CDs, downloads, streaming

[jayne lee wilson]

Dave2K2...

Try http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com, and look at "Media Players" for a witty and unpartisan discussion of the issues here.

Evidently, the differences are effects of the types of processing used, the power draw on the CPU etc., how far the MC can shut down unnecessary computer functions while playing (charmingly called "hog mode"). Audirvana offers two choices of sound - given the lack of any further info (unlike hifi hardware, MC designers tend to keep their secrets ...) I guess these act like the filters that most Dacs offer to the user as well. In my case this means at least 3 choices of digital output feeding 4 choices of Dac filter . So, too bad if you don't enjoy the selection process...

With any Media Player, you should use USB Asynchronous if you can as the feed to the Dac, as this puts the Dac's clock in charge and minimises any inaccuracy in the computer stream (i.e the dreaded jitter). Most Dacs at all price levels offer this input now. Having said that, I do get very good results with 24-bit on optical too. And yes, very different-sounding to my preferred USB (brighter, more recessed soundstage).

Among many misadventures in the implementation process was the discovery that the USB outputs on a given computer sound different. On a mac, go to "about this mac>more info>system report" and look at USB. Plug the computer cable into each in turn, and choose the one with the fewest functions feeding off it.
I all but gave up on USB a few months ago after indiscriminately choosing the wrong one - I got muted dynamics, a spatially-challenged soundstage, and 24-bit files (well, ALL files) were a distant 2nd to CD. I found this tip in the Audirvana Manual...
(Of course, getting around to running things off a dedicated Mac mini would - correction, should - bypass problems like this).

[Dave2002]

Jayne

Thanks for that - I'll follow it up - slowly. I wasn't going to comment much on CD players vs streaming, but recently I put on some new CDs - actually quite old recordings of jazz, recently purchased - and I was struck by the quality through my CD player. There could have been all sorts of reasons - perhaps I don't always listen on speakers, perhaps I had the volume turned up a bit etc., but basically the experience was good, and enjoyable. My CD player is a rather decent Marantz, and I think it does compare quite well with several DACs I've heard.

I have listened to various audio forms in recent months - for convenience - including downloads and streaming, and my CD player definitely sounded better. OTOH, if one is on a train in the middle of the night one is sometimes thankful for iPod or iPad music - and the environment and other distractions are not conducive to appreciation of high audio quality.

I was amused at these two links, found in the section on Media Players which you mentioned:

The Zen of Classical Music Tagging

http://blog.musichi.eu/post/28748522...ging-part1-the Part 1
http://blog.musichi.eu/post/36172452...ng-part-2-with Part 2

The series is incomplete, and I gather that Part 3 will emerge in due course. These might be helpful for others round here who are trying to catalogue their music collections - currently on another thread.

Re using a Mac Mini as a dedicated system - maybe I can do that - but I also note from the link that some are using Raspberry Pi kit for this purpose. I don't know how good that would be, but it would be relatively very cheap - and some people might like a project. I myself had thought of doing Raspberry Pi things, as in theory I might have time, but the way things are working out I've just not got round to it, nor have I invested in the kit, unlike some of my friends who bought the devices, but haven't constructed/used them.

[reinerfan]

I use CD quality downloading when I need the recording urgently, or the download is significantly cheaper than the physical CD, and I can hear the difference between CDs, SACDs and Blu-ray, with the appropriate high quality equipment for playback. In the circumstances, high quality downloads would be useful, and an "Idiot's Guide" to this type of downloading and, in particular, playback would be useful. Can anyone recommend such a guide?

[Stunsworth]

In the circumstances, high quality downloads would be useful, and an "Idiot's Guide" to this type of downloading and, in particular, playback would be useful. Can anyone recommend such a guide?

One important thing for Mac users to bear in mind is that the bit depth and sampling rate is set by the first track that's played after starting iTunes. So if you play a standard 16/44.1 track, and then play a 24/96 track, the ouput from iTunes will remain as 16/44.1 when the higher resolution track is played.

There are two ways of getting iTunes to play higher resolution tracks correctly. Quit iTunes (assuming it's running) then select the audio/midi program in the utilites folder. Then change the bit depth and sampling frequency to match the file you want to play.

The second way of playing tracks at the correct settings is to use software such as Audirvana or Pure Music. They are able to switch settings on the fly ensuring that the music is played with the correct technical settings.

[Dave2002]

The second way of playing tracks at the correct settings is to use software such as Audirvana or Pure Music. They are able to switch settings on the fly ensuring that the music is played with the correct technical settings.

Having tried to figure out what some of the software does very recently, it seems that Bit Perfect will also do that. I wondered what it's all about, but apparently Bit Perfect uses the iTunes cataloguing/indexing and data base, but the music files can be of different types. Bit Perfect will automatically switch between file types, and hopefully choose the "best" audio output setting. The intention is to work with DACs which use the CoreAudio interface, though I've no idea whether my main DAC (Beresford Caiman) works with that software and the CoreAudio API. Some of these software tools try to improve the soundquality by various means, such as pre-loading data into memory. Audirvana+ is now around 59-60 Euros.

[seabright]

I'm amused to read the phrase "only available as a download" repeatedly stated here. I know from the BBC's own demographic surveys that Radio 3's listeners are primarily white males aged 65 or over and that the majority of them are in their 70s. This is borne out by some of the comments made here by collectors who reminisce about having heard a work for the first time on an LP they bought back in the 1960s, ie: half-a-century ago!

