Streaming Is To Audio What Red Plastic Cups Are To Wine

"Vinyl is it!" 

Oy vey.

I LOVE vinyl. I've been collecting since teenage years quite a few decades ago, except for the years when CD's took over.

I have a collection I love - after all I selected what I like, so I ought to love it. And when I say collection, I mean vinyl, CD's, and cassettes. As well as my curated music on Tidal/Roon.

When it comes to "quality" sound, of course the cassettes are lacking. Yet, I love the way they sound. It has a familiar and I suppose nostalgic sound for me that is familiar and enjoyable.

I'm a Music-First audiophile (a John Darko philosophy). And I only take audiophilia so far - I'm not out for the ultimate magic, just want to do the best I can under my various limitations, such as not being able to acoustically treat my listening areas, or buy all the latest and greatest.

Another limitation is the cost of media. Albums have gotten damn expensive and there's just too much music to hear. That's where CD's come in at a much lower price, and I can still select something and put it on and play it through and look at liner notes, lyrics, etc.

On another note. I'm not so thrilled by the trend of single albums being spread across two disks, resulting in a lot of 12-minute LP sides. I can't say I hear higher quality sound from the disks that way, and it IS a pain in the butt to either let the needle run in the out-groove or get up and stop it. Besides, choosing a side with two or three songs isn't the same as playing Side 1 or Side 2 with a good 5 or 6 songs on them. Roon will play a whole album and I have it set to go right into "radio" mode where it plays complementary music. It's great for discovery and often hits a good groove.

AND - streaming is the best for checking things out. The radio days are long gone for the most part, unless one is committed and adventurous. But I can check stuff out on streaming and then purchase. Just had a recommendation to a band the other day and will listen on streaming. I may end up buying vinyl and seeing them in concert and buying their merch. But I may say, eh, not my thing. Doesn't cost any additional money to check them out.

it's all good. Just went from Tedeschi Trucks on vinyl in my living room to The War on Drugs on CD in my home office right now, and I love hearing music pretty much wherever I am.

I was recently comparing the official studio masters (some 24 bit files) to the vinyl master for a couple of albums. 

Stuff on the low end’s gone, stuff on the top end’s gone (this album really needed it not gone, certainly not artist intent)....with a pestilent midbass and bizarre eq sht done to it...pure trash, i seriously can’t believe some of the TRASH masters that get pressed on the vinly plastic.

Some mind numbing bozos will deliberately lose things that were present in the music, so they can stick to their faulty bozo medium of loyalty, i suppose....It is no freaking "real deal".

I’ve been tinkering with some AI tools to reclaim the sht that was lost on some very old vinyl i’ve been trying to archive....rather not name any of the botched recent albums because the starving artist relies on some physical medium purchases to make a living wage. Streaming didn’t pay diddly. Buy the CD or the digital hires album if you like the album you heard/sampled on qobuz.

It may not be about sound quality, but it is - at the core of things - what’s really implied; there’s the underlying notion that physical media playback, certainly analogue in the shape of LP’s is "the real deal" and will always hold the upper hand in regards to sound quality. Maybe that’s true, ultimately in a more all-out approach, but who among us can really claim that mantle (other than just borrowing it)?

Increasingly the cover art and any content are included in streaming with the album. Over time, I would imaging the back cover will be included with these albums as well. It is actually easier to read on an iPad than the small print on cardboard. 

I listen to both vinyl and streaming. My vinyl system is higher end than my streaming system: VPI Prime Signature 21 (the best of belt VPI) with a Fatboy arm; and Shyla cartridge; Pass Labs XP-25 phono preamp;. All of that vinyl grear is about $35k. For streaming I own a Moon 280D, a decent streamer but not equivalent to my vinyl gear at all. It's well reviewed, but today a $4k streamer would sound better. 

I write in the mornings and listen to music while I write, almost always LPs, jazz and classical. MY afternoon listening usually moves to streaming. That's where I get to hear new music for free. I test out albums to see if I want to buy them. When I stream at 192 Khz, it comes close to albums. Much closer on high, high-end streamers. And I don't care that much about quality. Well, I usally stop listening if the quality is CD 44.1 Khz. It's flat and jangly. But 48 or 96 Khz or above, I'm happy with. 

I have all 3 media: vinyl, CD, and streaming. Last week my wife asked to listen to  Sting album she received for Christmas. I admit, we haven't listened to vinyl in awhile - out of convenience - and was shocked at how good the vinyl sounded, smoother, more 'organic'. For reference my vinyl rig consists of a VPI Prime Scout w/ JMW Mrmorial 10.5 3D printed epoxy armtube and a Hana SH High Output MC running into a Marantz Model 40 Streaming Integrated Amp and driving Monitor Audio Silver 300 7G. I also have an office streaming-only system with JM Lab/Focal 'Chorus' standmounts, and a dedicated Dolby Atmos 5.2.2 home theater with a 4K projector and 110" screen that also streams, and a 55" Main Bedroom TV with a Sonos Arc (more Atmos!) and subwoofer. I have both Blue Note and Wiim Ultra streamers and a couple outboard DACs, and Several of the Nelson Pass designed Adcom MOSFET amps and a modified APT One preamp that continues to impress me after over 40 years ownership, and a pair of LS-50s and a pair of Maggie LRS for fun. None of my gear is eye-wateringly priced high-end, or impossible to service esoterica, but it is good enough for me to assess source and component quality. 

Streaming audio can sound great, but too often it has passed through too many CODECS and disparate reconstruction filters that don't always exactly put the bits back together the same way, and those accumulated small errors are audible. In fact, the only meaningful and repeatable SQ differences I've heard in DACs are from different reconstruction filters. Vinyl suffers none of that, and is to my ear, what people enjoy most about the medium.