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CD Quality Versus Streaming Quality

I realize this will be a contentious subject, and far be it from me to challenge any of the many expert opinions on this forum, but if I may offer my feedback vis-a-vis what I am hearing, and gain some knowledge in the process.

i will begin saying that my digital front end setup is not state of the art, but i have had the good fortune to listen to a number of really high-end systems. I guess the number one deficit in my digital front end is a streamer server, and no question about it that will improve the sound.

My CD player is a universal player; Pioneer BDP-09fd. It uses Wolfson DACs. It has been modified to a degree. I have bought and sold other players, but kept this one, because it has a beautiful sound that serves the music well.

Recently, i ventured over to my son’s place and we hooked up my player (he doesn’t have one and rely’s on streaming only) We compared tracks / albums of CD quality and master quality streamed on Tidal with ‘redbook’ CDs I have. For example, some Lee Ritenaur CDs and some Indian classical and the wonderful Mozart and Chopin.
His system is highly resolving.

we were both very surprised to find the CDs played on the player to be the better sound. And not just by a little. The sound was clearly superior, with higher resolution and definition, spatial ques, much better and clearer imaging. Very surprising indeed. Shouldn’t there be no difference? This would suggest the streaming service is throttling the bandwidth or compressing the signal?

i am most interested to hear others’ observations, and suggestions as to why this might be? I do love the convenience aspect of streaming, but it IS expensive for a chap like me of fairly modest means. The Tidal HiFi topline service is $30 per month I believe, something the good lady is not too thrilled about. God forbid I should suggest Roon on top of that I may likely get my walking papers. I jest, but only partially LoL. My point is, if I pay this sort of money, isn’t it fair to expect sound to equal the digital stream from the CD player and silver disc?
Thoughts?

AK





4afsanakhan
4afsanakhan OP
147 posts
 
Hi RichTruss,

Excellent system. I believe what you are saying and can understand why,, although others have different results with different players. Your scenario is not the same as streaming from a cloud service though, right?. You are playing FLAC files stored on a local NAS drive, so have full control of the stream quality / bandwidth. 
With respect to the high-end community turning its collective back on ultimate sound quality for the sake of convenience, I don’t accept that as truth. All of us love the convenience of streaming, and the access to vast and growing libraries of music, but there is a point in our community where ultimate quality is a deciding factor for the music we key up for critical listening. Listening to a well-recorded album with original dynamic range intact of, say late 60’s early 70’s classic rock can be a wonderful experience. Not so much so if the content is off in some way. 
Hi Roxy, by the way I like your idea of hunting for old CD treasures. One can run across pristine CDs like that. At the end of the day, for those on a budget with so many other financial responsibilities, that may find streaming cloud music services hard to justify, then having a decent disc spinner and enjoying the hunt for bargains is a great strategy.
Post removed 
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 

George - would you mind checking out apple music


Sure here are 65 x Apple I found on DRDB website, same thing, as you can see early ones not so compressed, then more compressed as they get younger in release date
https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/year?album=apple

here is also HD tracks same, sav for a couple of blocks someone must have said something.
https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/year?album=HD+tracks

Also - GREAT GREAT video you shared. Did you check out that nirvana one I posted earlier? It’s really hard to unhear that and hate what’s being done to modern music.
Yes I hate what’s happening, thing is compressed sound ok until you put it through a system that expresses that wall of sound with no quiet parts.

Like they say
"if you have no quite parts, you can have no loud parts "NO DYNAMIC RANGE!!

Cheers George
rikkipuu's avatar
rikkipuu
357 posts
 
The quality of your streaming from Tidal, etc will largely depend on the quality of your network.  You should have at least one quality switch like a Etherregen or one of the myriad just recently released switches.  The switch should have a quality LPS.  SMPS's inject lots of noise.  The Ethernet cables need to be of quality and or have filters or they will add noise.  The Network Acoustics ENO filter is very effective.
It is likely out of your budget but adding a master clock to the switches lowers noise dramatically.
You are likely hearing network noise more than the deficiencies of the files from Tidal. 
But I will agree local files will sound better than Tidal and Qobuz even with a low noise network set up.
cleeds
6,599 posts
 
jpeters568
Your CD player, when it encounters an error, does correct that error by "guessing" essentially. (I’m not an expert on that, but, that’s what I too have gathered online.)
I’m not guessing or relying on what I’ve read online. You can actually measure CD read errors with software. I’m surprised you’re making such a big deal out of this, because CD data are encoded redundantly and most errors can be corrected perfectly. Only those errors that cannot be recovered are then replaced with interpolated data, and that’s rare. (I’m assuming the CD itself is in reasonable condition.)
A streamer/ router/ switch - a network device on the other hand will replace that bad data with good data - again - making it perfect. (On this point, I am an expert) Second, data is data. Music, 4k streaming, or files you download - it does not matter. All of them are bit perfect, each and every time.
No, they are not inherently perfect. There are such things as unrecoverable errors when streaming digital audio because the user is at the mercy of his internet connection which - if nothing else - is subject to interruptions and bandwidth limitations. Have you ever seen pixelization on your TV, or heard clicks when playing a CD? It’s the same thing and it’s definitely not perfect. You need to separate yourself from your textbooks and controlled corporate environments and step into the real world.
... If you are having the types of issues that you describe on your own network, it proves that you don’t know how to configure a network properly. And you shouldn’t be giving out any sort of technical advice on the subject.
My computer networks work fine, thanks. I’m lucky that my ISP has a good network locally, and that helps. It’s others here that are reporting problems with streaming services.
And Cleeds - I don’t mean to sound like a d!ck. I’m sorry.
You can stop anytime.
But, I do consulting work and see dozens of companies a year where their provider or IT guy is just clueless. And, I’m at a breaking point where I am literally having dreams of screaming F you to someone in a CEO’s office .... So seriously, if you are having problems, please feel free to reach out and I’ll see what I can do to help.
I’m obviously not the one having problems here.

By the way, @jpeters568, you might want to bring your computer expertise over to the A’gon thread on network switches, but you’ll probably want to calm down first. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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