After having been a vivid collector of CDs back in the days (I sold all of them some 15 years ago…), I started collecting vinyl and depend on streaming services ever since. Currently, I make use of a Quobuz subscription and Roon to manage my library which also includes various high-res downloads stored locally (with backups in the cloud).
But I miss physical media, and vinyl doesn’t cut it for me. Don’t get me wrong, nothing beats listening to a good record with a dram of Scotch, but quality wise, it’s nowhere near digital sources, at least not within any reasonable price point.
Where to go from here? Paying for high-res downloads I often can stream at the same time feels strangely unsatisfying, while falling back to CDs might be an option, but leaves out higher quality tiers. Physical alternatives such as HDCD, SACD or DVD-Audio seem more or less a niche for enthusiasts of classical music (if not dead), with a very limited catalogue.
Can some of you share my feelings? How do you deal with it?
I buy physical media, been buying mainly cassettes as of late since they’re rad as hell and pretty much is the only option for physicals for a lot of indie albums. It’s probably my faviorite physical format.
I still buy CDs to have as my digital master copy and I’m definitely listening to them more after upgrading my CD players dac to a Modi 3e since it sounds similar to my tape deck but a bit cleaner and wider.
Vinyl is fun and I like it, but not enough bands I like have releases on the format, but I do like listening to the 15 or so records I have