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

[Rexp]

I don't understand why anyone is pretending that it's a controversial take to say that, all things being relatively equal, CD playback is superior to streaming.

It seems as though people take issue with a specific individual(s) or the way something was presented, and then decide to argue.

In your experience CD is superior to streaming, it's not the same for everyone. The advantage streaming has is it can be done using low power, batteries for instance. The power source can make or break digital playback.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I don't understand why anyone is pretending that it's a controversial take to say that, all things being relatively equal, CD playback is superior to streaming.

the issue is not hierarchy or preference, it's the intentional dismissive tone and word choice (inferior) of the original thread title. meant to be inflammatory.

many have much invested and committed serious effort toward and in streaming and there are many degrees of it. so this thread tenor resulted in lots of motivated resistance.

It seems as though people take issue with a specific individual(s) or the way something was presented, and then decide to argue.

when disrespect happens it matters.

you asked why.....

 

[PYP]

For those fans of transports, I understand the assertion that 44.1/16 sounds better via transport than streaming (from local disc or internet) at the same resolution. But are you also saying that 44.1/16 via transport sounds better than, say, 192/24 (or, really, any 24 bit recording) via local disc or internet?

 

[godofwealth]

I did not mean to imply that DACs don't matter, on the contrary. As mentioned, most if not all DACs are susceptible to the quality of the digital signal (jitter, noise).

But whether the file you are playing is stored locally on your home network, or thousands of miles away on a "cloud server" probably makes little difference.

When playing a file from a streaming service, the file content is transferred to your local "player", and the local player transforms it into a digital audio signal (just like what a CD player does).

Once you accept the idea that DACs are "imperfect", and susceptible to the "noise spectrum" of the incoming digital signal, then it makes little sense to think in terms of streaming versus local files. Every component in your home audio configuration becomes critical, and every component is unique (in terms of noise spectrum). So the consequence is that comparisons between two systems also becomes very difficult. The recipe applied in one system may not work when applied in another.

One person could have better results with streaming as opposed to local files because some component (hardware or software) in their system is slightly different in both cases. Another person may find it works the other way around. It is impossible to generalize.

Here’s a simple experiment you can try in your home. Watch a movie in Blu Ray (or 4K Blu Ray if you have that). Watch the *same* movie on Netflix or your favorite movie streaming service. Is the quality the same? Not by a country mile! The problem is that when you stream bits over the Internet, there’s no way in hell you can guarantee QOS (quality of service). Ask any Internet geek in your social network. The mathematics of Internet is based on the TCP/IP protocol. There’s no way around it….

If you watch a 4K movie streaming closely, you’ll notice subtle variations. I see this all the time with Apple TV+ and Netflix and Amazon Prime. The quality varies all over the place. Sometimes, the quality is almost as good as 4K Blu Ray. But then all of a sudden, it just goes to pieces, and pixelizes. That’s because congestion on the network causes the bits not to be available in real time. You can buffer, and you can do a lot of tricks to make the problem less acute. Lots of smart computer scientists — my academic colleagues — have worked on this problem for decades. They are some of the most brilliant folks on the planet. Like I said, it’s amazing that we can even talk of 4K streaming. But, we are pushing the limits of the network. Ultimately, what we need, as I said, is some version of what the hedge funds did. High speed optical fiber to everyone’s home with absolutely unlimited capacity. It can be done, but it’s hugely expensive. Transatlantic fiber cables send *terabytes* of data per second over thousands of miles under water. Think that’s easy. It’s an absolute miracle of science that we can do that.

Read the article below to appreciate the technical wizardry at work here. It costs many billions of dollars for us to enjoy the Internet we have. The next generation of quantum computing over the Internet will make our current Internet look like a model T Ford. We will be streaming music using entanglement of quantum bits using scary particle physics. That‘s the stuff I am currently working on, if you want to know, and using state of the art AI technology to make everything you use now completely obsolete. But, it’s not yet practical….

“The concert is in London. You're watching it live from your home in Atlanta. What makes that possible is a network of subsea cables draped across the cold, dark contours of the ocean floor, transmitting sights and sounds at the speed of light through strands of glass fiber as thin as your hair but thousands of miles long.

These cables, only about as thick as a garden hose, are high-tech marvels. The fastest, the newly completed transatlantic cable called Amitié and funded by Microsoft, Meta and others, can carry 400 terabits of data per second. That's 400,000 times faster than your home broadband if you're lucky enough to have high-end gigabit service.”

The Secret Life of the 500+ Cables That Run the Internet

Laced across the cold depths of the world's oceans is a network of multimillion-dollar cables, which have become the vital connections of our online lives.

www.cnet.com

The whole network of undersea cables is the lifeblood of the economy," said Alan Mauldin, an analyst with TeleGeography. "It's how we're sending emails and phone calls and YouTube videos and financial transactions."

