More Consensus That Streaming Is An Inferior Format & Not High End?

[godofwealth]

The longstanding puzzle that continues to befuddle me for over 35+ years of high end audio experience is the inconsistency between objective (left brain) and subjective (right brain) thinking. As a long time research academic and now industry professional who thinks about next generation AI technology for his day job, I am naturally comfortable in the world of science and measurements. But my subjective right brain rears itself up each evening when I listen to my various systems.

Last night’s experience was no different. I started by playing a classic 1957 Stan Getz mono album through a Garrard 301 table, SME 312S arm and the fabulous Miyajima Zero Infinity mono cartridge into a Mola Mola Makua preamp with its built in phono stage feeding a pair of Mola Mola Kaluga monoblocks driving Quad 2805 electrostatics. The recording was made almost 70 years ago in LA, but the beauty of Getz saxophone was palpable. After listening to a few more albums, I closed up my table and streamed some albums through Qobuz/Roon into the Makua’s built-in streamer/DAC. Going from mono vinyl to streaming is just a shock. It’s very well captured by JV’s analogy of pouring water into a good glass of wine.

Objectively speaking, a world class DAC like the Tambaqui that’s in the Makua has far better specs than the far noisier Miyajima mono cartridge. A modern DSD or high Rez recording has in theory at least far higher bit rate. And yet my right brain does not agree. The old mono Stan Getz recorded in 1957 was more enjoyable in so many ways. It sounded real. Authentic. Present. Life like. Atmospheric.

Could it just be that our brains like distortion? Does noise make music more enjoyable? Perhaps the vinyl noise modulates the signal in ways that our brains interpret as higher fidelity to the source. Or is it that the much touted specs of digital audio are highly misleading as they often refer to the mythical 0dB case, whereas if you listen to an oboe in a symphony recording, the oboe is playing -60dB down from the maximum 0dB signal. PCM throws bits away as the signal gets fainter. The high resolution of digital audio is a myth in some ways because the average signal is -30-50 dB down where the advantages of digital over analog largely vanish.

Who knows? Since I have to live with both sides of my brain, I enjoy the yin and the yang, vinyl and digital audio, tubes and solid state, electrostatics and horns, SETs and class D amps. Life’s too short to paint yourself into corners. Learn to enjoy different perspectives that analog and digital bring. Vinyl is back more popular than ever for a reason. But streaming will always be the dominant transport format.

Either way, putting my day job hat on, in a few years all of human creative musical genius will be digested by ultra large transformer based deep neural networks with hundreds of trillions of parameters. These successors to ChatGPT will be able to render my Stan Getz album in a myriad new ways, and make him perform musical pieces he never recorded. The end of human creativity in music may not be far away. That AI generated experience will replace today’s streaming and vinyl playback.

 

[caesar]

Gents,
One point I would like to make clear: although Taiko (and streaming in general) is not really for me, I do respect the entrepreneurial spirit of the Taiko team and wish them much success reaching those who appreciate what they do

 

[Kingrex]

"...But obviously other people have had different experiences to form their opinions - either via different perception or via being experientially impoverished.

And the experiences people have in their minds are completely different from what others have in their minds. Disagreements will go on foreever ..."

The point here is how many people have compared a good transport feeding their DAC to their Taiko. Anyone with something better than an OPPO video player.
I have heard some people say they like their Taiko better than other servers they owned prior. That other servers were possibly/negligibly better than a laptop. But people that have focused all their efforts to streaming, are not parallel focusing their efforts to a transport. And for good reason. They want the limitless library. So why bother. But directing all your efforts to a particular source and improving on that source to maybe the highest level that source has achieved does not mean that source has exceeded other digital sources performance level. It just means, for the type of source your using, you are at the top of the heap.

