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Streaming is inferior to redbook CD playback?

Del monaco said:
Jitter.One of the most over-emphasised selling points of recent hifi with companies preying on audiophile paranoia to shift some fairly standard gear at ever higher and unjustified prices.Discuss.
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Jitter has been one of the subjects on which the audio press has dined out for some time. Whenever I observe this I ask questions like "is the problem for real?" One of my audio "obsessions" is to accumulate independent evidence and make my own judgment.

My belief is that jitter may have been a problem when audio kit manufacturers started separating CD transports from DACs and sending the clock the "wrong" way across the interface without sufficient de-jittering. The audio press certainly wrote about that. Their readers got sensitized.

But that was a very long time ago. Designers do learn and products do develop. IMHO with modern products jitter is very unlikely to explain what people report hearing when they experience differences in digital audio systems. And ISTM it's often the very same people who obsess about jitter that's way below audibility who excoriate those who search for DACS with SNR way below audibility. Go figure.
 
Wow 9 pages worth and still going strong...well hear's my tuppence halfpenny worth.
So I bought most of a system at once, sort of a mix and match with my system with the intention of keeping some and selling some. So the comparison was between a naim cd555 vs NDS on a 552/500 isobarariks. I compared Cd's that I owned with the ripped Aiff version and the conclusion was clear - streaming won hands down. I then tried to reason why that was the outcome, and what I came up with was this. Imagine a place dropping parachutists, in the streaming example they are all lined up ready to drop, exactly like the digits coming off a drive, but off a cd there is the whole process of extracting the digits optically from a moving disc running at a variable speed. Now if the CD555 (trigger warning) probably the best CD player ever made is losing against the NDS (which although is fantastic, is not the final word in streaming) then the game is up for CD players. Much like those top end Nakamichi decks were beyond fantastic, still struggle due to the inherent weaknesses of the cassette format. At that point I saw no need to own a CD player as ripping a CD was always sound better.
Incidentally I bought a Buffalo CD drive (its a Melco really) and compared ripping directly to a melco as opposed to importing to a Mac as an AIFF and pushing the audio file into the Melco. I found that the WMV as well as being pretty poor in the fields department sounded thinner than the AIFF version.
 
The jitter levels in early ADCs used in the recording studios, was often horrible. There is nothing that can be done to remove it from the masters.
The jitter in any competent playback is a few orders of magnitude better
 
I suspect a large amount of the superiority of one source or another is what was primarily used to set up your system in the first place, Small differences in speaker placement associated cabling etc can all influence what your hearing so if you set up with analogue as your primary source it could well be that digital is going to sound somewhat inferior. I do not use a dedicated streamer but have built some streaming PCs running off linear PSU etc or as my system is now running from my high ish end normal PC with Jcat cards LPS and Roon streaming via Tidal or Qubuz the sound via streaming is really very good and on a par or better than the transports and cd players I have on hand running through the same dac. My analogue system which is circa 8k retail is barely used. Whilst it too sounds great and has some advantages and disadvantages in terms of sound quality , which i prefer very much comes down to the individual recording or what mood I'm in.
 
Mongeddavid said:
I suspect a large amount of the superiority of one source or another is what was primarily used to set up your system in the first place, Small differences in speaker placement associated cabling etc can all influence what your hearing so if you set up with analogue as your primary source it could well be that digital is going to sound somewhat inferior. I do not use a dedicated streamer but have built some streaming PCs running off linear PSU etc or as my system is now running from my high ish end normal PC with Jcat cards LPS and Roon streaming via Tidal or Qubuz the sound via streaming is really very good and on a par or better than the transports and cd players I have on hand running through the same dac. My analogue system which is circa 8k retail is barely used. Whilst it too sounds great and has some advantages and disadvantages in terms of sound quality , which i prefer very much comes down to the individual recording or what mood I'm in.
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+1 for associated cabling!
 
davidsrsb said:
The jitter levels in early ADCs used in the recording studios, was often horrible. There is nothing that can be done to remove it from the masters.
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When reading horror stories of early digital's shortcomings I sometimes try to hear them in my own cd collection. I started buying cds in 1985 - so I have quite a few cds which could be suffering from this. What am I supposed to be hearing?
 
I remember MF making a great deal of jitter levels some years ago. I thought it was all marketing fluff. John Atkinson was discussing what audible levels of jitter were at the time. Some manufacturers and those on ASR appear fixated on jitter. Others jumped on the jitter bandwagon dragging a load of paranoid worshippers behind them. I thought it amusing at the time. The word disingenuous springs to mind. It’s all in the hearing.
 
The funny thing is I spend most hours listening to R3 on my analogue fm tuner. It’s the first thing I switch on in the morning and when get home from work. I really do love the sound quality of the A&R. It’s the most listenable of all my equipment. Just the right balance of virtues.
 
Curtis said:
Don’t do it Del.
You’ve been down the deluded cable route before.
He will be talking you into ukulele’s next.
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Curtis. I’m sure I will be unconvinced again as I have been over the last few years. Always good to check my faculties are still in good order though. As for the Ukuleles, he very kindly sent me one a few weeks ago for which I was very grateful. I happen to like Ukuleles too. I have an album of Russian music including the venerable Dark Eyes that is played by a Ukulele Band. Who knows, we might even form a duo. My son and daughter have them so we could even do a a Von Trapp some day!
 
Del monaco said:
Curtis. I’m sure I will be unconvinced again as I have been over the last few years. Always good to check my faculties are still in good order though. As for the Ukuleles, he very kindly sent me one a few weeks ago for which I was very grateful. I happen to like Ukuleles too. I have an album of Russian music including the venerable Dark Eyes that is played by a Ukulele Band. Who knows, we might even form a duo. My son and daughter have them so we could even do a a Von Trapp some day!
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Del monaco said:
Curtis. I’m sure I will be unconvinced again as I have been over the last few years. Always good to check my faculties are still in good order though. As for the Ukuleles, he very kindly sent me one a few weeks ago for which I was very grateful. I happen to like Ukuleles too. I have an album of Russian music including the venerable Dark Eyes that is played by a Ukulele Band. Who knows, we might even form a duo. My son and daughter have them so we could even do a a Von Trapp some day!
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Then it’s already too late for you.
He offered me a ukulele once.
I knew his game.
 
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