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

[rando]

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?

Consideration given towards how the smaller pieces of an encampment fit together in current guise.


At a low level you have the differences between serving files and streaming them to contend with. Keep in mind Qobuz allows local storage for playback if that interests you.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

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

I lose my sh*t once in a while like everyone. but maybe I hit delete quicker most of the time. but not this time.

 

[rando]

not following. not clear what you are suggesting.

Trial pitting Reference Transport against your Reference Server.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Trial pitting Reference Transport against your Reference Server.

ok. Roy Gregory just did that compare with the Wadax Atlantis Transport. read it. I linked it earlier.

not sure the new Wadax Reference Transport will fare any differently.

variables are more from recording to recording and transfer to transfer than any advantage. that is if the streaming gets all the tricks and whistles that Wadax can provide. there are slight differences but without distinction.

will I ever have either transport to go down this road? I don't expect that to happen. but it could I guess. all the while streaming will continue to improve incrementally.

 

[spiritofmusic]

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

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

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.

Typo hell! I meant the possibility of a Wadax Ref Server v Wadax Ref Transport at some point.
I'm not seeing any bad blood or ad hominems on the thread. The OT has drifted into the night.
Just my heartfelt verdict, long term, multiple setups over multiple visits to guys, where other than the first track or two, mental distraction to what I *subjectively* feel sounds *better*, or cognitive dissonance turning me off.
I can be both super impressed with the raw resolution of detail off the best streamers I've heard while feeling a disconnect in the rest of the sonic picture.

 

[spiritofmusic]

ok. Roy Gregory just did that compare with the Wadax Atlantis Transport. read it. I linked it earlier.

not sure the new Wadax Reference Transport will fare any differently.

variables are more from recording to recording and transfer to transfer than any advantage. that is if the streaming gets all the tricks and whistles that Wadax can provide. there are slight differences but without distinction.

will I ever have either transport to go down this road? I don't expect that to happen. but it could I guess. all the while streaming will continue to improve incrementally.

Mike, you pride yourself on not just having *the very best*, but a *whole range of the very best options*.
How many permutations of tt/arm/cart do you run? And tape alongside.
Surely like your meta choices on analog, where one combo or machine will sound better on one album, the same *potentially* (I would say definitely) should apply to certain albums on streamed v silver disc.
Of the 0000s of CDs you own, surely if we meet even in the middle, that would mean a few hundred CDs being superior, maybe very superior to streamed.
You're in a prime position to tell us, Wadax Ref Server and Dac in situ.

 

[godofwealth]

Just out of curiosity, what album was it?

Here’s one of my mono Stan Getz albums I really like. This one is on Qobuz, but I can’t find the other ones I like. It’s interesting, we think wow, streaming has so much available to listen to. When you start to dig into the old jazz classics, as well as big band etc., you realize how limiting streaming is. The popular stuff is all there on streaming. The really good rare old stuff? Not so much.…

 

[caesar]

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.

....

Mike,
High end audio is a subjective experience. There is nothing "absolutist" or objective about that.

DDK, Valin, Roy Gregory, Spirit, myself, and others are just describing their experience. No one is saying you or others should not enjoy it. It's just that we find it inferior and find better use of time for our time.

I am sincerely thrilled that you enjoy your wadax and a bunch of guys like their taiko. Why assume that others should be emotionally moved by what you like?

 

[godofwealth]

I would go as far as to say streaming is not yet a high end product. Yes, undoubtedly, there are expensive streamers, stretching into the six figures. But that doesn’t make streaming high end. The problem is that you have the rest of the zillions of components to worry about that you cannot possibly control. When you stream via Roon/Qobuz, the bits are coming to you from a cloud server many (hundreds or thousands) of miles away. It’s a miracle of modern science that this works at all, thanks largely to many smart engineers and scientists (like Claude Shannon, who invented much of the science that modern digital technology relies on, and of course, many computer scientists, software developers etc. who made the web possible, including one of my former academic colleagues who invented the principle of overlay networks in his PhD thesis at Princeton without which streaming would be impossible).

