Vinyl vs Streaming


Hey,

Hope this is OK to post here.

Do you ever find yourself questioning Vinyl in the face of Streaming?

And question yourself, why am I going through all this struggle when streaming is so much easier.

I was sitting on my couch streaming some hi res music, which was sounding great, asking this to myself.

It's just so much easier to stream and get from one song to another.

I know for some, their analog rig is much better and stronger than their digital side (if they even have one) and for others it might be the opposite. 

Regardless, just wondering if you ever feel if it's worth all the extra work.

 

jay73

For me the over-riding issue is and always has been the availability of the music that I want to hear.  There is still a lot of old jazz that is simply out of print and basically the only way to hear it is on old records.  Or sometimes on re-issues on cd compilations in many cases coming from over seas.  Most of the stuff is not available on any streaming service.  This music could never be considered high level sonically so the issue of what format has the best sound is moot.  

Yeah, they are different, digital is artificial no matter how much it tries to imitate analogue. $300 turntable set up is better than $30k digital in conveying the essence of music.

Availability is an important point too.

And let’s be real. This is a mostly aged (ahem) crowd whose hearing is changing, and the draw of convenience & downsizing looms large at a certain point. 
 

👍

@mulveling I agree with you but I can only speak from what I hear with my own system. I have no other reference as I don't live anywhere near an audio salon of any kind and I don't know one single person in my area who owns any kind of stereo system that I would care to hear. For those of us who always thought of vinyl as being better, most of us have geared our systems toward vinyl. I'm getting blasted and actually blocked out by pop ups. Will try later. This is very annoying.

@billpete 

It is entirely dependent on every component that you have in your analog and digital steam. There are so many variables. It is easy to put together a system that sounds terrible, in either digital or analog domain. 

But for folks that know what they are doing and what they want... it began in fairly expensive gear about ten years ago and the levels at which putting digital together that equaled or exceeded analog has worked its way both down cost tiers and up. 

To determine resolutions etc. you would have to develop a standard yourself for analog and digital and make your own comparison. But it is all component dependent. 

I know my analog and digital ends are very close. Such that differences in recording and mastering is far and away the biggest variable in what a recording sounds like. And exactly the same mastering will sound the same at high resolution and vinyl, but how early the vinyl master is in the sequence from a given stamper will determine whether it is as good or less so than the digital version.