Streaming,Schmeeming!IMO Cds rule!

[gabor]

After having my streaming service well customized to suit my tastes,I much prefer to listen to my individual CDs,

As I understand the CD format is in demise.

Played Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" album yesterday.Haven't listened to it for several years.

On my "refreshed" system with a MAC 252 integrated as the base, that album sounded so good.Terry Clements guitar playing shines through and so did the bass guitar.

Does any one else feel the same way?I hope high quality CDs will continue to be produced and sold at reasonable prices...

[oddeophile]

Cd/SACD absolutely. To heck with streaming/downloads.

[Audioraven]

I love the silver discs as well!

[Antonmb]

Ripped CDs streamed from NAS through a Linn Klimax sound better than any disc player I’ve heard. If I want to get up and change a disc, I prefer it to be black[emoji41]

[bart]

I love (SA)CDs, I love streaming.
It's all good!

[gabor]

Originally Posted by oddeophile

Cd/SACD absolutely. To heck with streaming/downloads.

Is the $30 per disc worth it?

Some of my older regular Cds sound crappy ,others much better.That Lightfoot CD was very well formatted (from the late 1908s) and it is not "remastered".
Meanwhile the Beatles CDs from that era sound lifeless.

Gabe

[Yamaki]

I am not a fan of streaming but I too hope they continue to produce high quality CDs.

While I no longer spin a single CD very often, I do buy new and used CDs. I rip them to FLAC and store them on my NAS for digital playback through Roon.

Every once in a while I find a CD that is labeled "HDCD" (High Definition Compatible Digital) which is an encode-decode process developed by Microsoft. All of the HDCDs I have found rip to a 24 bit/48 kbps rate. But those seem to be rare and I do not know if they continue to produce them.

The HDCDs I have play well on my Oppo and I had no problem with playback on my old Denon DVD 2910. They rip to FLAC easily with no special steps needed, at least not when using dbpoweramp CD ripper. Interestingly, when ripping to FLAC, they result in a 24 bit/48 kbps digital file.

Thankfully there are still plenty of sources near me for picking through stacks of CDs (a local auction, two used music stores, Goodwill and SA) and I will buy a new CD at times through Amazon when it is a recent release, such as Mark Knopfler's "Down The Road Wherever".

Long Live The CD!

[kaarmstrong]

Agree, ripped CD steaming from a good music player is very good. I think it is important to define streaming. Streaming from local music vs streaming from service provider. My opinion at similar resolution, local music library is best from quality music player (Silenzio for example), CD or SACD player next best, streaming from music service like Tital falls in to 3rd. This includes MQA. Your results may vary.

[Antonmb]

Originally Posted by kaarmstrong

My opinion at similar resolution, local music library is best from quality music player (Silenzio for example), CD or SACD player next best, streaming from music service like Tital falls in to 3rd. This includes MQA. Your results may vary.

+1

[crwilli]

Originally Posted by kaarmstrong

Agree, ripped CD steaming from a good music player is very good. I think it is important to define streaming. Streaming from local music vs streaming from service provider. My opinion at similar resolution, local music library is best from quality music player (Silenzio for example), CD or SACD player next best, streaming from music service like Tital falls in to 3rd. This includes MQA. Your results may vary.

I can’t say I hear a consistent difference between CDs or Streaming that same disc ripped to my NAS in FLAC format.

On SaCDs, I tend to prefer the sound of the physical medium over the DSD ripped versions but not so much that I often dig them out to play them. It is close enough that I am happy playing the DSD versions off the NAS.