CD transport vs.streaming

I think that CD’s and Streaming can sound equally good but in both cases it depends on the master used on both the CD and the copy the streaming service is using and it also depends on the electronics being used for each media source.

As far as CD’s go in many cases I prefer my old original AAD CD’s sourced and mastered from the original analog tapes but that is not 100%.

I run my Bluesound Node 2i through the DAC in my Moon 260D CD player and with balanced cables to my preamplifier. If the original source on both the CD and streamed file are good they will sound equally fantastic.

There was a reason CD was decided to be sampled at 44.1kHz. Many many many experiments were done and it was observed that 99.9% of the people could not hear any difference above that sampling rate (the other 0.1% descended from dogs).

Raising the sampling frequency will only push up the nasties from the filters to higher frequencies. So, up sampling does not improve the sound, it simply pushes up the filter artifacts to higher frequencies, hence giving the impression that the sound is ’cleaner’.

However, if very good designed and cleaner filters (more expensive to implement), are used, the 44.1 khz will sound almost exactly as good as your 23456234098634256 Mhz upsampled $34,000,000 music gear :-)

That is why most of the time, as well as is the case with you, you will not notice that much improvement with much higher up sampled music.

Buying a good quality CD player with a very good filter stage at its DAC will sound just as good.

Here is a good educational video:

rvpiano

another reason I posted my ’better player quest’ is because many people have gotten rid of or stopped using their CD players, stopped playing their actual CDs. Your subject implies re-discovery to people who stream. Even though I don’t stream, I had to re-discover my CDs. I suppose there is a category who have never actually owned/played CDs.

Like me, those people are not inclined to spend a heck of a lotta money to rediscover actual CD’s.

After spending 2 years exclusively LPs, I decided to try for a better sounding CD player. It can be done I found, now I don’t hesitate to enjoy my CDs as well as my LPs. To the point that I buy used LPs or used CDs now, expecting the CD to sound really good. Or not, content/engineering is always an issue.

So much technology is involved, either can sound superior, yet a few changes, the other could be superior, either ’preferred’ or ’better’.

Looking for help or someone to share their experience if you have already been down this road. I started to revamp my home theatre music set up and I joined the B&W group with a set of CM10 S2 towers and center. I then swapped out my two paradigm defiance subs since I was moving away from paradigm with two SVS PC 2000 Pro subs. I have also purchased some DS3 surrounds and I still have paradigm in the ceiling for the Atmos channels. Everything has been an improvement. However I also wanted to up the game and gain more convenience streaming music and loading my cd collection I went ahead and purchased a blue sound vault 2. I hooked it up to my Yamaha A8A with the optical pcm to bypass the dac in the blue sound since the dac in the Yamaha is rated much higher. After ripping a cd to the blue sound playing it back the volume is probably 25% less compared side by side to my Yamaha S1000 CD player playing the same song same time and switching back and forth. I then hooked up the blue sound RCA analog and the volume came up and added more bass low end. I then played the same song on my phone through air play to my Apple TV and that is the closest to the Yamaha cd player. I love the idea of ripping my cd’s into the blue sound but now with Apple Air Play lossless quality I can download all of my old cds so not sure which is the best way to play my music while avoiding Bluetooth for sure. I contacted Crutchfield and blue sound and Audio Advice and they all claim that different electronics will send different volume based on voltage they are set up at and although I would have to turn up the volume to match the Yamaha CD player I shouldn’t be losing any quality but the soundstage is definitely different. So now I called my local stereo speaker shop and they recommend the B&W formation streamer? Or perhaps the Cambridge streamer? What is the best avenue? How do I get my cds into my music library. The new I mac doesn’t have a CD player to load them? Thank you anyone that can assist much appreciated.

@mofojo save the pennies the project rs2 made me me sell my sacd player as the cds on that sounded better than same album on sacd. Made no sense... Now going i2s (HDMI) into rs2 dac which reclocks it to even better quality.