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

Yes, advances over the last ten years have completely eroded the advantage of vinyl or physical media based digital. With high resolution low cost streaming like Qobuz the unbelievable restrictions of owning physical media have been laid bare.

For generations people interested in musical fidelity have had to focus on carefully assessing and buying a tiny amount of music and listening it to it over and over again. Once the sound quality advantage goes away it is simply shocking the freedom is to explore all music. A completely new paradigm. Having 10 million plus albums at your finger tips. At first you listen to the same old stuff… then start opening up to the huge world of music you have not heard. It is overwhelmingly compelling. I seldom listen to anything that was in my 4,000 album collection. If I do, I stream it.

I like having a CD library. Streaming does sound great and gives almost unlimited music choices. . But having it on a hard drive uncompressed is really nice for critcal listening. What I like best about streaming services is you can take it anywhere, it’s easy. With video it seems streaming services have taken over with many choices. It can get expensive. I like having my favorites handy. The same goes for CDs. They are mine, I get charged one time and it’s mine. Steaming gives you more choice, but it’s never yours and you keep paying.

This is great if you don’t mind someone else choosing the mastering / release version for you. I’m VERY picky about my cds, and of the half dozen versions out there of ’Captain Fantastic’ the only one I care to listen to was mastered in the 1980s.

And before you ask: the correct mastering makes a HUGE difference.

rbstehno

Which Sony CD/SACD player is in your collection?

Happy Listening!

@fpomposo  ......I've found the same thing.   I have the Eversolo A8.  The ripped CDs on the SSD is the best digital I've heard yet and better sounding than any streaming. So easy now to access the music. And I also found that WAVE sounds better than FLAC on that unit which is controversial but I certainly hear a difference.  After ripping all my hundreds of CDs to FLAC.  Arrrrggghh.

But now with these SSDs we don't even need a CD player.  I use a laptop that has a DVD/CD drive and rip to a thumb drive using dBpoweramp.  The quality of the CD player isn't a factor anymore.  

Streaming is easier than dealing with the physical discs but with them ripped it's now so much easier.  Gotta love technology.