Digital Drive

Ditto

173.22.28.11

garymuffley

In Reply to: RE: What if... CD better that streaming 16/44.1? posted by Ivan303 on December 09, 2023 at 16:36:41

CDs played on my Audio Note transport and Audio Note dac sound better than streaming on Qobuz on a Bluesound 2i through the Audio Note dac. Not "night and day" differences, but certainly audible. That said, I listen to Qobuz a lot to hear music I don't own (primarily classical) and to sample music I am not familiar with.

Follow Ups:

RE: Ditto - srl1 08:48:28 12/10/23 (0)
Gary, glad to see you got the Bluesound. I do most of my listening through a Bluesound Node X and a Benchmark DAC 3B or the digital input to my Marantz SA-KI Ruby. I still get the feeling that an SACD version of some of the hirez streams sounds better but finances kind of discourage such duplication. I have noticed in the past that a wired connection from the internet to the Bluesound sounds better than a wireless one, and I can fortunately do that with the current hardware placement.
RE: Ditto - cawson@onetel.com 08:46:37 12/10/23 (2)
Well, let's be fair! How much is the Audio Note transport and how much is the Bluesound 2i?
I've not looked up prices, but I suspect the AN is costly "hi-fi" while the 2i is perhaps less costly "mid-fi". Is so, that will easily explain why CD playback sounds marginally better than streaming,
Get yourself a hi-fi streamer and it's likely your findings will be reversed.
Think about it - you CD stores music digitally in 16/44.1 quality. Getting it off the disc in real time (that's how CDPs work) will inevitable incur some errors. These are explained by the imperfection in cleanliness of the CD itself, or the failure of the laser to pick up every single bit on the only occasion it examines the disc. Good CDPs include an error correction circuit that "makes up" missing bits to reproduce the missing ones as best it can, CDPs have been doing this for decades and have no better method.
The streaming service will have the exact digital file that the CD is storing if you are looking at Qobuz or Tidal's standard CD quality service - not Spotify or other MP3 quality streaming services. Your streamer grabs this file in batches and feeds it in ironed-out corrected time to the DAC. Not a single bit should be lost (unlike a CDP) so the sound quality should be marginally better than the CD.
If your CDs sound better, then get a higher quality streamer. If you want even better, use Qobuz HD files for better quality than CD can offer. Or look at Tidal's MQA files that use complex processing to imitate higher quality than CD - but this claim is often challenged!
For my money, a good streamer that outputs via AES/EBU (not optical or coax) should better the comparable output from a CD transport.
Remember also that the source (your CD collection vs the Qobuz library) is 1000 times bigger in the case of Qobuz.
I hope this simple explanation helps to show why well-streamed digital music should sound marginally better than the same digital music obtained via a CDP's laser as it scans the disc's surface in real time

Edits: 12/10/23 12/10/23 12/10/23
- RE: Ditto - Mel 09:13:26 12/10/23 (0)
  I agree, for it is my experience that streamers sound better than cd players so it is a no brainer for me to rip my cds (and sacds) and play back via a streamer. Not to mention the convenience.
  
  However, as for "should sound marginally better," too often what should should better, as because it measures better, actually doesn't. That's just why your only dependable guide are your ears.
- A lot of those so-called Hi-Fi streamers.... - Ivan303 08:57:01 12/10/23 (0)
  have a Raspberry Pi built in. And some don't even use a linear supply, if you dare to take the cover off.
  
  So I'm guessing you would have to call a Raspberry Pi with a linear power supply and a decently designed S/PDIF 'hat' with AES3 output as Hi-Fi?
  
  First they came for the dumb-asses
  And I did not speak out
  Because I was not a dumb-ass

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