Connect this to the concept of Whatsbest, and you can see how someone can challenge streaming as "Digital" playback and say, if you want to be at the top of the heap with "Digital" music reproduction, there are other formats at this time that "may" surpass streaming if you focus you efforts elsewhere. The answer to this is usually, I don't want to do that as I don't want to buy CD and have to change disc. I want to stream. Well, OK. But that still does not make streaming a sonically superiors source to a well applied transport. It just means you have really good streaming and your happy with it.

 

[spiritofmusic]

The longstanding puzzle that continues to befuddle me for over 35+ years of high end audio experience is the inconsistency between objective (left brain) and subjective (right brain) thinking. As a long time research academic and now industry professional who thinks about next generation AI technology for his day job, I am naturally comfortable in the world of science and measurements. But my subjective right brain rears itself up each evening when I listen to my various systems.

Last night’s experience was no different. I started by playing a classic 1957 Stan Getz mono album through a Garrard 301 table, SME 312S arm and the fabulous Miyajima Zero Infinity mono cartridge into a Mola Mola Makua preamp with its built in phono stage feeding a pair of Mola Mola Kaluga monoblocks driving Quad 2805 electrostatics. The recording was made almost 70 years ago in LA, but the beauty of Getz saxophone was palpable. After listening to a few more albums, I closed up my table and streamed some albums through Qobuz/Roon into the Makua’s built-in streamer/DAC. Going from mono vinyl to streaming is just a shock. It’s very well captured by JV’s analogy of pouring water into a good glass of wine.

Objectively speaking, a world class DAC like the Tambaqui that’s in the Makua has far better specs than the far noisier Miyajima mono cartridge. A modern DSD or high Rez recording has in theory at least far higher bit rate. And yet my right brain does not agree. The old mono Stan Getz recorded in 1957 was more enjoyable in so many ways. It sounded real. Authentic. Present. Life like. Atmospheric.

Could it just be that our brains like distortion? Does noise make music more enjoyable? Perhaps the vinyl noise modulates the signal in ways that our brains interpret as higher fidelity to the source. Or is it that the much touted specs of digital audio are highly misleading as they often refer to the mythical 0dB case, whereas if you listen to an oboe in a symphony recording, the oboe is playing -60dB down from the maximum 0dB signal. PCM throws bits away as the signal gets fainter. The high resolution of digital audio is a myth in some ways because the average signal is -30-50 dB down where the advantages of digital over analog largely vanish.

Who knows? Since I have to live with both sides of my brain, I enjoy the yin and the yang, vinyl and digital audio, tubes and solid state, electrostatics and horns, SETs and class D amps. Life’s too short to paint yourself into corners. Learn to enjoy different perspectives that analog and digital bring. Vinyl is back more popular than ever for a reason. But streaming will always be the dominant transport format.

Either way, putting my day job hat on, in a few years all of human creative musical genius will be digested by ultra large transformer based deep neural networks with hundreds of trillions of parameters. These successors to ChatGPT will be able to render my Stan Getz album in a myriad new ways, and make him perform musical pieces he never recorded. The end of human creativity in music may not be far away. That AI generated experience will replace today’s streaming and vinyl playback.

I think our brains may "like" distortions, vinyl, tubes, maybe even the "pleasing" effects of tweaks. But our brains certainly don't like "noise" or more accurately "hash". And this I believe is why there isn't a streamer setup yet that doesn't within a song or two announce it's presence and shortcomings to me. And I've listened to quite a broad range incl a bespoke server using custom coding.
I can admire the detail resolution and hifi checklist that the best servers serve up. But pure musicality where my brain can just switch off and lap up the experience, not happened yet.
I can quote over a dozen CDPs incl my own that absolutely allow me to melt into the music.
Vinyl, natch'.

 

[Kingrex]

I can quote over a dozen CDPs incl my own that absolutely allow me to melt into the music.

Are you saying your have a transport and DAC and find it fully satisfying?

 

[nonesup]

The longstanding puzzle that continues to befuddle me for over 35+ years of high end audio experience is the inconsistency between objective (left brain) and subjective (right brain) thinking. As a long time research academic and now industry professional who thinks about next generation AI technology for his day job, I am naturally comfortable in the world of science and measurements. But my subjective right brain rears itself up each evening when I listen to my various systems.

