Am I the only guy w little or no interest in streaming high resolution?

Complete nonsense, btw. I don't understand how anybody competent enough to set up QoS can't just get reliable wifi working properly. Some of us can stream 4K HDR video over WiFi, but your music has skips?

Note I don't say this to badger you, only to combat myths present in this space.

 

Right now I'm listening to a cool compilation of Greek movie music on CD I bought yesterday for 34 cents. How would I find this on a stream machine? Not a lick of English anywhere on the disc?

 

And just like that, we have our first faux-mutual exclusive take on streaming! That's right Wally, streaming services likely don't have the soundtracks to Greek films so its best to completely avoid them forever.

 

Nope. No interest from me either. Spotify/Tidal etc I do not find interesting, and they're expensive. All my music is loaded onto my server and that's enough for me.

 

I didn't say they don't have them. How would I find them if I don't speak Greek? Digging at the flea market though I see a cool looking disc and voila, rounds of ouzo for everyone!

 

I'd just type a bunch of words with way too many vowels into the search field and see what you get.

 

I'll bet this streaming conspiracy has been cooked up by the wives of CD/Vinyl collectors to reclaim the parts of the house they've lost to us!

 

I have no interest in streaming music......

 

This actually brings up a semantics issue I consider from time to time. When we say "streaming", we can mean "streaming music from a cloud service", or we can mean "playing music off a hard drive or computer in our homes". The former is the most correct use of the term streaming IMO. The latter would likely be served by a better term.

This is relevant (to the extent it can be, lol) as while some people hate anything that doesn't involve putting a CD in a tray, others dislike the cloud streaming concept but are completely on board with computer-based audio, just not "streaming". Either of these can clean up a large physical media library. I still have my records of course, but the CDs are packed away as third-level backups.

 

Complete nonsense. I don't understand how anybody competent enough to stream 4K can't understand how various interference issues, and lack of close proximity to one's router can make wifi a not-so-great medium for streaming at times.

FYI - In my neighborhood there is not a single clear channel to set our wifi on. My clearest channels only have two neighbors on them, and my worst channels have as many as six! Worse, is the fact that as I move around the house, the neighbors who I pick up interference from varies, as does which channels are clearest.

In order to get full coverage and mostly reliable coverage inside of my house I have been forced to run a mesh system. Without a repeater my signal is not strong enough to make it past all of my neighbors interference from the end of the house with my router to the end of the house with our TV. But with a conventional repeater, streaming between various HEOS devices inside of my house, was miserable, and extremely unreliable.

Even with our mesh, all is not perfect with the Wifi, and some neighbors who are clearly fighting with the same interference issue as we are keep changing their wifi channels as well, which forces me to change ours every couple of months just to keep the wifi running mostly reliably and minimize the interference.

So chill before you simply assume that everybody else is stupid if they can't get perfect wifi running inside of their houses. For people dealing with extreme wifi interference like myself, Ethernet can be a godsend.

 

Needs a little bit longer.... incl. price increase

BTW: I will never use streaming.

 

Here's the problem - you go on to describe a very specific situation that still baffles me. Hopefully you can agree that running mesh wireless and still having wifi performance so terrible you can't stream music is an edge case, right? You've probably been in other locations without these problems, right?

So why warn the internet that "I believe regardless of wireless streaming protocols and operating frequencies, that will still suffer from ample jitter, delay and interferences." As a whole, this is as I said, complete nonsense. WiFi is not inherently bad for music. Essentially, your WiFi is just broken.

 

I have no interest in music streaming services as well. It's just not appealing to me sound wise.

 

I hate MQA, but to be fair to Tidal, there are something like 10,000 MQA albums available for streaming there

 

Dear sir, did you ever capture packets over the air with Wireshark and analyze how much latency, interference,... there is ? The same issues that people complain about USB connections exist over WiFi. I never said WiFi doesnt work well, it's just not as good as a wired connection, unless you are running an ultra low latency wireless network (which even .ac isnt) and you are alone on an isolated island.

Most HiFi streaming services uses TCP, would you like that I show you how many TCP re transmits that are on my 5Ghz .ac network and with very few neighbors that run on 5Ghz ? Even with a jitter buffer, and packet re-ordering,... the goal is to minimize any un-needed processing on audio packets in the digital world. I don't think I need to go on to make the point that from an "audiophile" perspective, you want to ensure that your physical medium, be it wired or wireless has the least interference possible.

Sorry for being OT OP, but for once I needed to correct the above "complete nonsense"

 

You are absolutely correct, that number is under the "New" section in Tidal, not the total number. My bad !

 

Totally agree! I just recently retired. Gimme a few months and I’ll be obsessed w streaming.

 

My co-workers use Spotify for background music at work, using Spotify’s playlists and its fine for this; like listening to the radio without annoying chat in between songs.
I occasionally use Spotify to sample music, either via iPhone and headphones or computer speakers but I’m not currently tempted to use a steaming service with a main hifi, CD, LP and SACD are fine, I like the physical media.

Why big worry with streaming is how it will affect the way a lot people will use music. Play a piece of music via streaming, if it doesn’t immediately grab you attention then flick to something else. Music will be produced that has instant appeal; which often means sounds familiar. Innovation could suffer.
When I was young, buying an LP was a bit of an investment so if I didn’t like it straight away I would work at it, play it over and over, and many times things that I didn’t get straight away would grow on me and years later I still enjoy.
Yes I understand the great advantage of having access to a vast library of recorded music, but actually I can only listen to one thing at once, I’m happy to be playing things I already know and love or buying a new CD or LP and taking the time to get to know it and understand it.

 

Well "hearing" is unreliable. If I don't "see" any theoretical evidence to suggest that I will "hear" a difference, I find it pretty unlikely that the difference will be audible.

 

You’ll be setup in no time, if you need a nudge, I’d be more than happy to provide some suggestions. Using a combination of technologies enable us to enjoy our HiFi music in different ways in different rooms, and no reason not to keep a dedicated typical source/pre-amp/amp setup.

 

Thanks bud.

 

I don't think streaming & discovery are mutually exclusive - I pick up recommendations from friends, the radio, reviews or music forums & listen to samples on the likes of Amazon, Soundcloud or Bandcamp then buy physical media of the ones I like. I discover a lot of new music this way.

 

U can stream on ur TV.....really, you can. I know what ur thinking "what has this world come to??"

 

I agree especially since no one is offering multichannel hi-res from a "cloud" service. I have to do it locally.

 

Actually since the OP was "do you give a fig about HI RES streaming""
I have to answer "sort of."
I stream already---just not at high res.
I mean I can easily hear a dip in the midrange on 128K streaming.
And the top end is a LITTLE bit less clear.
But as you could say that about darn near everything DIGITAL at CD rates and under it isn't something I would rush right out to get TIDAL just to stream at high bit rates .
But high bit rates AND MQA just might do it.
Now I have to investigate by putting a toe in the water to try out MQA.
MQA is being touted as not only very nice resolution but a completely different, clearer and sweeter way to play music---like listening to fresh master tapes or something.
And THAT might be enough to get me to buy into HIGH RES STREAMING.
As it is I am more than pleased how much enjoyment I'm getting for free already using Amazon Prime Music and YouTube videos both at rates 320K and under.
I would really miss not being plugged into the modern streaming world.
But HIGH RES?
I'll get back to you on that.