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What am I missing?

When discussing streaming we often hear the quality achieved by streaming compared to "cd quality". "Cd quality" seems often to be the standard by which streaming is favorably compared while cds have at the same widely fallen into disfavor as a medium. If "cd quality" continues to be a quality standard by which we judge streaming services -which it appears to be- why exactly do we hold cds in such disfavor? More sophisticated dacs can always be employed with cd transports as they are with streaming. I understand the convenience and storage issues with cds but I also understand that with streaming you will never own the music which you do with cds. This becomes even more unclear to me when considering the resurgence of vinyl and the storage and convenience issues involved with this medium. I don't believe the music industry ever wanted us to own the music we listen to but rather preferred we only rent and pay for that music each time.

128x128pmiller115
lordmelton's avatar
lordmelton
877 posts
 

A huge part of my youth was spent hunting for LPs in record shops and in magazines and later for CDs and SACDs in shops and online.

Anyone coming into Hi-End Audio now is blessed that they have millions of albums to choose from for a small monthly fee.

With the exception of bootlegs everything is available and then some. Owning music really doesn't make any sense anymore, unless you already own it.

Barring some dystopian future where the internet goes down we'll be scraping through the remnants of humanity for CDs or even better SSD drives.

arafiq's avatar
arafiq
1,681 posts
 

The ownership (or the lack thereof) criticism is not valid anymore. If you own a streamer and local storage/server, you can always buy and download your music if you like. I stream mostly with Qobuz but I have ripped most of my CDs and have downloaded many DSD and other high quality recordings that I own. If anything, you get the best of both worlds.

sns
3,265 posts
 

Yep, still have option to download if you feel the need to own. Another consideration for me has been storage. I have well over 3.5k cd's and same with vinyl, I have this physical media stored all over my house, total pain, don't need or want any more physical media.

rpeluso
1,063 posts
 

CDs are not in disfavor in my home.  Not even close.  

fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,629 posts
 

"We" who? Your what hurts?

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