Thread: How many members are digital audio purists ? Meaning no streaming or analog just CD/SACD

Originally Posted by mdp632

The recent CD threads have got me thinking, Going forward, we will see a resurgence of optical disc playback enthusiasts ? Similar to the analog/vinyl crowd of today. Which regardless of people’s opinion I feel has brought many new and younger people in the hobby that wouldn’t have had an interest prior.

I’ve always read and continue to read about analog enthusiasts but, never compact disc ones. Especially in mainstream audio publications.

However, I noticied a few members seem to focus on disc playback exclusively. Quite a few have high end Esoteric one box players.

To those members, do you ever feel you are missing out? With regards to having the conviennace of file back and streaming?

Or do you feel that physically borrowing your collection and playing a disc is the same as putting a record on a turntable?

I'm 100% digital, have been now for several years. - Digital downloads (99.9% Flac, DSF and a few WAV) Still rip CDs to FLAC for playback. It took me a few years to get digital where I wanted it. Once I did I've never looked back. I have less than zero desire for vinyl, slipping CDs into a CD Player or even HQ streaming.
I do stream music for "party quality" music. I am however keeping an eye on high rez streaming services. I may look into them further at some point in the future.

Originally Posted by mdp632

The recent CD threads have got me thinking, Going forward, we will see a resurgence of optical disc playback enthusiasts ? Similar to the analog/vinyl crowd of today. Which regardless of people’s opinion I feel has brought many new and younger people in the hobby that wouldn’t have had an interest prior.

I’ve always read and continue to read about analog enthusiasts but, never compact disc ones. Especially in mainstream audio publications.

However, I noticied a few members seem to focus on disc playback exclusively. Quite a few have high end Esoteric one box players.

To those members, do you ever feel you are missing out? With regards to having the conviennace of file back and streaming?

Or do you feel that physically borrowing your collection and playing a disc is the same as putting a record on a turntable?

Count me in but mind you that in the 70s-90s I loved Vinyl starting with time with my father and his Big Band vinyl collection
on 33 and 78 and a very solid (by today's standards) intermediate or a bit lower system. I also had vinyl up through the late
1990s until a plumbing leak over a 2 week period we were out of country trashed an entire corner of our home from the top (3rd)
floor down and took out all my vinyl including a good number of original MoFi releases, a Denon high-end (at the time) and
Technics deck and miscellaneous things all related to my vinyl playback. Do I miss vinyl/pure analog playback,..absolutely.
Do I still appreciate it,...hell yes! I have however gone solidly down pure CD/XRCD/SACD/etc...playback with no vinyl
or no streaming. I've hard 'the best' server-based solutions vendor OEM and some home-built by experts and it just
doesn't equal what I hear every day including tests of Tidal, software MQA, etc...here.

Long-winded but definitely +1!!!

These point out my 'problem' and love for CD, XRCD and SACD

Man I just love music and if CD's provide the music I am after then CD/SACD's it is. Same for LP's, and hi-rez downloads or rips. It's about the music after all just enjoy.

I as this with all due respect SC. Is there a method to your filing madness? :-0

[QUOTE=SCAudiophile;230565]Count me in but mind you that in the 70s-90s I loved Vinyl starting with time with my father and his Big Band vinyl collection
on 33 and 78 and a very solid (by today's standards) intermediate or a bit lower system. I also had vinyl up through the late
1990s until a plumbing leak over a 2 week period we were out of country trashed an entire corner of our home from the top (3rd)
floor down and took out all my vinyl including a good number of original MoFi releases, a Denon high-end (at the time) and
Technics deck and miscellaneous things all related to my vinyl playback. Do I miss vinyl/pure analog playback,..absolutely.
Do I still appreciate it,...hell yes! I have however gone solidly down pure CD/XRCD/SACD/etc...playback with no vinyl
or no streaming. I've hard 'the best' server-based solutions vendor OEM and some home-built by experts and it just
doesn't equal what I hear every day including tests of Tidal, software MQA, etc...here.

Long-winded but definitely

Mark is this you? Ed here.


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SCAudiophile,

I love that CD collection. Well done.

Is that a Bach hard case as well?

I am about 90% digital with 4tb of music from ripping Cd's and digital download. Other 10% of listening is vinyl. Although I wish my vinyl collection was bigger and that new vinyl was exclusively recorded via analog vs digital which IMO sounds like crap most of the time. I also wish I had a much better CDP but the DAC and digital storage works great.

My listening is primarily from playing files from my NAS. There is a fair amount of listening to Tidal streaming as it is so integrated with ROON often times the radio function of ROON kicks in and may play something off of Tidal or my NAS. If there is something new I hear or read about, I will first play it on Tidal (if available) before purchasing it.

I just listened to the ‘A’ side of the Eagles The Long Run album. First vinyl I have spun in almost 2 years.

