The question of building a mature system in both digital and analog stands apart from preferences in listening to music. Why would I pay any attention to MikeL's preferences of listening, which make him an enthusiastic proponent of streaming, when mine differ as I explained in my previous post?
ok Al, good question. i was not responding to your post, but to Tim's. but why would you, considering your use case, care about streaming? what might it offer you?
The question if you need or want streaming or not is to a large extent independent from the analog vs digital debate. As you know digital is my only source, which does not automatically mean that I am or should be interested in streaming.
do you need or want streaming?
The "any music you want to hear" argument doesn't work for me either.
ok.
No one is entitled to tell people how they should listen to music,
i don't mean to tell anyone what to do, just trying to inform. i see streaming as low hanging fruit where the entry fee is minimal and the payoff huge. i do think serious audiophiles should be informed about it, so they don't miss what it might do for them. it's just too big to ignore, whether it's for them or not.
or that somehow access to all music available makes one a greater music lover
never said that.
while foregoing streaming somehow "limits" yourself in your music listening.
well, not streaming does limit you. whether that is a concern is another question. one you refute. fair enough.
It's all a matter of preference. I have so much music at home already, with a number of CD albums even still unopened in their plastic wrap, and I can listen to that forever.
i can relate. i have more Lp's on my shelves than i can ever fully consume. and if i had hundreds/thousands of CD's un opened i can see your point. hard to imagine needing more music.
not saying you should give up your CD's. but you can listen to the streaming file over and over. or buy the file and own it forever too.
And with my mode of listening, streaming would be a more of a distraction to my love of music than it would be useful. I like to get to know the structure and textures of a piece of music intimately, and therefore I like to listen to a piece repeatedly, if not many times over, not just once.
nothing about streaming would prevent that same approach. maybe sections of cuts are harder to repeat over and over with streaming. i know it is easy to do but never really did it much. the i-pad interface is quite flexible and of course playlists are trivial with streaming.
but streaming does open up other possibilities. most CD's have higher rez native resolutions. so higher quality playback for many of your CD's is accessible. the benefits of that is debatable, but most would agree that it's real. so it can very likely enhance your listening even if you keep to the music of your CD's. and finding companion recordings/performances becomes a natural thing. much easier than finding the CD somewhere and cheaper too.
To me personally this exploration in depth opens up much more riches of music than a more shallow exploration of music in breadth.*)
there is no aspect or exploration in depth that streaming does not match with CD.
If someone else's mode of listening is different, and streaming works for them, that is great and all the power to them. Yet telling those who do not need and want streaming that they forego riches of music is preposterous and reeks of an unwarranted superiority complex.
not intended.
And yes, I do sometimes explore music via streaming on laptop and headphones. Yet streaming is just not my main mode of listening.
it's related but not the same as on our systems.
*) Listening to a number of different interpretations of a single piece, greatly enabled by streaming, to a large extent is a different story altogether. When I make such comparisons, my attention is mostly focused on presentation and phrasing, not the structure of a piece. Certainly, in some cases different interpretations can shed new light on elements of structure and texture, but in order to explore structure and texture in depth I prefer to rely on a single performance, or start with it and stick with it for some time. Only then I may spread out.
nothing about streaming would restrict this approach.
i sincerely apologize if my streaming posts are offensive to you and crossed the line.