Last night’s experience was no different. I started by playing a classic 1957 Stan Getz mono album through a Garrard 301 table, SME 312S arm and the fabulous Miyajima Zero Infinity mono cartridge into a Mola Mola Makua preamp with its built in phono stage feeding a pair of Mola Mola Kaluga monoblocks driving Quad 2805 electrostatics. The recording was made almost 70 years ago in LA, but the beauty of Getz saxophone was palpable. After listening to a few more albums, I closed up my table and streamed some albums through Qobuz/Roon into the Makua’s built-in streamer/DAC. Going from mono vinyl to streaming is just a shock. It’s very well captured by JV’s analogy of pouring water into a good glass of wine.

Objectively speaking, a world class DAC like the Tambaqui that’s in the Makua has far better specs than the far noisier Miyajima mono cartridge. A modern DSD or high Rez recording has in theory at least far higher bit rate. And yet my right brain does not agree. The old mono Stan Getz recorded in 1957 was more enjoyable in so many ways. It sounded real. Authentic. Present. Life like. Atmospheric.

Could it just be that our brains like distortion? Does noise make music more enjoyable? Perhaps the vinyl noise modulates the signal in ways that our brains interpret as higher fidelity to the source. Or is it that the much touted specs of digital audio are highly misleading as they often refer to the mythical 0dB case, whereas if you listen to an oboe in a symphony recording, the oboe is playing -60dB down from the maximum 0dB signal. PCM throws bits away as the signal gets fainter. The high resolution of digital audio is a myth in some ways because the average signal is -30-50 dB down where the advantages of digital over analog largely vanish.

Who knows? Since I have to live with both sides of my brain, I enjoy the yin and the yang, vinyl and digital audio, tubes and solid state, electrostatics and horns, SETs and class D amps. Life’s too short to paint yourself into corners. Learn to enjoy different perspectives that analog and digital bring. Vinyl is back more popular than ever for a reason. But streaming will always be the dominant transport format.

Either way, putting my day job hat on, in a few years all of human creative musical genius will be digested by ultra large transformer based deep neural networks with hundreds of trillions of parameters. These successors to ChatGPT will be able to render my Stan Getz album in a myriad new ways, and make him perform musical pieces he never recorded. The end of human creativity in music may not be far away. That AI generated experience will replace today’s streaming and vinyl playback.

Just out of curiosity, what album was it?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Are you saying your have a transport and DAC and find it fully satisfying?

One box CDP. Fully satisfying in every way, speaking as a former CD hater and vinylphile since I can remember.
After that first decade of truly loathing CD (despite liking one player during that period, Marantz CD12/DA12 from 1989), I was gradually brought around to CD, and by early 00s liked a lot of players, Audiomeca Mephisto, Reimyo CDP-777, EMM Labs CDSA-SE (which I ended up buying), and my current keeper for life the Eera Tentation.
By the mid 2010s, after being told by so many that CDs were glorified coasters and frisbees, and that streaming was "where it is, Daddy-O", I've made plenty of efforts to go and visit guys with top streaming setups, and other than the SGM w T&A Dac8 using HQ Audio, I've been left with truly schizophrenic experiences of huge admiration for raw resolution and detail retrieval allied to reservations on shortfall re texture, tone, sheer immersive musicality.
I'm not a total recidivist, who wouldn't want 93m albums at their fingertips when new vinyl and CD is £20-50 a throw, and collectible vinyl prices are off the scale.
But this is what's BEST forum, not what's CONVENIENT forum, and for me, the BEST of CD and of course vinyl/tape trumps the convenience of streaming.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I think the perspective has to be set to address who Whatsbest is focused towards. Is it the 1% with $10M or more in cash, kids out of college and the house paid for. Or is it for the 99% rest of us. The 99% may want Whatsbest at working man prices. So how do you get there. If your looking for an immersive and "ultimate " digital experience on a budget, you may want to look at a transport. A Jays Audiolab CD3MK3 might possibly sound as good as a $60k Taiko with $20k in additional infrastructure upgrades to the data utility. Thats a $5.5k player head to head with $80k in streaming. Streaming obviously has the versatility of a close to unlimited catalog of music. And if your a 1%er, then why not spend the $80k. You can't take the money with you.

