally give up on streaming though as it provides new music discovery, selection and convenience that can’t be beat. I just hope some of these frustration inducing variables can be worked out at the source and they find a way to stabilize it. For now, I am on a hunt for a CD transport. |
Again, one needs to optimize streaming setup. In my early days of streaming, the two transports I was using in that period of time, PS Audio Perfectwave and/or Mark Levinson ML37, both top grade transports, bested streaming. Over time, as upgraded streaming setup, beat cd transport, this on cd rips over NAS. Over time and even more streaming upgrades, streaming now sounds extremely close to cd rips. I prefer Qobuz to Tidal by slight margin, use Roon with no digital processing. |
