Over the past 4 years i have built and refined a dedicated system for local and remote streaming. While the journey has been fun, it has involved a great many upgrades of things like power supplies, cables, mains supplies, network components etc. Each time I have made those upgrades my system has needed many weeks to fully run-in. In order to ‘drive’ the running in process I keep internet radio flowing through the network. Very early I discovered Swiss Radio Classics, a 128kbps, MP3 based station. It provides a beautiful selection of well recorded classical music, announcements of the music and occasional station ID….no adverts. The announcements are a collection of recordings made by several different people over a period of 20 years.
In the beginning I used to finish a listening session, switch on SRC then switch the amps to stand by. The next listening session I would hit the standby button and SRC would start to play and I’d again start listening to Qobuz or my library of local files.
Pretty early on in the 4 years I started to notice that with each system improvement I could clearly (very clearly) hear the improvement and the effects of runnning in in the SRC announcers’ voices. The better the system got, the more the human aspects of the voices came across, the mouth sounds, the presence, the intake of breath, the intonations and ‘character’ of the voice, the balance and colouration of the recording, the studio (sound booth) contribution. Running in would add at various times sibilance, treble emphasis and bass emphasis…..anomalies that would suddenly (from one day to the next) disappear to be replaced by additional information and clarity in the same frequency range. Eventually SRC became my ‘tool’ for understanding where I was sonically in the running in process. I made many power supply upgrades and ALL my power supplies bar one are standardised on a single supplier, so I started to notice that running in followed a very similar pattern of development which I’ve now repeated dozens of times.
As things progressed and my system got better and better I started to notice another phenomenon. I would start a listening session by hitting the standby button and an hour or so later would realise that I was still listening to music on SRC. Essentially the initial music would grab my attention with its deep, ethereal beauty and I would be so mentally involved that there was resistance/reluctance to switching it off. It was just too lovely. Too engaging. Now this isn’t to say that with improvements SRC ‘caught up‘ full fat (lossless) streaming. Not at all. But what it does say it that, to a great extent SRC started to remind me, very strongly of sitting in a concert hall. The orchestras sounded similar, the imaging was very similar and the recordings were always premium, such that the music became highly engaging and eminently listenable. The more I listened, the more SRC introduced me to beautiful, highly involving music that I‘d never heard before. With improvements SRC started to deliver true audiophile value, not in outright performance but in content and enjoyment.
Another phenomena. As the system got better still, I found myself not only listening to but thoroughly enjoying genres of music I’d previously not appreciated. Choral recitals, opera, small woodwind pieces. Mmmmmmm. Gorgeous. This stuff had me conducting, then ’chair dancing’ as my entire being got involved and wanted to move to the music. The strength of emotional involvement and the feelings the music generates just keep getting stronger as my system improves.
So after an hour or so of SRC I’ll switch to Qobuz and maybe start a playlist. The difference is huge. The 4 dimensional spaciousness, the immersiveness, the sense of being in a real venue, with real musicians. The power, the scale, the sense that i am present as the music is being created, that there are real instruments making the music, the physicality of the music that I can sense with my entire body, the deep sense of being involved in a performance in a venue that is sonically very unlike my listening room and uniquely different on every recording.
So yes, MP3 and internet radio can improve. Massively! We’re certainly not talking chicken sh*t here. Far from it. We’re talking frozen, prepacked, processed chicken. Not beautiful, highly aromatic roast chicken for sure but a very adequate protein that a good chef can use to create extremely tasty, enjoyable and nutritious meals.
If my past 4 years of hi-fi has taught me one thing its that streaming, both local and remote has more potential to satisfy my audio appetite than any other medium I have worked with and enjoyed over 50 years. And that appetite includes new music, more of the same music and musical performances that make me feel wonderful in all aspects and respects.
