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Streamer vs cd player

Old Shatterhand said:
There is no logical why this should be the case only the opposite (reading error correction).
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Do you own a decent cd player? And if you do? Have you compared your cd player to your streamer? I have compared them and cd can be as good as so called hi res..so this begs a question, is hi res really hi res?
 
Mozart said:
Just bought Mozart Philips Complete Collection from 1991. All 180 CDs complete with booklets and great art work. Thought for ripping fills me dread. I love physical ritual of finding CDs, looking at the booklets and artwork, taking it out and loading the drive and seeing it load up. I’m not of the vinyl era so CDs are for me what vinyl is for my seniors. Classical metadata on streaming and Roon is a mess sadly.
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Wow..180 cds! That should keep you going for a bit..any love for Beethoven at all?
 
It intrigues me this debate. I believe that they produce different sounds. For me Cd is a full, daily’s sound that can have significant weight. Streaming is light footed and airy. I believe both have their merits and neither is superior.
 
Mozart said:
Just bought Mozart Philips Complete Collection from 1991. All 180 CDs complete with booklets and great art work
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I inherited this collection complete with the cabinet from my father. Like you I dread the thought of ripping them all.

I do miss the information from the sleeves and the physical handling of the media. However I don't think I've bought any CDs since I started my Qobuz subscription. I reached the stage in my life where I want to reduce the things I own rather than increase them. Over the last few years I've had to clear my mother's house and am in the process of sorting out my late wife's stuff. I want to reduce the general clutter making easier for me and my executors in due course.

My current streaming setup is very modest, RPi4 running LMS with a Hifiberry DAC2 HD HAT.

To my ears it is difficult to tell it apart from my Karik/Numerik. I recently bought a 25th anniversary Karik to supplement my original one which doesn't play all discs. I had considered a new Rega Saturn R but decided not to put that amount of money into a CD player even though being able to use the DAC separately was tempting.

I will probably look to upgrade the streaming setup this year and would like to try Roon to see how the benefits stack up.
 
Del monaco said:
It intrigues me this debate. I believe that they produce different sounds. For me Cd is a full, daily’s sound that can have significant weight. Streaming is light footed and airy. I believe both have their merits and neither is superior.
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Identical data through the same dac equals identical sound, the digital revolution was in 1981, same data just the storage medium has changed.
Keith
 
Fretbuzz said:
Playing CDs directly sounds to me a bit better than playing the same CD rips via the Node 2i - both in to the same DAC. Not loads in it but definitely there, side by side. If you really want to ditch CDs altogether it's nothing to lose sleep over though.

Comparing to Spotify is interesting as it usually sounds a different master, and can either be surprisingly ('live with') good or really quite flat/compressed. Never the same, from the few I've tried.

Have wondered about a LPS for he Node as the benefits it's meant to bring are what I hear between it and CD.

Also, I've heard better CD transports than this one.

Clear as mud :)
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The Node2i definitely benefits from a linear psu if you are using an external DAC.

I rarely play CD’s tbh as I have them all burnt at AAC or Lossless onto a flash drive plugged into my Node2i. I can’t tell much difference between streaming hires and my lossless music.

As a side note, if I didn’t have the pleasure of listening to vinyl and everything that goes with it, I might actually spin more cd’s.
 
nbaptista said:
As you should know I have a Bluesound node 2i . Before I used to listen cd´s, but now I am questioning myself if I should ditch the cd format and use only the streamer. Of course I´m not giving up my cd´s, just thinking not buy anymore cd´s and use instead the streaming solution.What you think ? I guess is useless buy cd´s if I can listen it on Spotify or Tidal.
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For me, streaming costs the price of about one CD per month. I have largely stopped buying CDs so this costs less than I used to spend. I still keep a player, and my CD collection still takes up its space but it isn't growing as fast. I think this may be a similar situation.

I do still buy some CDs, but recently only those that are not available at all on my streaming service. I rip them to FLAC and listen to them from my streaming system's disc. The "physical" attributes of handling and playing CDs and reading physical booklets don't feature highly for me. Indeed playing a complete act from an opera without changing discs is a boon. For the libretto if needed there's almost always a PDF booklet and I have a tablet PC on which to read it.

AFAICS, my streaming-only risk is not being certain that I can continue to access any favourites, as my streaming service curates its files and manages them according to the streaming service's commercial imperatives. IMHO, that's the tension to consider.

I occasionally think about whether to return to buying the CDs for the streaming favourites I find. That will still end up costing me less than in the time before streaming, and the space taken up by the collection still won't be growing as fast. However the details of this approach are determined by my musical tastes and YMMV.

My main fare is classical music. It's not the case that there's only one CD for almost all of the repertoire I particularly like. I do have my favourites but there's mostly no such thing for me as that one true performance / recording as sometimes advocated by others. There's usually more than one good source that I can enjoy. However for some especial favourite recordings I might get back into buying. Also I might uprate my "not available at all" buying strategy to cover any interesting repertoire that's available from "only one source" (or a distinctly limited number). For non-classical music a lot more may fall into that category.

Anyway those are my thoughts about managing a streaming-only risk.
 
I can't really discern an audible difference between streaming (HiFi Rose / Qobuz via Pathos DAC) and playing CDs (various players Linn Ikemi / Marantz CD 94 / EAR Acute etc). I'm 43 with decent hearing FWIW.

Like others, I do find pleasure in the physical media aspect. A lot of weekend mornings are spent scouring car boot sales for weird and wonderful CD releases which makes up a huge part of the enjoyment for me.

I also take an unhealthy interest in cataloguing and organising my library. It's a classic hunter / gatherer situation...
 
