Don’t real audiophiles own their own media?

I’ve been one of the biggest streaming advocates on this thread and last night I unearthed Belladonna from Daniel Lanois on vinyl. Fantastic! Just reinforces my point that it is about the music not the medium.
 
I own LP's, CDs even have a few 8 tracks ( just to say I still have them from the 60's ) and cassettes but I stream as well and have some downloads, why, I just like music, that's it, its not for being an Audiophile or maybe its just, a musical hoarder. Like Randy noted, to each their own and ps enjoy the music
 
My listening sessions typically last hours... If I was to listen to 45s instead, all the up and down and record flipping would keep me in better shape. Yes, I loved my Blue Note Jazz individually/serially numbered subscription but those 45s would make me get up and flip the damn record every few minutes... Now I can listen to Rudy Van Gelder remasters from his vast master tape collection without having to get up. Here is the other part... Good luck finding all that vinyl or CD or SACD....
 
TheOctopus said:
My listening sessions typically last hours... If I was to listen to 45s instead, all the up and down and record flipping would keep me in better shape. Yes, I loved my Blue Note Jazz individually/serially numbered subscription but those 45s would make me get up and flip the damn record every few minutes... Now I can listen to Rudy Van Gelder remasters from his vast master tape collection without having to get up. Here is the other part... Good luck finding all that vinyl or CD or SACD....
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When I am feeling like not getting up and down I listen to digital off the server 😁. Speaking of 45's though, I am about to start listening to Eva Cassidy's live recording in 45. SEVEN glorious 45 RPM albums!
 
Randy Myers said:
When I am feeling like not getting up and down I listen to digital off the server 😁. Speaking of 45's though, I am about to start listening to Eva Cassidy's live recording in 45. SEVEN glorious 45 RPM albums!
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Sounds like a lot of fun. Both Tidal and Qobuz have all the Eva Cassidy albums ever produced. They are all there in my Roon collection... I have listened to all of them many times without paying a dime extra... Eva Cassidy discography - Wikipedia
 
Re: Don’t real audiophiles own their own media?

Who is an audiophile?

The name ‘audiophile’ was created in a similar way to words like ‘bibliophile’, ‘Russophile’ and similar. It was made by combining the words audio (Latin ‘I hear’) and phílos (Greek ‘friend, friendly’). As you can see, ‘audiophile’ does not mean ‘sound lover’, as it might have seemed. The difference is clear, isn’t it? The true meaning of this word concentrates on listening, and not on sound as it is. We will return to this later.

A really nice definition of the word ‘audiophile’, a philological definition, is given in the Słownik wyrazów obcych (dictionary of foreign words) (authored by Lidia Wiśniakowska, Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2007). According to this definition it is “a person especially interested in high quality sound reproduction and collecting highest class playback equipment”.

Combining these two elements, the name and the definition of the person described by it, we get the following description of the audiophile: “this is a person loving music, taking care of each aspect of its reproduction; caring for playing it back to the fullest extent possible”. ...

So what does an audiophile want, what is he trying to achieve? He wants music at his home, in his ‘system’ (important word) to sound as close as possible to what happened during a concert (if this is a live recording) or in the recording studio (if it is a studio recording) or in his imagination (if this is an electronic music recording, meaning that there is no real life equivalent of it).

High Fidelity
 
It appears from the majority of the opinions that the “quality” of music able to be played has been replaced by the “quantity” of music that can be played three streaming.

So, the definition of the modern audiophile is not so much concerned about quality of the music reproduced as they are about quantity?
 
Calvin, perhaps you are basing your view on the premise that streaming is somehow inferior to physical media? That is not the case. I hear no difference between SACD played through my SACD player and the same album streamed through the DAC of the same player. I have tried and compared with more than a few DACs already. Very easy to do. Tidal MQA actually boasts increasing fidelity with their Master Quality Authenticated codec and seems the industry is going for it. I am not a big fan. Having said that, the Qobuz 192/24 and even 44.1 files are perfectly musical and I can not discern any significant enough difference to even warrant being concerned of losing my audiophile focus of staying true to the music....

As if we can even ever agree on what the concept of being faithful to the signal is... Even the very first stage of the recording, the microphone itself will make a big difference from another. So there is no Universal Standard to faithful reproduction of sound as of today.
 
Calvin said:
It appears from the majority of the opinions that the “quality” of music able to be played has been replaced by the “quantity” of music that can be played three streaming.

So, the definition of the modern audiophile is not so much concerned about quality of the music reproduced as they are about quantity?
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Ok, let's hear about your definition of quality, how you arrived there and what it is you are listening to. Let's hear how you arrived at the conclusion that you may be a better audiophile
 
I stream from Qobuz at times and rarely have a choice of which mastering I can listen to, let alone stereo vs. mono. To me that makes a big difference. Call it what you want, but many people do care about that and that's why they own their own versions.
 
dminches said:
I stream from Qobuz at times and rarely have a choice of which mastering I can listen to, let alone stereo vs. mono. To me that makes a big difference. Call it what you want, but many people do care about that and that's why they own their own versions.
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Correct. I think what people are missing here is that streaming is not generally going to be the best mastered versions of certain recordings. For example, if you stream qobuz "Tea for the tillerman", it is not as good sounding as the analogue productions version, especially on vinyl. No contest. I know, because I've compared them directly just recently.

