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?
No human on earth can differentiate anything above 16 bit 44.1khz outside of tiny samples being blasted at brain damage levels in a lab, we can’t even hear half of that as adults so you’re not missing anything in terms of better quality going with CDs. High res has absolutely zero value for playback. No, the mastering isn’t better at any higher resolutions than non-high res files, that’s also been run into the ground. Of all the assorted audio snake oil debates out there, that one is easily the most open and shut case. There’s not even fringe copes for it, you can’t negotiate biology and change how sound works.
If SACD was cheaper and Apple Music didn’t have mountains of new spatial audio, I’d probably own all of them as I really enjoy music mixed for surround sound and Atmos, I have a 5.2.4 system and it’s really been a fun genre to explore. I have some SACDs and some files and like them a lot.
I primarily stream but the ease of it and instant gratification involved has me listening to a lot fewer songs, a lot fewer songs in totality, no full albums and I’m not exploring albums in their entirety because I have whatever I want in the moment with a click. I hate it. I’ll likely be doing CDs in the near future to combat this, requiring that I get up and load new CDs and relying on my laziness to spend more time with a particular album or artist.
The other adventure which isn’t related to media meant to expand my listening back to where it should be is going on a decade by decade by decade trip through eras of music and spending an entire month just listening to songs from those ten years going waaaaaay back. Streaming music giveth and taketh away, I think using any physical media can be a good way to slow it down and appreciate the experience a little more if it’s become a detractor.
That’s assuming the stream is going through a decent quality DAC, which is more often not the case and therefore an old CD player with an optical or coaxial output will certainly sound better.
Agreed!
Or vinyl with good needle
Back then, the first thing I did when visiting friends at their place for the first time was glancing through their records or CD collections which stood around. Quite often, it made them more interesting than before… Sometimes not. 😂