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Streaming for beginner

I have a PS Audio front end-- DMP disc player and DirectSteam DAC. Very happy with the resolution and performance, especially from my redbook cd collection. For those familiar with the DSD, it is upgradable via a network bridge card to become a dedicated streamer. When I bought this DAC, I was looking ahead to an eventual migration to streaming.
I also have a Spotify account, that currently only serves me as a companion to my iPhone during walks and exercise.

My question: assume my goal is to stream for convenience, simplicity, and achieve audio quality that equals or surpasses that of redbook cd’s. I am not looking to purchase music or download it for storage. What am I missing? I also have a dedicated iPad that can serve as the interface to the DAC/Streamer. Spotify also claims that streaming in high resolution is available on my account. Do I need anything else? Am I oversimplifying this?

I am a beginner when it comes to streaming, so please answer in simple terms since I will not be familiar with a lot of the services and components mentioned elsewhere in these forums. In fact, confusing enough for me that it is forcing me to ask here.


mbiondo

Showing 1 response by drbarney1

drbarney1's avatar
drbarney1
171 posts
 
I think I am less knowledgeable than many beginners on streaming and downloads. Hoping I made a good choice I bought a Bluesound Vault 2i and ripped about 170 CDs, all of my CD collection. With customer service help I made three spare copies of what the Vault had ripped using multiple passes and metadata on each CD to eliminate the vast majority of bit errors and cover art it took from the internet: two on USB drives - my entire library is only 31 MB on 60 GB flash drives, and a copy I could rearrange in my laptop to index my library by composer; something it would require a cerebral cortex the size of a watermelon to do in the Vault's hard drive of two Terra Bytes. If I need more storage for downloads I add I could put it on a 120 GB flash drive but I doubt I will collect that much more in downloads. I listen to my library through a flash drive I plug into the back of my Vault which is connected to a vintage turn-of-the century MSB Platinum with upgrades. The electronics following are vacuum tube electronics I designed and built myself so I could have things I wanted such as polypropylene power supply filter capacitors in the 1000 Volts I use in the final stage of amplification.  
What I get from the answers to the original question in this thread is there are no free high resolution services even though the Vault has a long list of streaming services and because I have no faith in my economic future, I do not want to be tied to paying for a subscription  so I just purchase downloads in higher resolution than CD. If I am wrong and there is a free service as good as high resolution downloads let me know because I an just a beginner at this.
Thank you in advance.
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