I now exclusively stream music. Here are some comments on why and some responses to other opinions.
If your CD player sounds better than streamed music it’s probably because you have not optimized your streaming set up. If you are still using a computer as your source, even into an external Dac, I am not surpised to hear that your CD player sounds better. Get a good dedicated streamer and you will likely change your mind.
The argument that streaming is more expensive is not my experience. I pay way less money yearly for my Tidal subscription than I spent yearly on CDs.
Streaming easily allows for listening to my favourite music with easy portability. I don’t need to drag physical media between my systems and when I travel my phone, portable DAC, and planar headphones provide a vastly better experience than in the days of portable CD players.
Lastly, my music listening time is precious, my sound systems are quite decent and revealing. A recording is only as good as the skills of the recording engineer and mastering engineer and a reflection of what they and the artist treid to achieve.
A lot of great music is poorly recorded. If I want to listen to an artist that has a large body of work, with streaming, I can favourite albums that are satisfying both musically and sonically, granted this applies more to jazz and classical where catalogs can be large compared to other genres.
For example, live Greatful Dead, Joe Pass, or Beeethovens 5th.....many many choices , Imagine Dragons Night Visions, only one poorly recorded one.
Of course good music badly engineered is always better than bad music perfectly engineered. With streaming I can have it all, here, there, and everywhere.
