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?
Started collecting SACDs during covid. There is still a hug selection available, and new titles are still coming out, however mostly jazz and classical. Pop/rock/folk is available, and remastered titles are mostly released by e.g. Analog Productions, Mobile Fidelity, Intervention Records.
Interesting to hear that there’s a growing jazz catalogue, I really only had SACDs in mind when thinking about classical music. Nevertheless, my Marantz CD-6007 only plays compact discs, so that would be another (probably hefty) invest I’d rather put into my headphone chain (good thing I don’t have a room where I can put speakers the way I’d like to (having a wife and my family around), so at least that’s a non-issue!).