I’m for owning my own media. IMO this is part and parcel of being a real audiophile. What about you?
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I’m for owning my own media. IMO this is part and parcel of being a real audiophile. What about you?
I got to agree but I believe you are going to get a lot of push back on this one.
I certainly don't see this as a black and white kind of thing. I stream a LOT. But I also own a decent collection of vinyl and cd/sacd. I continue to grow my collection, but I now focus on more collectible media. I'm more selective.
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I’ll start the push back. Since I listen primarily to new music, streaming is essential for my musical enjoyment. I still listen to my old CD’s and records when the spirit moves me, but most of my time is spent exploring via Tidal and Qobuz. No hard fast rules here. I suspect I am different than most audiophiles in that I am not spending much time in previous musical eras.
What does owning your own media have to do with anything? I own 7 types of media, r2r tape, tape, vinyl, cd's, hdcd's, sacd's and hi-res downloads. Does that make me better than the person who only has cd's or vinyl? I have a dedicated room. Does that make me better than the guy that uses a family room or loft? In my mind the answers are no. Being an audiophile is enjoying the reproduction of music. Streaming doesn't make someone any less "worthy" because they choose not to buy physical media. I prefer streaming to be honest. Less of a hassle and have millions of albums at your fingertips.
Also, I would argue that in order to grow this hobby with the younger generations, we need to more fully embrace streaming. I am confident that as the quality of streaming continues to improve, the gap between physical media and streaming will continue to narrow. It has already narrowed enough for me. My children (in their 20’s) do nothing but stream. My son is a potential audiophile (currently listens with KEF LS50W) but has no interest at all in physical media. He is typical in his peer group.
When I worked in a hifi store I had a few customers that mainly listened to am/fm and spent thousands on tuners. Are they not an audiophile? The media was free.
I am fully aware that some people feel that they need to own a physical thing to feel that they own it. I was one of those people. Years ago when I first heard of Spotify, I thought it was a crazy idea. Then I realized that what I really cared about was the music and not about ‘owning’ anything.
For $15 I can own ONE physical CD that I can play for the rest of my life. Or for the same amount of money I can listen to TENS of MILLIONS of CDs immediately.
To me, the choice is easy: MILLIONS > 1.
Ok, I'll bite... on this bait.
Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy. At least Pinocchio had a clear cut understanding what needed to happen to quantify him as a real boy. :rolleyes:
What quantifies an audiophile to be a "real audiophile"?
So in your example, it is defined by the presence or lack of physical media.
Let's break it down then. How much to earn your stripes?
Would it be 100, 1000, 10,000 or more records and/or CDs or R2R tapes (everyone should be so lucky)
The biggest record collection exceeds 6,000,000 records. The World’s Largest Collection of Vinyl Records – Vacheron Costantin : Reed Young.
So 6,000,000 records is a "real audiophile"? Although he will never listen to even 1/1000 of them.... Everyone else is just a wanna be audiophile who one day wish to achieve the status of a real one?
Now let's consider facts. Stylus can reach temperatures high enough to actually melt the groove while playing the vinyl record depending on the parameters. Even if it doesn't the fact remains the same. Vinyl degrades over time or hundreds of spins or it can be wrecked with one bad spin on a faulty setup.
CDs? CDs suffer from DISC ROT... so much for that "perfect sound forever" Disc rot - Wikipedia
R2R tapes? Even worse demise... They need to be saved and it is a temporary fix at best.... They degrade over time. That includes DAT tapes (not that anyone even uses or remembers them anymore.)
So which media is FOREVER? And why should I bother holding on to aging physical media that either gets worn out or rots away eventually?
You guessed it. Ones and Zeros on a server in multiple copies. Nothing will change it if it keeps being duplicated as technology evolves. Well... a well placed asteroid might put an end to that as well... But who will care at that point? :cool:
The audiophile that you are talking about is what I call the ‘old school’ audiophile.
There is now a ‘new school’ audiophile who is computer savvy and who is into streaming.
Not surprisingly, the ‘new school’ audiophile is also challenging a whole bunch of myths long held as truths by the old school guys.
Tidal and Qobuz have approximately 60,000,000 songs to listen to each. Take your pick.
I have once calculated what it would take to listen to all of them out of curiosity. The industry average is 3.5 minutes or 210 seconds... 210 seconds and 60,000,000 songs work out to be 399.54 human years of non-stop listening. Yes, I triple checked my math...