For a few years now, I have been gleaming insight into "computer audio." For the past year I've been ripping Cd's (gathered from many sources) and playing them through a 2010 MacBook Pro.
The CD's tend to have better SQ and vinyl has its own appeal of SQ, physical format and nostalgia. That said...
The convenience of the MacBook server is where I am doing most of my listening of late.
Still not ready to part with the CD player, TT or tuner; yet anyway.

I have gone 100% digital. When I get a new disk the absolute first thing I do is rip it and copy it to my server. I also love high res downloads, the higher the better. Big fan of DSD.

The quality and convince of listening to music the music server and controlled by Roon is unbeatable....

Originally Posted by SCAudiophile

Count me in but mind you that in the 70s-90s I loved Vinyl starting with time with my father and his Big Band vinyl collection
on 33 and 78 and a very solid (by today's standards) intermediate or a bit lower system. I also had vinyl up through the late
1990s until a plumbing leak over a 2 week period we were out of country trashed an entire corner of our home from the top (3rd)
floor down and took out all my vinyl including a good number of original MoFi releases, a Denon high-end (at the time) and
Technics deck and miscellaneous things all related to my vinyl playback. Do I miss vinyl/pure analog playback,..absolutely.
Do I still appreciate it,...hell yes! I have however gone solidly down pure CD/XRCD/SACD/etc...playback with no vinyl
or no streaming. I've hard 'the best' server-based solutions vendor OEM and some home-built by experts and it just
doesn't equal what I hear every day including tests of Tidal, software MQA, etc...here.

Long-winded but definitely +1!!!

These point out my 'problem' and love for CD, XRCD and SACD

Oh my! Beautiful to look at, so many treasures there. Thank you!
And yes, count me in for pure digital, CDs, HDCD, & a couple of SACDs...
Cheers.


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My entire CD/SACD collection is ripped to a NAS and is on my Aurender N10. I have nearly 3TB of digital music in FLAC & DSF. I rarely spin a CD and my TT hasn’t been hooked up in 2 years.


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Originally Posted by kevinkwann

I'll take it a step further. Almost any transport sounds better than a good streamer. I won't waste a second or cent on computer audio.

Many times I find there are higher resolution versions available online vs a physical format. Also, I’m a avid collector of Phish & Grateful Dead (Dead & Co) concerts. Most of those aren’t available on CD.


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Originally Posted by bikeman71

I also love the Phish/Dead stuff. It's fun going to a show and buy the download of the show the next day.

Will you be part of the Phish shows on the west coast this summer? If you are, we should find a way to get together...I live near Lake Tahoe and would welcome you to my place for some listening.

I haven't planned on any Phish so far this summer. I have some clients out in L.A. that I go out and visit during the west coast run. But right now it's too early to say.

I'm almost certainly going to one of the Dead & Co shows at Alpine Valley. My company has an office in Chicago, so I can fly there for a couple of days and drive up to the shows.

I try to tie my concerts to business meetings, so the company picks up the hotel/airfare.

Until Christmas, I was only playing physical media: CD, SACD, DVD-audio, Blu-ray audio.
I must have around 3000 silver discs.
Then, I started with a Tidal 3 month trial. I found so many old and new gems that I was immediately hooked.
The next step was subscribing to Qobuz Sublime +.
Wonderful, as I primarily listen to classical and jazz.

I have compared some of my discs to the stream (same DAC).
Sometimes the disc wins (mostly SACDs and Japanese pressings), sometimes the stream wins (newer remaster, hi-res?).

I'll keep on streaming... and putting discs in the tray.
For multi-channel, I only have the physical media solution so far.

Originally Posted by nicoff

The table below shows the history of music sales in different formats. As of 2017, 78% of sales was streaming as compared to 22% for physical media. (Since physical media includes LPs, then the number of CDs sold would be much less than that).



From the chart, the great majority of folks have voted for streaming with their wallets.

Here is another chart that shows how new technology is adopted.



Based on that second chart, one can say that there is up to 16% of consumers (“the laggards” using the term in the chart) that are late adopters and may never adopt streaming.

In a way, this is similar to when CDs were introduced and sales of LPs plummeted. Some folks kept spinning their LPs. Now that streaming is available, some folks keep playing their silver discs. Will physical digital media be as resilient as the LPs? I doubt it. But that’s just one person’s opinion.

There is no right or wrong here. In the end, regardless of how it sounds, we all vote with our wallets.

Well, I guess you can call me a “laggard” at least for now. But as for the charts: the top one is eerily similar to what happened to my to my portfolio in 94’ (the Dark line, that is.). Enjoy the Music!
Cheers


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love my cd`s and sacd . even though streamer is good , and talking to a well known brand american hi fi dealer recently , he really loves cd and feels better than streaming

Last weekend I visited a demo of the dCS Vivalidi One.

IMHO The Vivaldi One sounded better when used as transport compared to streaming. However streaming (NAS, Tidal Quobus etc) is much more convenient.

Originally Posted by DogsPart2

SCAudiophile,

I love that CD collection. Well done.

