Vinyl vs Streaming

@billpete 

So much of this is open to interpretation that it often seems pointless. Measurements mean something, they just don’t mean everything, if that makes sense. I guess there is no real way (so far) to make a measurement of live music, analog reproduction vs digital reproduction.

I can only speak for myself here, but I am not sure that it’s the actual sound of vinyl or streaming that matters. What really matters is how it affects me. Or the mental place it takes me or how it makes me feel. What I want is a sublime feeling that I can’t describe in words, an almost ecstatic state where music becomes transcendent. Something in the music triggers an emotional response.

Yet the same thing never works twice. The variable is me. It all depends my mood. The other day, it was some vinyl records. Yet when I came back a couple of hours later it was stuff I streamed. The following day nothing moves me because I am just not in the mood. Maybe sometime I am chilled on holiday and I am absolutely loving what I am hearing over some lowfi system in a restaurant. Or even the sound of thousands of people in a football stadium singing Only Fools Rush In.

There’s little rhyme nor reason to it. How can this possibly be measured?

@billpete 

Damn pop-ups

I took a suggestion here, and started using the BRAVE Browser

https://brave.com/

It blocks pop-ups, and I liked Chrome, but don't miss it.

There is the sound axis and then there is the part of paying vs. exploiting artists question, particularly with more niche artists. That is a signifiant part of why I buy vinyl; I typically also get the digital files and play them locally (no streaming in classical sense). And of course the artwork. A jpeg of the cover vs. opening a gatefold are two very different experiences.

It is certainly possible to buy the digital files and that is already better than rent-a-stream. 

@newton_john I have done the exact same thing with HDCD, pored over discogs etc. They seem to be hard to find and were never terribly common. Like you, I have found quite a few that were not even labeled as HDCD but the player recognizes them as such. I mark them when I find them. There are some 24k (gold) Japanese versions but they are priced crazy high for the most part. I suspect that the engineering process for them ( most or all HDCD) was more meticulous but it also utilized the higher rez of 20 bit....but did it in 16 bit format and can only be read by HDCD decoding. Kind of ridiculous. In the end, Microsoft bought the rights to it and killed it. Too bad.  I do have a few RBCD's that mention that it is from 20 bit master and they are usually better than standard RBCD. The high rez wars pretty well killed CD format altogether and people lost interest. It's too bad, on their own each of them can be very good, even RBCD can be done quite well, it just  often was not.

@elliottbnewcombjr As to the pop ups, why is it this site that is so inundated with them? I have them anywhere that I search but they are always off to the side. Here, they sometimes completely block what I'm trying to read or write. I don't understand why that has to be. I have a love/hate relationship with google as it is but I find it very hard to replace.