Anyone else feel like it’s the Wild Wild West?

This is a time of change. Ambiguity has been a fundamental tenant of high end audio since it’s inception, but given advances in the digital domain, the incredible proliferation of choices in individual choices of components and the joining of computing and audio… yeah, what a complex ambiguous mess.

I have pursued high end audio since the 70’s and adopted digital as soon as available… being an IT executive as my career… enabling me to afford and desire to investigate what is possible.

We are now at the tipping point when digital finally is equal to analog. But the complex choices available can make any given combination show analog to be better than digital, or visa versa. At the low end, analog still tends to exceed digital, as it does at the high end (think > $200K systems). But in the middle, it just depends on your choices.

My analog and digital have been equal for a couple years (see my systems… under my UserID). I recently upgraded my analog end and technically it is now more detailed. But the variation in recordings exceeds the sound quality of the media. So, unless You are an old fart with thousands of vinyl albums (like me)… I would put all my effort into digital streaming. If you have a total budget level of X. If digital streaming doesn’t exceed other alternatives now, it will in five years. Being in technology all my life… I assure you, plan for tomorrow… not today, or you are wasting a lot of money or time. Don’t waste your time on -laying disks either. 

So, if I had a budget system today, I would be laser focused on the best streaming system (with a tubed preamp and tubed amp) possible. This would put me on the lowest cost highest sound quality path possible.

Ok, I’ll start with a bittersweet post.  I recently bought an iFi Zen Steam (with iPowerX filter/power supply) to replace streaming from my iPad via a LavriCable adapter (big upgrade over the Apple Camera Adapter BTW) as per the suggestion of several experienced members here and they were 1000% right — the improvements of the Zen Stream were not at all subtle and has severely whet my appetite for what further improvements are possible.  Although the iFi Zen Stream seems to be a relative bargain for the sound quality per $, I have to say their customer support is ass.  There’s no phone support and you have to submit a support ticket and wait for a “support” person to respond via email, which in my case took a few days and resulted in a ridiculously sad recommendation that now requires me to send yet another “ticket” to which I’m sure I’ll get another inane response.  Sorry, but in this day and age this is absolutely archaic and unforgivable.  While I was very happy with the performance of the Zen Stream when it worked, if you’re not technically oriented I just can’t recommend this streamer as there’s basically no support if you encounter issues.  Very sad and unnecessary IMHO. 

I decided to just buy streamers and test them.  It was that easy.

I decided not to do it at all. It was even easier.

Wild west for sure, and so much ambiguity. This is best, no this is better, so confusing. The reality is everything changes constantly. I have streamed for awhile using a roku box and spotify. I have considered upgrading but I would need a dac, a ddc, a streamer, a manager app and god knows what else? Up until now it was always the fewer things between the source and the speaker was best, with streaming it's  the most is best?