Need I say more? For the price of one CD a month I have access to the world library and not enough of a lifetime to listen to even a fraction of it. Why would I want to spend multiples and have multiples less to listen to?
The other argument of course can be but physical media sounds better. My vinyl, my vinyl! Yes, OK, vinyl is a fun listen. Better? I beg to differ. So my best analog rig was the SME 20.2/V/Dynavector XXII MKII. cart. Dr. Feickert protractor, fozgometer, VPI Typhoon cleaning machine, distilled water, cleaning fluids, brushes, ad nauseam... Over $20k invested. I researched and setup many cartridges over the years so I knew what I was doing. Was it better? It was different... A different presentation at best compared to my digital front ends over the years. What used to piss me off to no end is paying $50 for a record and being disappointed by the pressing quality/surface noise or the sound of a very bad digital master being cut into vinyl for profit and it was clearly audible.
These days... I have a choice of the same album between Tidal and Qobuz, whether I want it in 44.1 or 192 and 16 vs 24 bits... I like those choices and not having to clean my precious physical media...
So, a person who has never heard tape, vinyl or CDs, but merely streams is a real audiophile?
I think you need to define what an audiophile is before you try to answer the question.
The one thing I do disagree with is "a 'new school' audiophile who is computer savvy and who is into streaming". I consider myself to be computer savvy, or at least all my bosses over many years have who paid me a decent amount to be their computer expert in one facet or another have at least :D. So I do computers but I do not stream. My digital files live on my server, on my portable player, and backed up on three devices.
I also consider my digital downloads as owning the media because listening to it does not depend on external connection (the Internet). An Internet outage and there is no music. Traveling in the country and you very well might be out of music.
I own my music. Does that make me an Audiophile and those that only stream not. Of course not. To each their own 😎✌.
Owning vinyl and thumbing through albums is a lot of fun. I’ll see an album I’ve forgotten all about and put it on and it always puts a smile on my face. I did that last night with this one:
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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....
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
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.
There are no issues with the quality of streaming music. You can have your cake and eat it to.
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.
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.
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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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
I would say that streaming actually made the audiophile into a musicphile... At least in my case. If sitting on a few hundred best sounding albums is being an audiophile, count me out. There is only so many times I can listen to Diana Krall, Rebecca Pidgeon and a few dozen popular MoFi discs... I go through a hundred albums a week at least just listening to stuff I enjoy and discovering new music I like even more constantly.
There are actually 14 albums of Tea for Tillerman between Qobuz and Tidal, including the Deluxe versions... I don't even know which one to begin with...
Sorry for the confusion. No, I didn't mean to bring up the whole analog vs digital thing again. I'm saying that the mastering is what I'm finding is most important, and different between the streaming versions and what you will find on sacd and vinyl.
The problem with the 24/96 and higher streaming versions, is that we really don't know what they are. I suppose it is possible that some are analogue productions etc.
I don't believe the "Tea for the tillerman" one is.
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Speaking of quality... Eva's album mentioned earlier. I have the original release, when they finally decided to release it years after the fact, and years after her very untimely death. It was in CD and sounded great, but when they realize these tapes they had may be one of the finest live recordings on record they started releasing better vinyl, etc., versions and the "audiophile" community loved them. Recently the did the entire package, full unedited concert (mistakes and all) in 45 RPM... Oh my God, best sounding that I have heard 😊.
Been spinning since earlier in this thread; on side two of disk three now 😍.
How confident are we that our analog rigs, the choice of tonearms/carts/decks/phonostages and especially the meticulous setup required for proper analog performance is up to snuff to compete with 192/24 of streaming?
Asking for a friend...
Just a reminder that when we are speaking of media we aren’t just speaking of CDs and SACDs, but tape and vinyl as well. Are any here seriously stating any streaming is equal to tape and vinyl? IMO even CDs beat streaming, and tape and vinyl surpass it even more so.
I compare my digital and my analog. Admittedly, my gear is not at the level of many others, however the best I can do is what I have to use in comparison. Setting up a turntable is not that hard, but I also assume that many of the tables some of these folks have are much more involved 😁.
Well, you are simply wrong just as I suspected. Hence the explanation of your post based on assumptions that do not match reality of things. What cartridge are you using? Surely a $15k MC cartridge will sound different than a $500 MM. What tape machine and what R2R tape/recording are you comparing here? Do you own much R2R material? Which have you compared to streaming?