I have bought a Naim XS 2 for my Dynaudio Focus 260. It is a perfect match. Now i doubt to replace my Marantz cd 6004 for a Naim CD5si. Will it give a better sound? Or better keep the Marantz and buy a streamer?
peterpan said:I have more than 500 cd's but none of them ripped. But isn't the CD era end?
chebby said:peterpan said:I have more than 500 cd's but none of them ripped. But isn't the CD era end?
No. Probably not for a long time to come. Even the vinyl era hasn't ended yet (in fact it's thriving again) and CDs have been around for over 30 years.
Buy what you are most comfortable with and don't worry. People who rip their CDs still buy new ones. (My purchase of CDs has doubled - or even tripled - since I sold my last dedicated CD player.)
peterpan said:All what i read is that the trend is streaming. But then which one? Naim is fine, but very expensive. The new Sony with harddisk? Or Cambridge or Pioneer n50? Marantz comes this year with the new NA 8005.
Al ears said:If you really intend to head down the streaming route it is going to cost you particularly if buying hi-res downloads.
matt49 said:Al ears said:If you really intend to head down the streaming route it is going to cost you particularly if buying hi-res downloads.
Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite. Of course, you're right about hi-res downloads. But streaming at CD quality needn't be expensive.
I was going to suggest doing the two, CD and streaming, in parallel. So keep playing CDs, but at the same time dip a toe in the water of streaming (excuse the pun). For instance, some CDPs and universal disk players now have digital inputs. As for the streamer, there are good guides on the web explaining how to build a streamer for next to nothing. And some off-the-shelf streamers aren't too expensive, e.g. the Sonos Connect.
Matt
MadSquirrel said:As for the FLAC v MP3 argument, I won't go into that here any more than to say that I use MP3 almost exclusively, but at very high bitrates with a particular set of options to LAME, which at worst will be indistinguishable from the original WAV or FLAC (on top-notch equipment), and may even sound better (on cheaper equipment, by removing inaudible signals it actually lowers the noise floor of the recording, meaning that a cheaper amplifier won't be wasting power amplifying a signal that you can't hear at the expense of what you can hear).
drummerman said:However, when it comes to ripping a cd collection, I still think Flac makes most sense as a true lossless copy. Storage space is cheap these days and it is easy to batch convert from Flac to another format if and when needed.
regards