Audiophile witch hunt or basic common sense?

[abacus]

I agree a CD will sound better than my Spotify account, but many platforms offer CD quality, or higher. If they use masters destined for CD production, then they will be bit for bit copies and should sound the same.

Unfortunately, many are not. (Applies to re-mastered physical media as well)

Bill

 

[podknocker]

A vast amount on streaming are re-masters and unfortunately compared to the originals (That are now on only on physical media) suck, big time.

Bill

I don't think the vast amount are re-masters. When I search through Spotify, most of it seems to be the original releases. I play albums from years ago and also their re-masters. I've listened to Dire Straits Brothers in Arms from the 80s and it sounds fantastic. I've also listened to the 20 year anniversary version and the 1996 re-master and that does sound better, with a tighter sound to the guitars and a little more light on the synths and panning effects etc. There seems to be a very dismissive and negative generalisation from non-streaming music fans and it doesn't and won't change my appreciation of streaming. The majority of music I play has been released in the last 15 years and it's only available online, so it's not possible to compare with any physical format. These digital files are high quality at 24 bit possibly and will probably never find their way to a CD or vinyl press. The genres of music I listen to use the latest recording and production techniques and I very much doubt the effort put into these albums would be allowed to suffer through lack of attention, or carelessness. I've said it before, but I think many on here listen to quite old albums of dubious quality and are surprised perhaps when the lack of quality is revealed on newer, high resolution and very revealing media, such as CD or the latest streaming platorms. I think the difference in sound quality between the originals and the re-masters and the difference between online and CD versions, is less than the difference between vinyl and CD. I love CD, even re-masters, but all this music is online now. Spotify has so many versions of the same album and from my experience, there doesn't appear to be any lack of quality. Again, the nitpicking over subtle differences in sound quality does seem odd, when you consider an online or CD version will always sound better than vinyl, using the same master. Add the convenience of streaming and the huge choice, what's not to like?

 

[JDL]

I like both but I prefer physical media because I hate having yet another set of menus to cycle through and connections to this, connections to that. Its just another hassle I'd rather not deal with. Your internet goes down? Guess what... no music, probably even if you've purchased it, lol.

I've had no internet since storm Darragh. I live quite rural but only 1 mile from the A486. Vodaphone, our supplier's customer service department is in South Africa and it's appalling. They are not even aware that Britain had that storm.
They kept giving us dates when the internet and phone would be restored, but the dates come and go with still no internet. Now they've made themselves unavailable.
Of course they still want their monthly payment and they've even had the gall to put the price up on the latest payment.
Openreach have no public complaints phone number. We have now contacted our local member of Parliament and he has promised to try and get Openreach to sort out the line.
It doesn't even look as though there's that much that needs doing. After the storm, the line was down on the road. They cut it, coiled it up and taped it to the pole about eight feet from the ground. Driving along the road quite regularly, we have seen not hide nor hare of Openreach.

 

[abacus]

I don't think the vast amount are re-masters. When I search through Spotify, most of it seems to be the original releases. I play albums from years ago and also their re-masters. I've listened to Dire Straits Brothers in Arms from the 80s and it sounds fantastic. I've also listened to the 20 year anniversary version and the 1996 re-master and that does sound better, with a tighter sound to the guitars and a little more light on the synths and panning effects etc. There seems to be a very dismissive and negative generalisation from non-streaming music fans and it doesn't and won't change my appreciation of streaming. The majority of music I play has been released in the last 15 years and it's only available online, so it's not possible to compare with any physical format. These digital files are high quality at 24 bit possibly and will probably never find their way to a CD or vinyl press. The genres of music I listen to use the latest recording and production techniques and I very much doubt the effort put into these albums would be allowed to suffer through lack of attention, or carelessness. I've said it before, but I think many on here listen to quite old albums of dubious quality and are surprised perhaps when the lack of quality is revealed on newer, high resolution and very revealing media, such as CD or the latest streaming platorms. I think the difference in sound quality between the originals and the re-masters and the difference between online and CD versions, is less than the difference between vinyl and CD. I love CD, even re-masters, but all this music is online now. Spotify has so many versions of the same album and from my experience, there doesn't appear to be any lack of quality. Again, the nitpicking over subtle differences in sound quality does seem odd, when you consider an online or CD version will always sound better than vinyl, using the same master. Add the convenience of streaming and the huge choice, what's not to like?

