I started streaming music about a year ago. I bought a Bluesound Node, hired an electrician to run an ethernet line from my router to my living/music room, and subscribed to Qobuz. I don't use the DAC in the Bluesound Node, I use the DAC in my Benchmark DAC3 HGC.
Why Qobuz? Well, Qobuz streams everything in the highest resolution available. I think high resolution audio sounds better than CD, and I find mp3 to be unlistenable. I can check something out with mp3, but it sounds like crap to me on the music room kit. I know that Tidal and some others also offer high resolution streams, but Qobuz is also the service that pays artists the highest royalty rate, although it is still too low. If you want to support artists, listen on a streamer, and then buy what you like on Bandcamp, which actually pays artists reasonably well.
But streaming is killing me because I can no longer keep up with all the music I want to hear. New music listed on Qobuz, old music by artists I've liked but not fully explored, recommendations from music blogs I read, and music reviewed in magazines (I've also started using Libby, a library app which lets me read a ton of magazines).
I have 86 records saved in Favorites in BlueOS, the software interface from Bluesound. A while back I put four that I'd like to get back to on a list on my iPad just to get them out of Favorites. That's 90 records I want to hear again, or which I haven't gotten to yet. Many of them get one listen and are then removed, but if I want to hear them again, I leave them in favorites. There might be a better way to save things or file them to a different list in Roon, I'm not sure. I tried Roon for a while but the BlueOS coupled with iTunes Remote (to listen from my iTunes library on my computer) seemed to do most of the Roon functions, and the additional info in Roon didn't seem all that much better than in BlueOS, especially given the cost of Roon, which is even more than Qobuz. If I want credits or more info, Discogs and Wikipedia do a good job with that. Liner notes would be nice, but I guess I'll get over it.
I have over 1100 vinyl records and over 1300 CDs. Over the years, and with recent purges, I have sold off at least as many vinyl records as I now own and a whole bunch of CDs. I am currently working on putting all the CDs on a hard drive accessible through iTunes. I'm about 1/4 of the way through that tedious job. I still buy vinyl occasionally. I used to take a lot of music out from our local library system to hear it, but streaming has replaced that function almost entirely.
When I want to listen to music I love in the best sound, I listen to vinyl. I know the technical arguments regarding digital music's superiority, but those arguments by themselves don't make music sound better. Maybe it's because I grew up with and never left vinyl. CDs generally sound fine to me unless they were transferred to CD in the mid-late eighties, before record companies and mastering facilities got their act together. I very rarely have bought the vinyl version after I bought the CD. For casual listening or background music (music is never really background music to me), I like the playlists I can find on Qobuz, or ones I have generated myself either in iTunes or Qobuz. Everything in my iTunes is lossless digital. I bluetooth music directly to my hearing aides from my phone at the gym. In my car, I have music on a USB flash drive.
Now I have to go work on catching up on my list of Favorites. I've never used the word "work" when discussing listening to music before now. It's killing me.
My CDs are probably close to 2,000, and the LPs over 1,000. Since I'm old enough to remember when new LPs cost under $10, I don't buy new pressings; the idea of spending $30 on something that will depreciate as soon as I play it doesn't appeal. It's more fun to find a used copy of something old, but the vinyl market has become so inflated that it's not easy to find a dollar bin with anything worthwhile anymore. I was pretty good about not having too many duplicates between LP and CD, but the reclusive dollar bins (and people getting rid of their vinyl in bulk) have bent that.
ReplyDeleteI don't have the affliction where MP3s and most streaming sounds horrible; I'm more irritated by surface noise on vinyl and CDs that skip. The CD player I bought on New Year's Day 1994 finally gave out last month after nearly daily service, so I spent about $400 on an Onkyo 6-CD changer that came recommended for its digital conversion. I'm just glad it plays CDs all the way through and doesn't skip when I walk past it.
Most of the listening I do is on Spotify, simply for convenience. That's generally how I listen to something I need to review for the blog if I don't otherwise own it. (I spent about 15 years loading up my iTunes with absolutely essential music I'd want to have on the iPod, as well as things I didn't have in any other format, ripped or otherwise procured.)
A friend does have that affliction, and in addition to owning a Linn Sondek that's he's kept in excellent condition over the decades, supplied me with a Moth turntable and KEF speakers about 20 years ago. He also sent me a Schiit digital converter, so I can just plug a USB cord from my laptop and supposedly hear Neil Young music from his site in best-possible quality.
I shudder to think how technology will have affected my listening routine in 20 years' time, considering where it's gone in the last 20.