Personality

I recently purchased a moderately priced streamer. To me, it sounds about the same to me as other digital media. What I like about the streamer is the well organized native "Internet Radio" application. I am able to easily find Afro-Jazz from Senegal and electronic music from Paris. It was more difficult to do this via my computer and using TuneIn or similar services.

I was using streaming to premiere recordings and then if I liked them would buy the physical product, but I have decided that in most cases the sound quality on Qobuz is very good and my purchases have been confined to big box reissues.  Whether or not the SQ of a disc or download ekes out a slight advantage to high resolution streaming is probably system dependent-which streamer, which DAC, which CD transport, etc.  

   Analog is a whole separate category 

np. That was my less disturbing question.

@rvpiano 

I also did not believe in Streaming, but, now I love it.  The main reason is because I joined a high end streaming service - Qobuz - aprox. $10 a month. 

I have all individual components, and I started with Vinyl, then finally went to CD, then to SACD...  From there, I ripped all my digital to files -- .wav and .dsf...  Finally, understanding how much improved streaming is today, I decided to join Qobuz and invest in high quality streaming front end and upgrade my ethernet components.  I am using the same DAC for everything and I do not think I can do a blind A/B test and tell the difference between CD/SACD, ripped files, and Qobuz streaming.  

The Qobuz streaming opened up a whole new world of music to me and rejunivated the hobby for me.  It is really fantastic how great streaming CD quality and Hi Rez data sounds on my stereo system.  Recently, it is really the best investment in the hobby I have made.  The time when streaming was not as good in sound quality as CD, SACD, or digital files is over. 

@parkergetdean 

 I’m truly sorry you’re disturbed.