If the average guy is looking for answers that are more down to earth in price structure, that means a transport of some type might be a more realistic route to get peak performance from digital. I personally stream every day. Even if I had a transport, I would stream every day.
In an attempt to get to a higher level of streaming, I do have decent LPS to my modem, router and audiophile brand switch. Spending $20k in power supplies. Get Real. Your obviously talking to the 1%ers of society. There are the 99%ers that are looking for answers to. This might be Whatsbest. But that is not a Carte Blanche Whatsbest for the 1%. Its Whatsbest for all of us. And the other 99% want to know what is the best at a realistic price. That means I want to know if stacking 3 x $100 switches will help streaming. Will a $300 or less LPS help. Will a Puritan Routemaster/City Groundmaster help.

Rex, with threads like this where the format of streaming is being denigrated with some sort of absolutist statement, it's a shot across the bow to many who have much invested in streaming and enjoy it. so the counter is clearly that those making these ignorant claims need to do some work about what is possible with streaming. reality is that ultimate streaming products are expensive.

in a perfect world ddk would have been diplomatic when he started the thread. but as we all know, it's not a perfect world. and that is/was never going to happen.

or maybe it is a perfect world.....for some.

you start a thread with more real world claims, and while it won't have the entertainment value, it might result in less conflict, and more actionable information. at more modest levels to me the whole music access aspect is even more significant than at the top rung as it's the music that stands out more than the performance either way.

streaming is.......inevitable. foot and knuckle draggers be damned.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Rex, with threads like this where the format of streaming is being denigrated with some sort of absolutist statement, it's a shot across the bow to many who have much invested in streaming and enjoy it. so the counter is clearly that those making these ignorant claims need to do some work about what is possible with streaming. reality is that ultimate streaming products are expensive.

in a perfect world ddk would have been diplomatic when he started the thread. but as we all know, it's not a perfect world. and that is/was never going to happen.

or maybe it is a perfect world.....for some.

you start a thread with more real world claims, and while it won't have the entertainment value, it might result in less conflict, and more actionable information. at more modest levels to me the whole music access aspect is even more significant than at the top rung as it's the music that stands out more than the performance either way.

streaming is.......inevitable. foot and knuckle draggers be damned.

I think you'll find my response more moderate and measured. No need to bring up the ghost of DDK.
Yes, the market has spoken. And punters have chosen.
Mike, would you ever run a Wadax Reference server at home to a/b against your Reference Server?
If anyone could make more interesting headway here, you're the man.
All I can say is that I've visited multiple high end server setups. And returning to CD always feels the more musical choice.
And this includes setups where the owner also runs a CDP. Yes, it can be close run. Yes, the servers do a lot of things right.
But what the CDP does right makes for me at least the silver disc option more compelling.
And once I hear what I find less than compelling in streamer SQ, I can't "unhear" it.
But, yes, the market and consumers don't agree with me.

 

[Argonaut]

Rex, with threads like this where the format of streaming is being denigrated with some sort of absolutist statement, it's a shot across the bow to many who have much invested in streaming and enjoy it. so the counter is clearly that those making these ignorant claims need to do some work about what is possible with streaming. reality is that ultimate streaming products are expensive.

Oh My Mike … perhaps consider taking the elevator down to the ground floor of that WADAX Digital Streaming Ivory tower and re evaluate that … Not quite what I am used to reading from you

 

[Argonaut]

I think you'll find my response more moderate and measured. No need to bring up the ghost of DDK.