What you can control in streaming is the proverbial ”last mile”, or make that, the ”last few feet”! Yes, you can optimize that to your hearts content, invest heavily in fancy Ethernet cabling, switches, linear power supplies for your sever, and all the nitty gritty of fanless PCs that the likes of Taiko, Wadax etc. have done. All of this is wonderful, of course, and a real work of passion. But, let’s face it, you cannot control the server side. It’s like streaming movies via Netflix. Sure, you can invest in a fancy projector, the best HDMI cables money can buy, a very fancy AV sound system etc. But you cannot control what algorithms Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime or Apple TV uses to stream the bits to you. That‘s out of your control.

True high end streaming will arrive when you can really control the quality of streaming on the server side better. That’s not economical yet. Roon exists as a mass market product. They have to cater to the many rather than the few. Spotify is still the most profitable and widely subscribed streaming service (watch the Netflix series “The PlayList” for an absolutely fabulous account of how Spotify came about, and streaming was invented, largely due to the genius of one crazy dude, Daniel Ek).

I love the convenience of streaming and would be lost without it. It has let me enjoy much new music that is being recorded today, and I have enjoyed listening to many high res recordings of obscure classical composers. But, for me at least, it is not yet a high end product, no matter how much money you throw at the streamer. That‘s not the problem, that’s just the last few feet. You have the hundreds or thousands of miles to contend with.

Let me make an analogy. A few years ago, hedge funds discovered microtrading, where algorithms that make trades every few milliseconds on the stock market could benefit from absolutely whittling down the tiny millisecond delays that occur in mass market networks. So, they invested hundreds of millions of dollars laying down optical fiber from their trading floors down to the stock exchange, and chasing down each and every connection in the chain till they were absolutely sure they had the lowest possible latency. Hugely expensive. But when you are trading in the trillions of dollars, every little nanosecond you save could pay for itself in faster trades. It’s a dog eat dog world in the hedge fund world.

Want true high end streaming? That’s what it might take. High speed optical fiber technology from Qobuz servers down to your listening room, with the absolutely lowest latency, and you work on optimizing every last bit of the chain. That’s not practical now, but perhaps one day, there will be a large enough market for true high end streaming. Of course, you still have to live with the limitations of PCM technology. To me, the true high end digital format has yet to be invented (I speak as a 40+ year geeky computer scientist!). You have to really focus on what‘s important for human hearing, not what’s technologically or algorithmically feasible to implement with today’s hardware. Chasing higher bit rates or bit depths might be entirely the wrong thing to do, as it’s not clear to me that is the limiting factor.

 

[wil]

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

To me it was anything but funny

 

[wil]

I would go as far as to say streaming is not yet a high end product. Yes, undoubtedly, there are expensive streamers, stretching into the six figures. But that doesn’t make streaming high end. The problem is that you have the rest of the zillions of components to worry about that you cannot possibly control. When you stream via Roon/Qobuz, the bits are coming to you from a cloud server many (hundreds or thousands) of miles away. It’s a miracle of modern science that this works at all, thanks largely to many smart engineers and scientists (like Claude Shannon, who invented much of the science that modern digital technology relies on, and of course, many computer scientists, software developers etc. who made the web possible, including one of my former academic colleagues who invented the principle of overlay networks in his PhD thesis at Princeton without which streaming would be impossible).

What you can control in streaming is the proverbial ”last mile”, or make that, the ”last few feet”! Yes, you can optimize that to your hearts content, invest heavily in fancy Ethernet cabling, switches, linear power supplies for your sever, and all the nitty gritty of fanless PCs that the likes of Taiko, Wadax etc. have done. All of this is wonderful, of course, and a real work of passion. But, let’s face it, you cannot control the server side. It’s like streaming movies via Netflix. Sure, you can invest in a fancy projector, the best HDMI cables money can buy, a very fancy AV sound system etc. But you cannot control what algorithms Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime or Apple TV uses to stream the bits to you. That‘s out of your control.

