Never tried Tidal but might have to at this price. $5 for 5 months on any plan. I have heard bad experiences with them though, so I will use a credit card I can freeze for sure if I do. New TIDAL Subscribers: 5 Months of Any Tidal Music Streaming Plan $5
Definitely not DAC based. I’ve easily noticed the difference when I first stepped into Hi Rez by the purchasing a Sony SCD-1. Funny thing though, I kept noticing how much I enjoyed natively recorded 24/192 even though I bought the latest DSD recordings. After the Sony I bought the Cambridge CXU that converted the analogue stereo outputs to 24/192. As far as the DAC/Streamer. I’m going by the advice of someone considered to be one of the top Analogue people on this continent and if he recommends it I’m not too worried. My opinion is base on what I hear with my ears not what I read. If I’m faulty then I guess I’ll just have to live with the consequences.
I moved a year back and when I did I culled my 4000 CDs and 1200 lps down to a slightly more manageable 3000/700. Since then (Last March) I find I seldom ever pull out a lp or cd.. (likely less than dozen times).. I stream almost everything. I’ll still make a cd purchase of a handful of artists just to show some support, but then I’ll play it once and file it. I’m quite pleased with streaming quality, however always hoping it will improve, perhaps liners notes/ artwork and maybe even 5.1.
For most people streaming is more than good enough. For me I am not too sure. I have Spotify, but are not satisfied. I hate listening to music if it sounds bad. I know how good music sounds and if I can not have it like I love to hear it I don't need to listen to it. I have ripped all my music from all kind of formats; CD, SACD, DVD-A, Vinyl, etc. All are tagged and stored on HDD. Plan is to stream my own music Currently I listen to jRiver's Cloudplay on work. Sounds great
I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't hear the differences. I have heard them too. My previous DAC had that similar sweet spot where being fed higher sampling rates sounded better. Then I changed DACs and found that lower sampling rates sound better on this DAC than higher sampling rates sounded on the prior DAC. The gap between sampling rates and sound quality closed enough that I don't really care what level I'm playing anymore and I'm pretty happy with CD playback again. I was suggesting that attributing the increased playback enjoyment to sample rate might be misplaced because it can be DAC dependent.
It's certainly small in terms of the raw number of buyers, but I suspect those buyers exert an outsized influence on the health of the vinyl ecosystem. In particular, if you care about the stuff beyond Crosleys and picture discs.
There’s a whole lot of vinyl being pressed in the spectrum between picture discs and audiophile releases. I don’t doubt that Boomers have more buying power, but, again, I also don’t know any personally who are buying vinyl at all. Some real data would be interesting.
I know, when we get new stuff we all rave about how good it is. I wasn’t expecting anything before my new DAC/Streamer was installed an hour or two ago. I joined Tidal and also accessed my Apple library. After just a cursory listen this thing is insanely good. Played my first MQA cuts and if there are any obvious deficiencies I can’t hear them. I guess it’s gonna take time to get familiar with this thing to be able to use it with max advantage. I've had some good equipment over the years but this thing is a step above.
Looks bad for CD, LP etc..... Streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora generated $8.8 billion to account for 79% of all U.S. music industry revenue in 2019, according to new data from the Recording Industry Association of America.
What amazes me is that ten years ago digital downloads made up a larger portion than both physical purchases and digital downloads combined today. Says that people aren't buying anything. I bet video is even worse. I haven't bought a movie in fifteen years.
Up until a few years ago people told me that I was nuts for continuing to buy Blu-Ray movies. I’ve come to realize they were right!!
This is correct. Also, it can be done for free. For instance jazzradio.com has an app whichj I love and includes over 30 jazz stations. Every twenty minutes I get about 2 mins of commercials, sometimes less, but so far never more. This is a terrific way to discover new music. I pay for Apple Music as well, but for discovering jazz I prefer jazzradio.com. I also have an app for Blues which is free. The other day I went over an hour with no commercials. Again over 30 channels, all kinds of music I never heard before. FREE. What I do is when I hear a song I like I add it to an Apple Playlist I created called New Discoveries. From there I can play a song and hit create station. I still love my CDs and vinyl, I still have that emotional need to collect, but there is a whole world of music out there, more than we can even fathom and streaming allows for the possibility to experience a small portion of that world with (for me, anyway) a sense of wonder.
One thing I sometimes feel is not covered in these recurring discussions is that, in my experience, a lot of people who are currently part of the "streaming" portion of the pie charts didn't come from the "physical" sales portion. Many people simply listened to "whatever was on the radio" or had illegal mp3 files from a handful of artists/singles. I.e. a lot of the streaming slice of the pie weren't buying cds/lps prior, nor would they be buying those again should someone pull the plug on streaming tomorrow, they would just go back to streaming radio and getting the latest coldplay record from Suzie's nephew/the IT guy.
I'd like to see some numbers to back that up, if anything the charts confirm that people who used to buy physical products or downloads have switched over to streaming. To go from 5% in 2009 to 79% in 2019 is a massive shift in consumer preferences.
Also think about all of the current and those being born every day kids that are on mom and dad’s family streaming plan and it’s all they have or will grown/grow up on...
Streaming is still the present....... the future will surely have something new, something in R&D that will come to fruition, something we are not thinking of today that will appear.... The only constant is change.... streaming will still have its place in the future, just like some still play reel to reel, 8 track, cassette, LP.... but it won't be "the" future.
Ya, Our futures will be a nano memory chip with our whole lives on it including our music. Wish I could just take off and join the crew of the “Starlost”.
LOL, I am with you, in fact here is what I said on Page 3: In fact, I said "Streaming is the present" a few pages back to --- I figure I'll say it every seven pages or so, so expect the reminder on Page 20........ it'll be fresh info for the 99% of the people still reading the thread that will never go read all 20 pages (just like above).
I can't imagine where they could go from streaming, physical products are almost phased out, you can access millions of songs from any device that's connected online for a low monthly fee. I guess the quality of the files can improve beyond that?? I think streaming is pretty much the end game.
I'm not saying they haven't, I'm pretty sure they have. Most of my friends who are my age don't even own cd players anymore (since desktop computers are a thing of the past and most laptops don't have them these days), and the weird boombox-type speakers may people used to have (those combo speakers-radio-cassette-cd portable gizmos) have long been replaced by bluethooth speakers. So these people don't even have a way of playing the CDs they already had. Streaming makes perfect sense, even in this forum most people also do streaming. And the fact that nowadays you don't have to buy any music in order to listen to all music naturally digs away at physical media sales.