So I stream for convenience, and most stuff sounds fantastic... But there are some recordings that are simply superior from other sources.

Sent from my SM-N986U1 using Tapatalk
 
Calvin said:
It appears from the majority of the opinions that the “quality” of music able to be played has been replaced by the “quantity” of music that can be played three streaming.

So, the definition of the modern audiophile is not so much concerned about quality of the music reproduced as they are about quantity?
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Nope. I cannot tell a difference in sound quality when playing music that I own vs the same recordings being streamed. All conditions being equal: physical CDs, ripped CDs, or streamed music all playing the same music with the same resolution through the same system sound the same. And based on science, that is the way it is supposed to me.
 
dminches said:
I stream from Qobuz at times and rarely have a choice of which mastering I can listen to, let alone stereo vs. mono. To me that makes a big difference. Call it what you want, but many people do care about that and that's why they own their own versions.
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I have not run into that problem where I wanted to listen to MONO but anything is possible. It seems there are more versions appearing for the genre I like to listen to, Jazz, Funk, Soul, Fusion, Acid, Rock, some Pop, classical, vocals across many genres... etc. I honestly would not have time to even worry about which version since there is so much great music. I prefer Qobuz, select 192/24 if available or the 44.1 will do and away I go for hours at a time. My longest listening session was just over 6 hours in headphones and not once did I feel I was missing a version of an album.

I get the desire to collect physical media. I had tons of CDs from the early days, boxes upon boxes. They were eventually tossed out. I had zero use or interest in the music I used to listen to and is still available on any streaming platform. I had over 400 CDs easily and just as many in ripped format on a few hard drives of various genres.

LPs I gave to my son to store and use if he chooses to. I am not convinced he will but said he may... I did set him up with a nice system a decade ago.

Questioning the status of being an audiophile based on the amount of media? When we have 60,000,000 songs to chose from streaming? I find that very odd...
 
2fastdriving said:
Correct. I think what people are missing here is that streaming is not generally going to be the best mastered versions of certain recordings. For example, if you stream qobuz "Tea for the tillerman", it is not as good sounding as the analogue productions version, especially on vinyl. No contest. I know, because I've compared them directly just recently.

So I stream for convenience, and most stuff sounds fantastic... But there are some recordings that are simply superior from other sources.

Sent from my SM-N986U1 using Tapatalk
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Any other examples? I am sure we can come up with a few dozen perhaps. Then what?
 
I honestly don’t understand the point of threads like these. I feel they add little value. No offense and no tomatoes please.

Ken
 
Here is just an example of the power of streaming and a good library platform. I recently decided to sort and add the top 50 Jazz saxophonists. There are 14 I believe types of saxophones but the ones typically encountered in Jazz are Soprano, Tenor, Alto, Baritone. I picked a very narrow window of time and performers of Hard Bop and Bebop specifically spanning a bit longer than a decade... I cataloged 50 saxophonists and all their albums in Roon. It was over 1,000 albums and I like them all! Now I am working my way through listening to all the ones I have heard over the years plus all the ones I have not yet heard from that list alone. It is not an easy task!

How would I ever match that today? Where would I find all those albums and what would that cost me? For the price of less than one album I have all I mentioned above plus 59,999,000 more songs/musical pieces to go...
 
2fastdriving said:
Correct. I think what people are missing here is that streaming is not generally going to be the best mastered versions of certain recordings. For example, if you stream qobuz "Tea for the tillerman", it is not as good sounding as the analogue productions version, especially on vinyl. No contest. I know, because I've compared them directly just recently.

So I stream for convenience, and most stuff sounds fantastic... But there are some recordings that are simply superior from other sources.

Sent from my SM-N986U1 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I don't need the quantity. I have a hard enough time choosing what to listen to from my collection already.

However, for me the quality does make a difference. I do hear a significant difference with higher resolution and better vinyl. Especially DSD for digital. To truly experience DSD however DSD128 is an absolute requirement. Better yet 256 or 512. I have compared the best my system can do with vinyl and digital. At DSD512 I believe I can no longer hear a difference.

Streaming this level digital is not possible. I have DSD albums that are 17 to 19 GB in size. Storage is cheap. I can carry a few hundred albums in super high rez/DSD(64/128/256) on my portable... No problem, but I know this cannot be streamed.
 
2fastdriving said:
Correct. I think what people are missing here is that streaming is not generally going to be the best mastered versions of certain recordings. For example, if you stream qobuz "Tea for the tillerman", it is not as good sounding as the analogue productions version, especially on vinyl. No contest. I know, because I've compared them directly just recently.

So I stream for convenience, and most stuff sounds fantastic... But there are some recordings that are simply superior from other sources.

Sent from my SM-N986U1 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I am not aware of remastered versions that only appear on LP. To me, it would make little economic sense to do a remaster and just release it in analogue in this day and age. In your “Tea for the Tillerman” example, there are 6 different versions in Qobuz including a 192/24 version. I venture to guess that the Analogue Production remastered version that you are talking about is the 192/24 version shown in Qobuz.
That said, you could be talking about analog versus digital reproduction which is a totally different issue.
 
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