True high end streaming will arrive when you can really control the quality of streaming on the server side better. That’s not economical yet. Roon exists as a mass market product. They have to cater to the many rather than the few. Spotify is still the most profitable and widely subscribed streaming service (watch the Netflix series “The PlayList” for an absolutely fabulous account of how Spotify came about, and streaming was invented, largely due to the genius of one crazy dude, Daniel Ek).

I love the convenience of streaming and would be lost without it. It has let me enjoy much new music that is being recorded today, and I have enjoyed listening to many high res recordings of obscure classical composers. But, for me at least, it is not yet a high end product, no matter how much money you throw at the streamer. That‘s not the problem, that’s just the last few feet. You have the hundreds or thousands of miles to contend with.

Let me make an analogy. A few years ago, hedge funds discovered microtrading, where algorithms that make trades every few milliseconds on the stock market could benefit from absolutely whittling down the tiny millisecond delays that occur in mass market networks. So, they invested hundreds of millions of dollars laying down optical fiber from their trading floors down to the stock exchange, and chasing down each and every connection in the chain till they were absolutely sure they had the lowest possible latency. Hugely expensive. But when you are trading in the trillions of dollars, every little nanosecond you save could pay for itself in faster trades. It’s a dog eat dog world in the hedge fund world.

Want true high end streaming? That’s what it might take. High speed optical fiber technology from Qobuz servers down to your listening room, with the absolutely lowest latency, and you work on optimizing every last bit of the chain. That’s not practical now, but perhaps one day, there will be a large enough market for true high end streaming. Of course, you still have to live with the limitations of PCM technology. To me, the true high end digital format has yet to be invented (I speak as a 40+ year geeky computer scientist!). You have to really focus on what‘s important for human hearing, not what’s technologically or algorithmically feasible to implement with today’s hardware. Chasing higher bit rates or bit depths might be entirely the wrong thing to do, as it’s not clear to me that is the limiting factor.

This is a interesting , thoughtful post. However, my experience is that streaming, given a good quality recording, provides a wonderful, “high end” experience. I’ve also found streamed and files to be equal in sound quality. It’s honestly been a struggle to get my system to this point and it’s only been in the last year that I can say I’m completely satisfied. It’s been worth the struggle.

 

[wil]

I can be both super impressed with the raw resolution of detail off the best streamers I've heard while feeling a disconnect in the rest of the sonic picture.

If you’re experience of streamed music is one only of “raw resolution of detail,” then you haven’t been hearing a good system. As, Mike L. has been saying it’s a mistake to generalize.

 

[hopkins]

I would go as far as to say streaming is not yet a high end product. Yes, undoubtedly, there are expensive streamers, stretching into the six figures. But that doesn’t make streaming high end. The problem is that you have the rest of the zillions of components to worry about that you cannot possibly control. When you stream via Roon/Qobuz, the bits are coming to you from a cloud server many (hundreds or thousands) of miles away. It’s a miracle of modern science that this works at all, thanks largely to many smart engineers and scientists (like Claude Shannon, who invented much of the science that modern digital technology relies on, and of course, many computer scientists, software developers etc. who made the web possible, including one of my former academic colleagues who invented the principle of overlay networks in his PhD thesis at Princeton without which streaming would be impossible).

Sorry, but this has absolutely nothing to do with audio quality.

With digital, it does not matter how far the signal has travelled or how many networks (wired or wireless) and servers it's been through before reaching your home.

The only thing that matters is what happens when the digital signal is received by the DAC.

From that point of view, where the digital files are stored and "how far they have travelled" is not significant.