Most commercial studios use 24/48 for their masters, which are adjusted accordingly for the format it is going into.
How you can compare Spotify (Which being lossy by removing information from the master) to CD or vinyl etc. is beyond me. (While vinyl has a more limited dynamic range there is no information missing, and CD is as original as it comes)
BTW: most of my music listening is via HD streaming and I can give you a 100% absolute guarantee that a lot of the stuff on streaming is re-mastered. (And HD services actually tell you this).
Also try using paragraphs to make things clearer. (Just think you are coding an application for your IT work)

Bill

 

[DougK1]

Getting tired of this broken record. We're all different as to how we like to consume our music, there are enough formats to please everyone. I know what I like and I intend to stick with it.

 

[davidf]

More than available on CD or vinyl and virtually instant access to every available album. There might be some very old and obscure albums not available online and I'm not bothered about those. I listen to 2 or 3 new albums a day and there's more than enough to get through for the remainder of my life. I don't understand the reluctance to accept music streaming is more practical, cheaper and of equal, or higher quality than physical meda. There are no real disadvantages.

Two instances last week for me. One guy popped on a track via streaming (I forget what it was), something he was familiar with, but it didn't sound good at all, it just sounded flat with all the life sucked out of it. The last time someone chose Walk On The Wild Side, that sounded similar too.

Another guy came to see me, and while we were chatting, I had an album on in the background. It's an album I use quite frequently. He liked the sound of it, and asked me what it was and to write it down for him. I did so, but told him he wouldn't find it on any streaming services - all of their albums are available except this particular one. He joked that the CD was likely an expensive one, but thankfully, it isn't.

And as remasters have been mentioned, Roger Waters' Amused To Death can only be had on streaming in its vastly altered, remastered form, not its original release, which I feel is superior musically and is the only version I listen to. The original got pulled when the remaster came out, as is usually the case.

I use streaming services, but only as an aid to my collection. Only today I listened to an album which I recently purchased on vinyl, as I haven't heard it yet, so was interested to see how good it was compared to their other albums. There's no way I could rely on streaming. I grew up in a physical world. Kids nowadays are growing up owning nothing, so they have zero attachment to anything, and put little to no value anything.

 

[spl84]

The failure of an interconnect connection is wildly exaggerated on this forum. My internet connections, either 5G or the ADSL previously, have never failed in 25 years. The last time my internet went down, I was using a dial up modem to connect to Freeserve. In the event of a failure, I could resort to my CDs, or the FLAC copies on my thumb drive. Losing access to online music would be my least concern and I'd be more worried about the loss of social media and other services. My interconnection is more than an online jukebox. It takes seconds to search for an artist, or album on my PC or laptop, using the Spotify connect feature and this is much quicker than searching through CDs, or LPs. My CDs are in a box now and I doubt I will ever play them again. Most of the music I listen to online will never be available on CD anyway and as I've said before, even if all the music was available on CD, it would cost a fortune to buy and I would have nowhere to store thousands of CDs. Finding a physical CD amongst a possible thousand would take much longer than just typing the album name into Spotify search. Having access to every album and podcast within seconds is incredible and there is no chance of me returning to any physical format now. I just copied and pasted 'Beethoven 9 Symphonies, again Deutsche Grammophon, 1963, Karajan' from post #136 above from JDL and Spotify found this within a second and I was playing this within another 2 seconds. I can't see any advantage using physical media, when a 100 million tunes and podcasts are available within seconds. Why bother with thousands of expensive and bulky CDs or LPs?

Different strokes for different folks I guess. I think that's kind of where we're going with this whole thread. I'm not totally against streaming. I use streaming occasionally. Another thing I don't care for is another monthly charge. It's just a personal preference but I DESPISE monthly recurring charges. They're a part of life but I refuse to add anymore. Some streaming services are free but they usually have ads and are lo res. I love to buy a record or cd and it's mine. I own it forever and ever.