Sound Quality of red book CDs vs.streaming


I’ve found that the SQ of my red book CDs exceeds that of streaming using the identical recordings for comparison. (I’m not including hi res technology here.)
I would like to stop buying CDs, save money, and just stream, but I really find I enjoy the CDs more because of the better overall sonic performance.
 I stream with Chromecast Audio using  the same DAC (Schiit Gumby) as I play CDs through.
I’m wondering if others have had the same experience
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The best will always win, and this is what we create. The sound will always tell the truth. And people will always choose what is superior to the rest. That is how simple it is!
I owned the best and most expensive cd-players in the world. And when I wanted to start with streaming in 2012 I was stunned that over 99% of all streaming products were all useless.

Now in 2018 in our world over 99% of all streaming products are still useless. We understand that many people still use turntables and cd-players. Because most digital sources and dacs are all very limited in quality.

The whole world in audio sells products. We create sound and vision. And that is a totally different world what is the opposite of the trial and error world.

We work with all our dedication, drive, effort, insight and knowledge to create sound. That brings people so much closer or how music and instruments sounds.

We are a Lumin specialsit and go into details further than any other Lumin dealer. Each single human being can sell a Lumin out of a box. We know the full DNA of each single Lumin product.

This makes us able to reach and use the full potential of each Lumin product. We often send new clients to shops to make them understand that how different the same Lumin sounds in our Tru-Fi world vs the limited trial and error world.


My question is do the streaming companies buy the tracks from the record companies directly, and if they do is it via hard drive transfer or software?
Or is there a distributor (middle man?)

It probably depends on the company, but I would bet that 99% of them just get the same tracks that we can buy by downloading them.  These are generally not masters because masters are 24/96 or 24/192, almost never 44.1.  These are down-sampled for the streaming track.

This is why I almost never stream.  I have my library of tracks on a RAID 1 and these are specifically selected for good SQ and tracks that I like.  All are .wav files, uncompressed.  This delivers the best SQ.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

Your thread is where many people are interested in. There is still too much what is unknown.

The thing I love most about now is that there are options of which we only could dream of in the past.

On the other hand is that still most audio products will never make people happy for over a longer period of time. Because our emotion cannot be fooled.

So when products cannot reveal all the different apects/properties of sound it is impossible to become and stay happy with it.

Streaming can be stunning and really great. But you are still independent of too many different aspects.

When I judge the quality of recordings of the biggest music stars in the world, often these recordings are limited. I am even sure that these artists have no idea how limited their recordings are.

I found and bought music of artists who only have a few thousand hits on Youtube. But their recordings are really stunning. It proofs that it is not about money what the issue is when a recording is limited.

In the 20 years that I work in this business I have tried many times to bring people together. But the world in audio is sick like the fact that the whole world is sick. I was dissapointed when people reacted very hard and where not interested in working together.

At the end we humans are the ones who limit us self over and over again. Because we think that we can do it all by ourselves. In those 20 years I work in this busienss I made big steps thanks to all those different specialists in many areas. Together you will always be so much stronger.

I wish you all a great and happy 2019.