high fidelity music streaming

[Mountainman Bob]

Was wondering what peoples thoughts are on the subject.....not the basic 320kbs stuff but the high end 24/192 from Tidal,Qobuz and such. I've been playing around with Tidal on some basic equipment and think i'm gonna go 'all in' on some decent eqipment. Not sure if easing into it with some mid fi stuff like Bluesound or even maybe an integrated like a yamaha RN-803D (my amp is kindly in a death spiral anyway) or just go full bore with something like a Lumin D2 and a parasound Halo behind it.....been doing alot of research aiming for smoothness,accurate detail, solid bass along with a good control app as criteria.
I'm in the process of making a new full wall entertainment center based on 2 channel.....may play around with surround later but for now the focus is stereo music, and dvd music The Admiral has agreed to an upgrade since the last was almost 20 yrs ago(plus its a new house).....my argument with myself is kinda tilted toward the high end stuff.

I told Sydney streaming is the death call for the CD but he disagreed!

Bob

[Sydney]

In the trades:
"According to a new report released by the RIAA, vinyl records and CD sales have collectively beat out digital downloads."
from https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/201...tal-downloads/

[djg]

CDs will survive nuclear EMP, kiss your cloud storage goodbye. Might take a few years before you can play them.

[Mountainman Bob]

In the trades:
"According to a new report released by the RIAA, vinyl records and CD sales have collectively beat out digital downloads."
from https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/201...tal-downloads/

yes 'digital downloads' but not surpassing streaming, its quite easy to add music to your collection via the control app without actually downloading.....my collection has been there instantly everytime i've wanted to listen.
You fellers can cling to your shiny discs......i'm gonna use them to scare crows from the garden! Part of my revamp is going to include a disc reader and storage(with backup) for my current cd collection thus freeing up my 300+1 for just DVD. Just have to figure out the best way to seemlessly incorporate it.......Roon seems to be the popular way to go?
And as far as vinyl vs digital goes, streaming/downloading has equalled or even surpassed the analog 'smoothness' of vinyl depending on your equipment; much of which has recently come down from stratospheric to a reasonable cost/value.

Of course if there are special cd's such as collector editions, sacd, hdcd, etc I suppose those should stay out of the garden! I'm talking run of the mill 16/44 stuff.

Bob

[Sydney]

ehhh, I've got close to 1500 albums ( I rarely play) and hundreds of cassette ( I rarely play). Having the ability to burn CDs cheap has been a godsend ( I do production work for a school ).
My music collection has taken a quantum leap since.
Having been working in DP since the 70s I've been through many media changes.
5.25" optical discs could hold more than 25Gb, so the onus is on the industry to use it for a higher res. offering.
I do like the cover art/ liner notes and Librettos that comes with physical media
fwiw: I keep my CD masters and rip wav files to thumb drives for the ability to take Gigs worth of music in my pocket.
To each his own flexibility according to needs.

[Mountainman Bob]

I believe the stigma is/was that not owning your music makes it less worthy most likely becuase until recently by owning the physical media you usually got better sq than downloaded/streamed music and also as stated by djg your 'cloud' can disappear relatively easy.

Any music I stream from tidal can be downloaded and backed up if need be at no extra cost, so 'losing' your music isn't really an issue....from the backup you can also still record it to cd or thumbdrive.

In relation to cd's streaming is basically the the same delivery of 1's and 0's but without the mechanical issues....drive motors,laser pickups and such. When I do archive my collection i'm probably going to use SSD storage so there are no moving parts.....I'm led to believe samsung makes a solid product in that dept.

In a nutshell, for a few $$ a month in subscription fees (I spend about $40 a month total) your hi-res music collection can now span just about every piece of music ever recorded in every genre......instantly. Its mind blowing!

I really don't see the need to ever buy another cd (I would like to start a sacd collection though) all of the cover art and info is available in the app's (some better than others) and I believe if you store a cd in a flac file the metadata goes with (more to research on that front)

Is there anyone on here thats made the leap, I don't mean just a computer based setup......I'm talking full blown stand alone audiophile streamers / DAC's

Another thing i'm trying to figure out is if the wifi router itself would make a difference and which one might be best suited for music streaming?

[Sydney]

Also: Since WV has perhaps some of the worst* Internet service in the country ( slow AND unreliable ), streaming is not yet a dependable option here ( perhaps next Millennia . )
( I've tried Neil Young's High Rez option; among other streaming - Pizpoor in Hooneyland )
* Class action lawsuits are pending

[Mountainman Bob]

Also: Since WV has perhaps some of the worst* Internet service in the country ( slow AND unreliable ), streaming is not yet a dependable option here ( perhaps next Millennia . )
( I've tried Neil Young's High Rez option; among other streaming - Pizpoor in Hooneyland )
* Class action lawsuits are pending

sorry.......I forgot about those unfortunate disconnected souls! theres always sattelite net, we used that in NC mtns for yrs......kinda pricey and weather sensative but otherwise it was good.