What may change is the immediate electrical (wired or wireless) "environment" your DAC is connected to in your home, in so far as most if not all DACs are susceptible to incoming and surrounding interferences.

The difference between relying on a streaming service (Qobuz, Tidal...) or your own files stored somewhere on your home network only has to do with the content. With streaming services, you have millions of albums available, but you may not always have the best version of any given album.

 

[caesar]

I found his “funny” screed both ignorant and crude— not even worth reading, much less celebrating.

Sorry your feelings have been hurt. Not everyone will share others' objectives and preferences in life - not sure why you consider this "ignorant".

Considering your comments, you will be much happier seeking confirmation bias in the orgiastic taiko thread.

if you ever compare your taiko to a CD transport, please come back here and share your experiences

 

[tima]

[/QUOTE]

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?

I found his “funny” screed both ignorant and crude— not even worth reading, much less celebrating.

So your ad hominem toward someone other than the author...

 

[spiritofmusic]

If you’re experience of streamed music is one only of “raw resolution of detail,” then you haven’t been hearing a good system. As, Mike L. has been saying it’s a mistake to generalize.

Who's generalizing? I'm simply relating what I hear. And since that includes multiple exposures to the product that is supporting WBF on its back with a gazillion posts, in a highly optimised setup, I'll say that's a fair conclusion, because it roughly matches what I hear in all the other setups I've visited.
You hear a fully musical result with your optimised network streamer solution. That's great. I haven't heard that yet.
I'm still considering streaming, because I know over time I'm missing out on a lot of new music.
Hence the lack of musical immersion thing I commonly experience is dictating how much funds I potentially dedicate to this direction.

 

[Daverich4]

At a low level you have the differences between serving files and streaming them to contend with. Keep in mind Qobuz allows local storage for playback if that interests you.

It doesn’t. I only use Qobuz to audition new music. If I find something I’m interested in I buy it.

 

[sigbergaudio]

(...)
Want true high end streaming? That’s what it might take. High speed optical fiber technology from Qobuz servers down to your listening room, with the absolutely lowest latency, and you work on optimizing every last bit of the chain. That’s not practical now, but perhaps one day, there will be a large enough market for true high end streaming. Of course, you still have to live with the limitations of PCM technology. To me, the true high end digital format has yet to be invented (I speak as a 40+ year geeky computer scientist!). You have to really focus on what‘s important for human hearing, not what’s technologically or algorithmically feasible to implement with today’s hardware. Chasing higher bit rates or bit depths might be entirely the wrong thing to do, as it’s not clear to me that is the limiting factor.

This is not necessary, as the song you listen to is buffered locally. So we need a good quality source file provided by the streaming service, and a good system to play it back on.

The delivery of that file or song from the streaming service to you is already a solved problem. No need for direct fiber connection.

I would also disagree that we need even higher quality digital formats then what exist today, but I guess that is somewhat of a sidetrack.

 

[Another Johnson]

The OP’s thread title rightly ends with a question mark.

The dictionary definition of consensus is that consensus implies general agreement

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/consensus#:~:text=A%20consensus%20is%20general%20agreement%20among%20a%20group%20of%20people.

After 42 pages of arguments, personal attacks, pearl clutching, whining, and general entropy generation by the usual suspects whose lives hang in the balance of eradicating the validity of formats they don’t prefer, it is obvious to the least casual observer that there is no consensus on the issue posed.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Why would anyone expect, or even want, consensus? Especially on this forum.
The market is the consensus, streaming is now 90% of music consumption, CD and vinyl just the crumbs.
Just like no-one will ever compare a Taiko Olympus/IO/XDMI with a Wadax Ref Server, or an AF0 with a GP Monaco 3.0/Esoteric T1/SAT/OMA etc, no-one will compare a fully loaded Taiko or Wadax with a SOTA cd transport.
And so the lack of consensus on What's BEST will continue. The consensus on What's CONVENIENT has already been formed. The market has spoken there.