John Phillips said:
Anyway those are my thoughts about managing a streaming-only risk.
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For me there is no “streaming-only risk”. With streaming the deal is that I buy the right to listen do a huge range of music for a defined period of time. A bit like a concert. And I get what I pay for. The only “risk” would be if the streaming service failed while I was listening, in which case I would “lose” a few euro. And if my streaming service, Qobuz, did fail, there will likely be others, and if they all failed I could always buy CDs or downloads of the music I might want to listen to again. So I can’t see what the risk is, especially as I am deliberately not locked in to any dedicated streaming hardware.
 
Ripping the CDs and streaming them locally or spinning the CD in a player is only a question of quality of streamer/player.
My old CDX2 still beats the new NDX2 in sound quality , but the extra effort to play a particular CD...
 
John Phillips said:
For me, streaming costs the price of about one CD per month. I have largely stopped buying CDs so this costs less than I used to spend. I still keep a player, and my CD collection still takes up its space but it isn't growing as fast. I think this may be a similar situation.

I do still buy some CDs, but recently only those that are not available at all on my streaming service. I rip them to FLAC and listen to them from my streaming system's disc. The "physical" attributes of handling and playing CDs and reading physical booklets don't feature highly for me. Indeed playing a complete act from an opera without changing discs is a boon. For the libretto if needed there's almost always a PDF booklet and I have a tablet PC on which to read it.

AFAICS, my streaming-only risk is not being certain that I can continue to access any favourites, as my streaming service curates its files and manages them according to the streaming service's commercial imperatives. IMHO, that's the tension to consider.

I occasionally think about whether to return to buying the CDs for the streaming favourites I find. That will still end up costing me less than in the time before streaming, and the space taken up by the collection still won't be growing as fast. However the details of this approach are determined by my musical tastes and YMMV.

My main fare is classical music. It's not the case that there's only one CD for almost all of the repertoire I particularly like. I do have my favourites but there's mostly no such thing for me as that one true performance / recording as sometimes advocated by others. There's usually more than one good source that I can enjoy. However for some especial favourite recordings I might get back into buying. Also I might uprate my "not available at all" buying strategy to cover any interesting repertoire that's available from "only one source" (or a distinctly limited number). For non-classical music a lot more may fall into that category.

Anyway those are my thoughts about managing a streaming-only risk.
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stephen_cowslip said:
I can't really discern an audible difference between streaming (HiFi Rose / Qobuz via Pathos DAC) and playing CDs (various players Linn Ikemi / Marantz CD 94 / EAR Acute etc). I'm 43 with decent hearing FWIW.

Like others, I do find pleasure in the physical media aspect. A lot of weekend mornings are spent scouring car boot sales for weird and wonderful CD releases which makes up a huge part of the enjoyment for me.

I also take an unhealthy interest in cataloguing and organising my library. It's a classic hunter / gatherer situation...
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I'm surprised you can't hear any difference between those players themselves - the inference that they must sound the same as your streamer/dac. I'm no spring chicken but can definitely hear the differences with some dacs or CD players ( their dacs essentially ). Playing both through the same dac and not hearing any difference would be understandable. I've had two of those players you mentioned ( 94 and Ikemi ) - the Ikemi had a lot more detail retrieval for example, pretty obvious to the ear.
 
I stop buying new CDs. All my collecton is ripped for local streaming.
From time to time I reach a couple of CDs and listen on my CD player.
Only to get it working from time to time.
 
LuisAlmeida said:
Ripping the CDs and streaming them locally or spinning the CD in a player is only a question of quality of streamer/player.
My old CDX2 still beats the new NDX2 in sound quality , but the extra effort to play a particular CD...
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Really? I have an ageing CDX2 and am considering a NDX2 in light of Naim no longer supporting the CDX2. In what way would you describe the NDX2 as inferior?
 
My CDX2 had a broken channel, was sent to England, repaired and service by Naim a year ago, new mech, came back nicely,
and beats the NDX2.
 
The difference is subtle between the 2, I did a test before the last firmware upgrade of the NDX2, but I found the CDX2 more "foot tapping" and "fuller" sound, NDX2 more "polite"
 
Last CD player I had in my system was a Naim CD5i, I'd been using a Squeezebox + Cambridge Audio DAC for a while and found I just wasn't using the CD player anymore so sold it around 2009/10 I think in part to pay towards an amp upgrade. Still used to buy CDs and rip them or occasional lossless downloads, I now use Apple Music but still buy lossless downloads from the likes of Boomkat and Bleep.
 
As I said, less and less I use the CD player, only for a special audition of this or that CD.
With a equal competent streamer, the ease of use makes a huge difference...
 
I have a decent streamer which is my main music source, fed to a decent external DAC.

It's only recently with the purchase of a decent transport, also fed to the DAC that spinning a disc is now equal to streaming in SQ. Previous I tried two other spinners, both of which did not sound equal to streaming. Still great, just not quite on par. Therefore imo source input to the dac does make a difference.

Now with my current transport fed to my DAC this has rejuvenated my cd collection as it equals the streamer for SQ.
 
Amormusic said:
I have a decent streamer which is my main music source, fed to a decent external DAC.

It's only recently with the purchase of a decent transport, also fed to the DAC that spinning a disc is now equal to streaming in SQ. Previous I tried two other spinners, both of which did not sound equal to streaming. Still great, just not quite on par. Therefore imo source input to the dac does make a difference.

Now with my current transport fed to my DAC this has rejuvenated my cd collection as it equals the streamer for SQ.
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What transport are you using?
 
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