[neildavis]

Also: Since WV has perhaps some of the worst* Internet service in the country ( slow AND unreliable ), streaming is not yet a dependable option here ( perhaps next Millennia .

The "whitespace Internet" services recently got rolled out in Garrett County MD, and it is suitable for streaming. It uses the "dead" space on the TV channels. Since the frequencies are relatively low and the channel slots aren't that wide, the bandwidth isn't very high, but you can get reliable 10-20 MHz data rates. It comes in using a UHF TV antenna and a frequency-agile radio. Here is a link to an article about providing WiFi throughout WVU: https://www.networkworld.com/article...-virginia.html.

The whitespace internet solution seems to be catching on for providing modern digital services in remote places like Namibia, Tanzania and West Virginia .

Our cabin is located at the western tip of Maryland, right on the West Virginia border.

Unfortunately, the service isn't cheap--they are charging about $75/mo for the entry-level 5M plan, or $110 for 20M...and that's after a substantial grant to the county. But the service isn't capped, so you get an unlimited amount of data for streaming. We went with Hughes Gen 5 because it is cheaper and we don't stream that much at the cabin. That last satellite they launched (Jupiter) provides a fairly steady 50M download stream, and it's $49 a month if you buy your own modem. It's been a big upgrade over the Gen 4 service.

[Sydney]

sorry.......I forgot about those unfortunate disconnected souls! ...

It'a a Giant Screwgee, from the same company that provides fiber-optic to others:
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/busine...b01428ac8.html

[Sydney]

“Broadband in this state is a huge challenge,” says John Campbell, WVU’s chief information officer. “We’re very rural and very mountainous. Between the terrain and the weather, it’s hard on infrastructure.”

yup

...Our cabin is located at the western tip of Maryland, right on the West Virginia border...

A slooow windy 4 1/2 hour journey from here in Dawg Patch.

[neildavis]

Was wondering what peoples thoughts are on the subject.....not the basic 320kbs stuff but the high end 24/192 from Tidal,Qobuz and such.

I think the middle ground of 16/48K LPCM is where the real excitement is for streaming. Full CD quality from your PC and cell phone libraries, and with those $40 Linkplay adapters from PE there are huge opportunities for the DIY crowd. I've got a couple of designs that are getting documented in the case studies at www.audiodevelopers.com.

[Jim Griffin]

While Mountainman Bob may be skewed toward streaming with hi-end gear in his upgrade quest, I go for value for my stuff. I recently purchased an ifi Audio Black Label nano iDSD for a DAC in my living room system. This is a small box (think of a large cigarette package size) that costs $200 but it is a Quad-speed DSD256 DXD, 384 kHz portable unit with both headamp and line out. It does MQA if you are using Tidal so it likely will have far more growth potential than those $!000 + DACs.

ifi Audio offers a wide array of products that have been reviewed in several audiophile magazines. The key ifi Audio designer is Thorsten Loesch who has posted on the Audio Asylum forums for several years.

https://ifi-audio.com/

https://www.audiostream.com/content/...-loesch-amrifi

Jim

[dst]

iFi makes some outstanding and affordable gear, most of it pretty small as well. Their larger scale pro headphone amp and preamp (tube circuit) is excellent. And as you say, their $200 to $500 DACs are hard to beat and are portable as well. As to streaming, I have an Asus TinkerBoard running Volumio's free software and it works very well. I am not a digital person, but I got it to run pretty easily. It is supposed to soon be able to run Tidal. I think you can currently do it if you know some basic Linux. For less than $100 you can stream anything you want to your DAC through the TinkerBoard, via ethernet or wireless. Store your music on the cloud, a hard drive, whatever. If you are not sure what high end streaming gear you want, try a Rapsberry Pi or Tinker Board and one of the free software packages and see how you like it.

[Mountainman Bob]

While Mountainman Bob may be skewed toward streaming with hi-end gear in his upgrade quest, I go for value for my stuff. I recently purchased an ifi Audio Black Label nano iDSD for a DAC in my living room system. This is a small box (think of a large cigarette package size) that costs $200 but it is a Quad-speed DSD256 DXD, 384 kHz portable unit with both headamp and line out. It does MQA if you are using Tidal so it likely will have far more growth potential than those $!000 + DACs.

ifi Audio offers a wide array of products that have been reviewed in several audiophile magazines. The key ifi Audio designer is Thorsten Loesch who has posted on the Audio Asylum forums for several years.

https://ifi-audio.com/

https://www.audiostream.com/content/...-loesch-amrifi

Jim

I looked at ifi idsd and the itube 2 looks really cool if i was setting up a desktop setup (which may happen someday) i'd be all over it but just can't wrap my head around minature stuff in my main system........value is important to me as the wife and I are just plain o'le middle class people.
ifi is making a new dac/streamer that incorporates both idsd and itube tech, the ifi pro idsd; its supposed to start shipping tomorrow (5/31) $2500 ......need to see some real world reviews before laying down that kinda scratch, that would also be the limit i'd be willing to spend..... the quality of streamer/dacs seems to increase exponentially at around $2k or so from what I can see.