The Rapid Rise (& Fall) of the CD

I always enjoy these dialogues. I'm probably in the "upper age range" of participants on this forum.  As a youngster growing up in the fifties (baby boomer) my parents had a large collection of records they played on a Zenith console.  That was my first exposure to recorded music.  I loved it.  One uncle was into reel to reel tape recorders and I loved that sound.  Time marched on and another uncle had his Caddy with the optional record player.  Sounded good as long as the car was not moving:)  Then 8 tracks (invented by Bill Lear of Lear Jet fame in conjunction with FMC) came in the mid 60s and went into oblivion less than 20 years later. It was the only viable recorded media solution for automobiles at the time.  That was followed by tape cassettes which are still around but mainly for non musical use.  Then CDs came into the fray.  I was married to vinyl and it took me a while appreciate the CD format.  To my ears Cds sounded "different" and it took me a while to warm up to the new format.  My first player was a Kyocera DA-610CX.  Now fast forward to the present.  I'm getting into streaming to "sample" different musical genres but it is not my primary listening source,  I am fortunate enough to have TTs, Cd players,etc that allow me to enjoy any type of media any any time. IMO vinyl and CD will always be viable formats and will fluctuate in popularity.  The pleasure will always be in the playing, the listening and the our enjoyment of music regardless of format, genre or generation.

Well if you look you will find mint cds for Cheap...but you have to search.I found a antique store that had lps they were 10,20,30 bucks used in very good condition  .while searching I found a  Cd Gold mine, cds were sealed or in mint condition, for $5 bucks each ,OK I have found them as cheap as a buck....But these cds were sealed Japanese with OBIs,Sealed cd double sets,triple set ,even4 ,5,cd set Sealed for $ 5 bucks....I bought 12 loo Grateful Dead Rhino reissue HCCD mult tracks on each .Plus Doors Strange Days and LA woman Japanese OBI sealed.I ended up buying 25 cds....Well I went back the next day and bought every Japanese sealed obi cds,Pink Floyd, Beatles, Thin Lizzy, John Mayall,Kinks,Rolling Stones..and others.Well I bought all they had another 25...This place had Hundreds to look through. I hadn't been there in like a year,they never had a cd collection like this,one of the guys told me he was getting alot more in ....this is a,big place with lots of aisles to go through but ,I will be going back...these Japanese obi cds, sell for 20 to 50 bucks apiece...Oh ,it's on Long Island......

I have no doubt that streaming offers better SQ than I can get from my vinyl and CD's. So many very experienced people have attested to that. However, I can not stream due to where I live.I get very unreliable and poor quality land line DSL service. I haven't saved money by not having to invest in streaming gear because I upgrade CD equipment along with the rest of the gear.  I am even toying with a TT upgrade from my VPI. Oh well, it never ends. I do like being able to go to my fave place, Music Millenium, in Portland,OR and perusing the vast wall of used CD's. And walking out with a pile of new to me stuff. Life is good.

I’ve gone back to CD’s because, to me, the quality is clearly better than streaming from Tidal the exact CD quality track hardwired etc to the same DAC. I enjoy not having a computer, phone, tablet, etc when I want to listen to music as my whole day is spent in front of a screen. A/B testing on my McIntosh MCT500 vs my computer, both hardwired into the McIntosh DA2 btw.

I have wondered whether errors in the music while being transported over the internet/server/etc just create more issues than a simple CD transport to the DAC. 

"I have wondered whether errors in the music while being transported over the internet/server/etc just create more issues than a simple CD transport to the DAC. "

The answer is no. The interent simply wouldn’t work at all if data were not transmitted accurately.

One thing that can occur is line noise getting into the connection to dac from streamer and causing jitter, however that is not a practical issue even anymore with modern DACs and streamers that are designed to deal with that effectively, ie are jitter resistant.

CD or streaming might sound better case by case.  The devil is in the details.