2. digital
  3. 173977-9627

A different world

For decades I have struggled to get digital even close to comparable to analog. Then finally a couple years ago after lots of upgrading and experimentation I succeeded. Streaming is equally satisfying with analog, very, very comparable. The full soundstage, instruments suspended in space, tonal balance, dead silent background, and details of brass cymbals … etc. Red Book CDs through my CD player are bested by my streamer with Qobuz or Tidal with hi-Rez versions.

 

A new world. It takes a while to get it. No longer confined to music you “own” to play over and over. Replay is supplanted by exploration. You love an new (or old album) and hit, “add to library”. It is yours.

So, HiFi+ magazine has an article on building a European 21st Century Jazz Library. I just start with the first album in the list and listen (add to library), the 2nd album (add to library), the third… the forth, fifth… a whole new category of incredible music to sit along side Miles Davis and Hank Moberly. Just a couple days in the life of a audiophile streamer. I could have never predicted this as a possibility ten years ago.

 

You love music? The goal of having an infinite audiophile library is now possible. It is possible at any high end level… just requires knowledge that it can be done… and I guess give up the idea that there is something special about your CD collection, or players.

 

I have a 2,000 vinyl albums, play them, usually one a day. They are fun, occasionally sound ever slightly better… but not significantly, I like them for nostalgic reasons.

ghdprentice

Showing 5 responses by sns

sns
3,003 posts
 

Yep, steaming is evolving fast and will continue to evolve.

sns
3,003 posts
 

So, we have one example of alleged compression, so of course everything compressed on steams, brilliant inductive reasoning.

 

I had similar path to streaming excellence, only cd rips superior to playing cd's on transport, over time and with continuing network upgrades, streams equal to cd rips.

And both superior to present vinyl setup. Streaming is for music lovers, I have at least 3K vinyl and 2.5k cds, not even close to all the music available to me from streams.

 

Further network upgrades coming soon which should make streaming experience that much better.

sns
3,003 posts
 

And so we have thirty three albums analyzed. Were these cherry picked? Does this guy have an agenda? Will one's system expose these varying levels of compression?

 

Thirty three releases out of the tens of thousands releases, still anecdotal evidence at best.

 

I have aprox. 2500 cd rips, 3,000 vinyl, varying levels of compression in all formats, far more dependent on individual release than format in my experience. Vast majority of sound quality determined by original recording engineering, production. Also whether duplicates come from original masters, safety's, whatever generation copy.

 

I don't hear overarching and inherent dynamic range limitation with streams vs other formats. Such contentions require large scale testing.

sns
3,003 posts
 

@audiom3 

I'm in process of converting to all fiber, just purchased fiber streamer, next will be fiber server. Doing fiber conversions via two FMC certainly one of best prior upgrades.

 

Also, another upgrade I don't hear much about is bridging ethernet out of server, shortcut ethernet so it doesn't have to route back through router/switch, direct out to streamer. Very few servers have this capability, can't figure out why.

 

USB out of server not best way to go unless one has something like Pink Faun, Jcat usb card, and I'd still prefer separate streamer for usb out.

sns
3,003 posts
 

Above is partially incorrect, brain fade. More specifically, you bridge to a second ethernet port in  order to split server and streamer duty. Most servers have only a single ethernet port, usb out to dac or usb renderers, perhaps I2S, spdif, etc.

 

Adding the second ethernet port has two advantages, possibly three, the first as above is to separate streamer. The second is one can than convert to fiber post server, galvanic isolation. Dedicated streamers can also be superior to built in streamer in some servers. The third possible advantage is usb out on server/streamer may be inferior to streamer usb, many streamers make extra efforts in providing superior usb out, such as femto clocks, superior grounding, etc.

 

In the above cases, one assigns the port they choose as ethernet port and then provide usb to ethernet conversion cable. In may case being Mac, thunderbolt to ethernet cable.

 

This was major upgrade for me, right up there with LPS and fiber conversion.

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