Well gentlemen, you'd better start teaching yourselves how to download and then how to copy from your hard-drives to a blank recordable CD-R, so that you can play it on your CD players, as that's the way the wind is blowing. I've been told recently that Guild Historical, with its large catalogue of great performances from the past by the likes of Toscanini, Stokowski, Szell, Mitropoulos, along with many great instrumentalists too, will no longer be pressing CDs. Their sales returns simply don't cover the production costs, let alone make any kind of profit. Consequently, as downloading is all it's going to be sooner or later, some self-teaching will have to be the order of the day! As this article says at the end: "The CD is dying. It will go obsolete like the floppy disc did. It just always takes a little more time than you’d think.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/28/how-the-compact-disc-lost-its-shine

[MickyD]

I'm a white male well under 60 and have no intention of teaching myself how to download. With an already extensive CD collection, I will keep on adding to it with the various sellers on the Amazon marketplaces. The floppy disc may well have gone obsolete, but the same cannot be said of the LP. I'd wager that the CD will be with us for many years to come.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The floppy disc may well have gone obsolete. . .

Not at all.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imation-Floppy-Disk-1-44-12881/dp/B001B0DCSK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491658005&sr=8-1&keywords=floppy+disc

[MickyD]

Not at all.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imation-Flo...ds=floppy+disc

Interesting...in fact, I was just making reference to the previous claim by seabright.

[BBMmk2]

I'm a white male well under 60 and have no intention of teaching myself how to download. With an already extensive CD collection, I will keep on adding to it with the various sellers on the Amazon marketplaces. The floppy disc may well have gone obsolete, but the same cannot be said of the LP. I'd wager that the CD will be with us for many years to come.

I was saying earlier, MickyD, why do the reviewers pick a download?

[pastoralguy]

I'm a white male well under 60 and have no intention of teaching myself how to download. With an already extensive CD collection, I will keep on adding to it with the various sellers on the Amazon marketplaces. The floppy disc may well have gone obsolete, but the same cannot be said of the LP. I'd wager that the CD will be with us for many years to come.

According the 'answers' website there are ar least 670.9 Billion CDs in the world. That's a LOT of music so I suspect cd will see most of us out.

[visualnickmos]

.....but the same cannot be said of the LP. I'd wager that the CD will be with us for many years to come.

Absolutely. I've never bought anything 'downloaded' I like to own the physical object. If the technology goes pear-shaped, at least you still have the music!

[HighlandDougie]

Heavens! What a line up of, "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells", posters. I'm amused that it seems to have become a kind of badge of honour to say, "Oh no, I never 'do' downloads". I think that Seabright is right in his assertion that record companies will increasingly ditch physical media - the CD - in favour of downloads or, almost bizarrely, vinyl. The latter has become a niche product (which can command high retail prices) whereas the latter is not in any way "niche" (unless, like clever old Universal, you take some classic recordings - Kertesz's Dvorák, for example - put them in a box, remaster the recordings, include a proper booklet, throw in a Blu-Ray version and claim that it is a "limited edition" - and charge a respectable but not outrageous price). And anyway, what's not to like about downloads? Better sound as high-Res files than CDs, price (often cheaper than the CD) and the instant gratification that comes from the fact that clicking a few buttons on a PC brings, say, Georg Solti's "Dances of Galanta" into one's collection (as it did with me earlier). As to the fetishisation of the physical object, i.e. a CD in a plastic box, well, isn't it the music that's the important thing? Not difficult to burn downloads to "Audio Quality" CD-Rs. Not, of course, that any of this stops me buying CDs as well as downloads ....

[MickyD]

Whoa, steady on, Dougie!

I don't regard myself as a 'Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells' person at all, nor a fetishist for plastic boxes! I am sure you are right that companies will increasingly ditch physical media. I have nothing against those who prefer downloads, but they are just not for me - not at the moment, anyway, because being a bit of a technophobe, I simply don't have the know-how like many of you.

[richardfinegold]

I'm amused to read the phrase "only available as a download" repeatedly stated here. I know from the BBC's own demographic surveys that Radio 3's listeners are primarily white males aged 65 or over and that the majority of them are in their 70s. This is borne out by some of the comments made here by collectors who reminisce about having heard a work for the first time on an LP they bought back in the 1960s, ie: half-a-century ago!

Well gentlemen, you'd better start teaching yourselves how to download and then how to copy from your hard-drives to a blank recordable CD-R, so that you can play it on your CD players, as that's the way the wind is blowing. I've been told recently that Guild Historical, with its large catalogue of great performances from the past by the likes of Toscanini, Stokowski, Szell, Mitropoulos, along with many great instrumentalists too, will no longer be pressing CDs. Their sales returns simply don't cover the production costs, let alone make any kind of profit. Consequently, as downloading is all it's going to be sooner or later, some self-teaching will have to be the order of the day! As this article says at the end: "The CD is dying. It will go obsolete like the floppy disc did. It just always takes a little more time than you’d think.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...lost-its-shine

U.K. data quoted in Steophile by Paul Messenger a few months ago showed that downloads in 2016 had fallen by 50% from their peak of a few years ago. Downloads make sense for a company such as Guild but at this rate of decline they would disappear long before CD sales, which have stabilized after years of shrinkage.
The truth is that all media will persist. Streaming will predominate but vinyl, CDs, downloads, SACD, Blu Ray will all have a presence