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 honestly believe that CD quality is the sweet spot. As a format it exceeds what the human ear can resolve, which is why that was the bit rates and such chosen at the time it was created, I’m sure.
All that hires stuff… probably, in my opinion, a cash grab to drive more sales of the stuff people already owned.
I haven’t formed a final opinion on hi-res but what CD can’t give you is multichannel sound. That’s why initiatives like the SDE Blu-ray series or Steven Wilson always releasing his albums in the format are good.