Not unlike invoking ‘The Scottish Play’ then

 

[Daverich4]

I’ve followed this thread from the beginning and I’m not sure exactly what everyone is considering “streaming”. I’m pretty sure everyone considers listening to Qobuz streaming but what about locally sourced files? I have over 1,000 CDs that have been in a disk tray exactly once. When I play those files from my server across the network, is that streaming? Something else?

 

[Al M.]

It doesn't have to be an either or physical media vs streaming scenario. If someone prefers to listen to music via CD it doesn't preclude them from simply using a streaming service via a laptop or whatever as one amongst other avenues to find new music. A streaming platform integrated into their system isn't mandatory to avoid placing ones head in the sand and missing music

Yes, that's how I use streaming.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Not unlike invoking ‘The Scottish Play’ then

You're right. Bad luck to mention him.

 

[tima]

Quote: “I know nothing about streaming.”

Yet, you revel in Ceaser’s hatchet job postings.

If you wanted to know anything, (doubtful), you could learn quite a bit from people in this forum.

Why are you attacking me? Because someone else said something funny?

 

[Al M.]

But, yes, the market and consumers don't agree with me.

Or you could say, you and I don't follow the herd.

But of course, those who stayed with vinyl rather than digital would say the same.

Regardless, I am comfortable doing what I do, and everyone else should be as well, whatever they may choose. No need for anyone to give in to "peer pressure", from whatever side it may present itself. Such as this one:

streaming is.......inevitable. foot and knuckle draggers be damned.

 

[facten]

streaming is.......inevitable. foot and knuckle draggers be damned

What chapter of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People was the above in?

 

[PeterA]

streaming is.......inevitable. foot and knuckle draggers be damned.

Damned and deplorable.

I don’t mind being a non upright Neanderthal and dragging my knuckles on the floor as a pick up a record so that a rock can scrape across its surface and play what sounds like music to me.

Some non-audio files are coming over tonight and will listen to music over cocktails before retiring for dinner in the dining room. I might play the Girl from Ipanema or some Herb Albert followed by a Beethoven Middle Quartet and a bottle of c c c Chianti.

 

[Brucemck2]

Across multiple rooms and multiple pre/amp/speaker chains I’ve found little to no difference when comparing physical CDs (via multiple great transports) to FLAC files of those same CDs (through multiple great “streamers”) when feeding the same DAC and playback chain. When there was a non-trivial difference (that is, one being “better than” rather than just “different from”) it was usually but not always in favor of the FLAC file. For me, the added benefits of the superior user interfaces makes “streamers” an easy choice.

I generally use Tidal/Qobuz to find new music I love and then source the files (physical disks which I convert to FLAC and directly downloaded files) and store them locally on my media server. (I haven’t yet devoted the time to testing local FLAC files versus those same files streaming in from Tidal/Qobuz, knowing that will take me further down my networking rathole.)

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I think you'll find my response more moderate and measured. No need to bring up the ghost of DDK.

he started the thread. his statement and thread title that were are debating. I did not bring the subject up. he did.

Yes, the market has spoken. And punters have chosen.
Mike, would you ever run a Wadax Reference server at home to a/b against your Reference Server?

not following. not clear what you are suggesting. a typo?

If anyone could make more interesting headway here, you're the man.
All I can say is that I've visited multiple high end server setups. And returning to CD always feels the more musical choice.
And this includes setups where the owner also runs a CDP. Yes, it can be close run. Yes, the servers do a lot of things right.
But what the CDP does right makes for me at least the silver disc option more compelling.
And once I hear what I find less than compelling in streamer SQ, I can't "unhear" it.
But, yes, the market and consumers don't agree with me.

I agree that good quality silver disc playback does things better than decent streaming. but streaming is a moving target, and it's leaped ahead of where it was and continues to improve. that's all I'm saying. I don't see it's a conflict with what you are saying.

if we can stay away from generalized characterizations then that would be helpful. but it's not the way of audio forums.