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?
Yes, I remember when I once bought Deep Purple’s “Made in Japan” on CD, some 20 or more years ago… It was such a disappointment. As I had an old vinyl recording (most likely the “original” pressing) that I listened to back in the days, I was shocked how compressed the digital mastering sounded in comparison. It took all the fun away and was clearly inferior.
I have a feeling that if enough people clamored for it, we could convince those mean, old swindler record labels to release a digital release with the vinyl-style dynamic range mastering. CDs are more than capable of blowing vinyl away in that regard, let alone high-res PCM and DSD formats.