Is that a Bach hard case as well?

Yes,...that's a 2012 Bach Strad B-flat trumpet, silver plated :-), In the corner on the floor next to a big cigar humidor I have my father's
Big Band era Conn medium bore B-flat, silver plate with the most beautiful etching/scroll work from the bell all the way up the pipe. Still plays
well if not a bit constrained (was my first trumpet back in the early-late 70s....). I could kick myself however...1989 I parted with a
1979 original Benge .468 large bore, gold plated that was an all-time favorite and a large bore Benge flugelhorn when I put the horns
down due to life/work circumstances....very bad choice and I've regretted it ever since. Slowly picking up the horns again,....

BTW...love the 2 axes in your avatar....SWEET!!!

[QUOTE=UltraFast69;230643]

Originally Posted by SCAudiophile

Count me in but mind you that in the 70s-90s I loved Vinyl starting with time with my father and his Big Band vinyl collection
on 33 and 78 and a very solid (by today's standards) intermediate or a bit lower system. I also had vinyl up through the late
1990s until a plumbing leak over a 2 week period we were out of country trashed an entire corner of our home from the top (3rd)
floor down and took out all my vinyl including a good number of original MoFi releases, a Denon high-end (at the time) and
Technics deck and miscellaneous things all related to my vinyl playback. Do I miss vinyl/pure analog playback,..absolutely.
Do I still appreciate it,...hell yes! I have however gone solidly down pure CD/XRCD/SACD/etc...playback with no vinyl
or no streaming. I've hard 'the best' server-based solutions vendor OEM and some home-built by experts and it just
doesn't equal what I hear every day including tests of Tidal, software MQA, etc...here.

Long-winded but definitely

Mark is this you? Ed here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Sorry for the delay,...work has been killing my forum and listening time :-)

Yes it is! Hello Ed!!!

Thank you LostnAmerica!

Originally Posted by SCAudiophile

Thank you LostnAmerica!

You’re welcome! Thank you for sharing your collection.



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Funny, I'd think of a "digital purist" as someone who only listens to either ripped music or hi-res streams (eg Tidal); opposed to CD/disc, which to me seems "less purely digital". I guess in the end there's media somewhere, whether it be a disc or a hard drive. Maybe a SSD, completely cached to memory, is the "most pure".

Originally Posted by jmusica

Funny, I'd think of a "digital purist" as someone who only listens to either ripped music or hi-res streams (eg Tidal); opposed to CD/disc, which to me seems "less purely digital".

Care to explain/define? Thanks.

I guess I fall into the digital camp, although 'purist' doesn't seem to be the correct term. I have zero interest in ever using a turntable again. The setup required for cartridges, the need to clean records and cartridges, the ease of breaking a stylus, the ease of scratching a record, the unavoidable pops and crackles with records, the cost, and the total difficulty of only playing the good songs, and skipping the filler songs is much, much more than I want to deal with.

I want to listen to music, not frack with it.

Originally Posted by BlueFox

I guess I fall into the digital camp, although 'purist' doesn't seem to be the correct term. I have zero interest in ever using a turntable again. The setup required for cartridges, the need to clean records and cartridges, the ease of breaking a stylus, the ease of scratching a record, the unavoidable pops and crackles with records, the cost,

I'm with you on this one. I enjoy the vinyl in my friends' systems very much, but I could never again deal with it in my system for every single one of the reasons you mentioned. As a friend nicely put it, "analog is a land you like to visit but wouldn't want to live there".

Originally Posted by Al M.

Care to explain/define? Thanks.

Not sure I can define it much more than what I wrote before; maybe I could say it's just a sense that if there's a piece of plastic involved, spinning on a mechanical platter, it's not as "purely digital" as a stream of bits and bytes over a network, for instance. To me the most purely digital is getting as close to 0's and 1's from start to finish. Just a musing on a different reaction to the OP.

Originally Posted by jmusica

Not sure I can define it much more than what I wrote before; maybe I could say it's just a sense that if there's a piece of plastic involved, spinning on a mechanical platter, it's not as "purely digital" as a stream of bits and bytes over a network, for instance. To me the most purely digital is getting as close to 0's and 1's from start to finish. Just a musing on a different reaction to the OP.

It's still 0 and 1s.

As for the most 'pure' 0 and 1s, a computer nominally may have less jitter, but has a better chance to foul up the 0 and 1s with RF noise. Pick your poison. Fact is, the best and most highly resolving digital playback that I've heard to date was from spinning CDs.

Maybe a top-level dedicated server like a Baetis might top that, but not average computer playback (I know, everyone says their computer playback isn't average -- yet on average it is ).

I love them both for all the right reasons; growing up with analog and degenerating (breaking free) with digital.

@ the end of the tunnel and during the long journey only the music remains. Everything else is like a bowl of Fruit Loops ... cereals with milk (2%).

Most of my listening come from above.

However, I do listen to Flac through a headphone amp in the study.