Anyone else feel like it’s the Wild Wild West?
I’ve been following the streaming threads here for a while now, and I find it both exhilarating and intimidating. I mean, we all know everything in high-end audio matters to some degree or another, right (Ok, maybe except for the flat earth contingent)? From what I’m reading and from my own experience the process of optimizing steaming has near unlimited potential, and some even say it rivals or even surpasses vinyl if taken to the max. Cables, routers, optical, filters, extenders, power supplies, switches, etc., they all seem to make a significant difference despite the naysayers who say bits are just bits. I’m all in on this steaming renaissance, but most of the jewels of useful info are buried in other posts, so I’d like to have this be a consolidator post of your best streaming experiences and recommendations for others who could benefit greatly from your hard-won victories and maybe save a lot of people the agony you went through to get to streaming nirvana. So have at it — let’s empower this community in this noble task and help everyone realize the amazing potential of this magic gift to audiophiles. What say you?
I hear you. Some People like to over complicate things. It’s a hard habit to break. Streaming is not so hard. Only when one becomes obsessed with always trying to find something better. So I guess in some cases it is made out to be like the wild Wild West. Conquering new frontiers is a thing. Even Star Trek was conceived as Wagon Train to the stars. Shatner is famous for his overacting. It’s all good . To each their own
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The wild Wild West was truly wild. There was a lot to conquer and master by frontier folk of various kinds. People should admire that spirit even if at times it was to the detriment of others I suppose. Talking about native Americans and wildlife there. Nowadays, in these parts, we have a bunch of OCD types always looking for trouble. People call them “Karens” now, which is not at all fair to people actually named Karen. I know some very nice real Karen’s. I suppose the wild Wild West had them too. Allegedly….. |
CD is better than streaming in my rig. Streaming makes choosing music simple. Laziness has me streaming most of the time. Took me a few years to understand ,try and implement. My kit: Router , cat 6 unshielded , Uptone etherregen switch, cat 6 unshielded, Aurender, AUDIOQUEST Diamond USB cable , AUDIOQUEST Jitterbug, MSB DAC . Sounds decent. CD sounds more holographic , natural and non fatiguing. My vinyl rig gathering dust. |
@soix this thread is turning into a gem, posts such as those by @fastfreight and other terrific contributions, very enjoyable reading i would echo some key thoughts expressed as they really resonate with me, as i started streaming and vigorously climbed the learning curve since early 2020 when we were all locked in by the pandemic -- streaming is really wonderful, sooo worth doing, for the wide, wide musical world it affords us in the comfort of our homes -- new artists, new music, new forms -- for those of us who spent countless days at the racks at tower records, gnashing our teeth about whether to buy those two additional records or cds we could not hear, not knowing if we would be wasting our money - streaming is a god send -- interestingly, and separate from all of us going head over heels to get streamed music to sound as good as possible on our systems, it seems to me streaming is really the avenue of music lovers, leaving aside audiophilia and its ocd-ness, so to speak -- as much as i love my records and analog front end, i just laugh when those ’records or bust’ folks put down streaming, they sooo miss the point, man, it makes it really about the music, discovering great music, and not just the media... -- as others have said, i also feel the wild-west moniker is rather overplaying it... it isn’t THAT hard to figure out... yes there is a good amount of change occurring, some of the tech is computer/network related... but i think the right attitude is to embrace it, take the time and effort to really understand it best we can, and then apply personal efforts and funds judiciously to make the most it -- yes it all matters, truly, just like with vinyl ... sooo many elements to consider, so many variables to manage, but for those who enjoy the challenge, the process of learning, improving, implementing is a reward in and of itself, and for those who don’t want the hassle, there are ample, be it expensive, one unit boxes that have much if not most of it figured out and well packaged... you just pay your $$ for the convenience and avoidance of the hassle :)
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@alpha100 — I’d recommend taking the Jitterbug out and see what you find. When I first built my HeadFi rig I was using a Dragonfly Red and was happy, so I thought adding a Jitterbug would be a no-brainer improvement — wrong! It ruined the transparency and imaging/soundstage and I returned it. I later spoke with an industry insider/manufacturer who has contacts at Audioquest and he confirmed the Jitterbug has performance issues and they’re working on a redesign. Just a thought FWIW. |
