I Sold my CD Player!!! Streaming sounds so incredible!!!

@echolane 

  Last week I tried to find Sviatislav Richter RCA recording of Bach Well Tempered Clavier Books I and II on my streamer.  My software is mconnect and Cambridge Audio Stream Magic.  I know that I had ripped it to the NAS.

  I have something like 17 tabs for the composer in both programs.  He is listed as Bach, JS; JD Bach; Bach with his birth date; Bach, J.S with his death date; and multiple other ways. The 100 or so Bach albums that I’ve ripped to the NAS are all dispersed amongst the various tabs.  Different discs from multi disc set are in different tabs.  If I want to play the 3 discs from St Matthew Passion I need to find it in 3 different tabs.  Guess what?  After checking all of these tabs, the Richter recording isn’t in any of them!  Nor does searching by Artist-enter Sviatislav, Richter, or all the possible combinations-bring it up.

  I go to my CD shelves, which I organized over the 30+ years of buying CDs.  I look under JS Bach, who is in the B section, find the CD set, pull it out and play it, and in 10 seconds I have music.  I had just fruitlessly waisted 15 minutes in the thickets of streamer software.

  The same problem exists with Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.  As for multi composer discs, don’t ask.

  So I again burn the Richter discs.  The Melco N 100 will usually give me a message if the disc already exists in the database; none occurs.  Again the discs don’t show up in any of the tabs except for “recently added”.

  So make a playlist, you say.  So I did.  I created a playlist and named it “Sviatislav Richter”.  I had to add each track individually.48 Preludes and Fugues.  96 tracks.  A couple of times my wife interrupted me, I lost concentration, made a few mistakes in the order.  then had to add/delete/reorder…. I could have gone to my shelf about 10,000 times and pulled the CD off and replaced it in the time it took to search these tabs and make the playlist.

  Buy Roon and your troubles are solved, you say.  I did a one week trial a few years back and it maybe made things maybe 10% better.  I thought the SQ took about a 10% dip.  Decided against the lifetime $500 fee. YMMV.

  Regarding the commercial services, I have had several discs, usually Nonesuch recordings, go in and out of the catalog in a few months time. Joshua Rifkin Scott Joplin recordings originally were on 3 LPs and were eventually, briefly reissued on 3 CDs.  After enjoying them on Qobuz for a month or so they disappeared.  Emails to Qobuz went unanswered.  One of the albums reappeared after a month and then disappeared a few weeks later.  Same with Karl Ristenpart Bach recordings.  I eventually purchased all of these as second hand CDs, downloads, or LPs, depending upon availability.

  My physical media are fairly well organized, and I can find them easily.  Classical Music just doesn’t fit music file systems, which were all designed to other genres.  I’ve tried several others besides the ones mentioned above.

I haven’t even gone into the issues that I had with with Bluesound Node, which became hung up for weeks doing and update, or the Bryston BDP3, which relies upon a software program that is unusable for any genre.

  So my experience is atypical but for me streaming has been a frustrating, cumbersome experience.  Nothing beats the plug and play of a CD player, and SQ is equal.

  I just want to enjoy listening to music without having to learn how to become an IT Consultant in the process 

.I’m amazed that analog works at all...dragging a tiny MC stylus through some plastic...amazing.

+1 @wolf_garcia It is amazing. I always equate it to riding roller coasters to make music. Plus it’s still a somewhat popular thing which is even more amazing.

Like you I listen to Classical Music, both opera and classical music. As an audiophile with a very well outfitted Roon system and duplicated on the Naim Uniti Core that I started on by ripping my CD collection and editing the metadata and with a CD Collection of over 4000 albums,

Hmmm, what the hell am I missing here?

When you all rip your 4000 cds or 10000 cds, do you throw the files willy nelly into a nas drive (hoping metadata will save you) OR do you organize a folder tree by root folder genre --’>> Artist name folder (alphabetical) ---->> Album names folder?? ....which is how cds or vinyl sits in the racks

If the Metadata tracker fails, why can’t you all simply browse by folder to get to your favorite song bird for the day? Seems like a common sense thought process/solution is getting buried by promise of a failed "Metadata" miracle....

It is amazing. I always equate it to riding roller coasters to make music. Plus it’s still a somewhat popular thing which is even more amazing.

What’s getting even more popular in ultra high end vinyl audiophilia is putting that vinyl through a Sugar Cube filter or whatever adc/dac chain to remove the pops and the crackles and the brrrss and the....sounds of an organic life (they say)  to make vinyl sound more hifi..

Mmmhmm

One of the downsides to streaming mentioned, and that is sudden disappearance of recordings from streaming services. And it will be the exact same artist and album from both Tidal and Qobuz. I presume disputes with artists and/or record labels here? The funny thing is sometimes they reappear, either dispute settled or are these server glitches? So, one might consider purchasing the cd of the deleted recording, sorry that cd may no longer be available for purchase. Shazam, magical disappearing act.

Point is, yes, recordings disappear from streaming services, but physical media disappears as well. I fully expect production and distribution of cd's to continue to decline, in recent years I've observed two sites I previously purchased cd's from ceasing business. I expect both vinyl and cd's will continue with very limited releases available.