Two thirds of traffic comes from the hyperscalers, according to Telegeography. And the data demands of hyperscalers' subsea cable is surging 45% to 60% per year, said SubCom Chief Executive David Coughlan. "Their underlying growth is fairly spectacular," he said.

 

[godofwealth]

If you want a taste of where we are heading with generative AI technology, read this NY Times article on how AI can fool you into thinking that Taylor Swift has endorsed your product:

No, That’s Not Taylor Swift Peddling Le Creuset Cookware

The singer did not promote a giveaway of the popular cookware, but an artificially generated version of her voice suggested otherwise.

www.nytimes.com

OK, now let’s stretch our minds a bit. Take every piece of music every written from the dawn of humanity Let’s say that‘s a hundred billion albums, each album is 10 tracks long. OK, that‘s a trillion tracks. We can take this trillion tracks and feed that into a generative AI system that can essentially compress every note of music ever written by any human that‘s ever lived, and then it can simply come free with your latest fancy shmancy sever. Let’s give the server a name: Unobtanium (because you can’t buy it today!). OK, what does this Unobtanium server do for you. For one, it has stored in it every piece of music ever written by any human since the dawn of recorded history. But, it gets better. It’s got state of the art generative technology. It can generate an infinite number of variants mixing every type of composer or artist you can imagine. Want to combine Taylor Swift‘s music with Duke Ellington? Coming right up.. in short, the Unobtanium server will generate for you every evening when you listen an infinite combination of new music of whatever mix you want. It’s the next version of “The Playlist”. It’s novel music generated for you, every night.

We know how to do this *today*! Scary thought. But, it’s very expensive. If you think the Taiko server is expensive, well, this is a million times more money, You won‘t be able to afford it. But, hey, in 1956, it cost $9200 per megabyte to buy storage. In 2023, it costs $ 0.0000137 per megabyte. You can extrapolate from the table below. Your fancy 8 TB NVME high speed storage in your Taiko server will look completely obsolete in 5-10 years time. Eventually, when quantum computing takes over, storage will get exponentially larger and be exponentially cheaper than it is today.

Disk Drive Prices 1955+

As the world-renowned physicist Richard Feynman famously said once, Nature is a quantum computer. If you don‘t know he is, in the movie Oppenheimer, he’s the dude who plays bongo drums in a few scenes. Shame he didn’t get a few lines of script. Without him, the Manhattan project would probably have failed!

In 1981, at a conference co-organized by MIT and IBM, the famously brilliant and irreverent physicist Richard Feynman urged the world to build a quantum computer.

He said, "Nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it's a wonderful problem, because it doesn't look so easy."

IBM BrandVoice: With The Dawn Of Quantum Computing, Let's Build A Quantum Community

In 1981, at a conference co-organized by MIT and IBM, the famously brilliant and irreverent physicist Richard Feynman urged the world to build a quantum computer.

www.forbes.com

 

[Kingrex]

Is that the tit or the tat fulfilling the old English saying.

Source: The New Yorker

Went over my head. What do you mean?

 

[tima]

I don't understand why anyone is pretending that it's a controversial take to say that, all things being relatively equal, CD playback is superior to streaming.

It seems as though people take issue with a specific individual(s) or the way something was presented, and then decide to argue.

the issue is not hierarchy or preference, it's the intentional dismissive tone and word choice (inferior) of the original post and thread title. meant to be inflammatory.

many have much invested and committed serious effort toward and in streaming and there are many degrees of it. so this thread tenor resulted in lots of motivated resistance.

when disrespect happens it matters.

you asked why.....

This is a meme I've read on several occasions and applied to other threads. It is a comment about posters not content.

The original tone and word choice belong to Paul McGowen. Inflammatory titles are everywhere in every medium, typically to grab attention -- with this thread still going after a year, looks like it did its job. That someone spends a lot of money on or is serious about some piece of technology draws attention, yes, but is not the entrée to respect.

 

[rando]

Went over my head. What do you mean?

To impose wit and good humor as always. The rest is wide open to personal interpretation.

I actually think you would be quite upset at my involuntarily witty and good humored response on theme of streaming and over my head. So I'll refrain, allowing you to decide what it meant devoid of further endowing thoughts towards calcitration.

 

[hopkins]

Here’s a simple experiment you can try in your home. Watch a movie in Blu Ray (or 4K Blu Ray if you have that). Watch the *same* movie on Netflix or your favorite movie streaming service. Is the quality the same? Not by a country mile! The problem is that when you stream bits over the Internet, there’s no way in hell you can guarantee QOS (quality of service). Ask any Internet geek in your social network. The mathematics of Internet is based on the TCP/IP protocol. There’s no way around it….

If you watch a 4K movie streaming closely, you’ll notice subtle variations. I see this all the time with Apple TV+ and Netflix and Amazon Prime. The quality varies all over the place. Sometimes, the quality is almost as good as 4K Blu Ray. But then all of a sudden, it just goes to pieces, and pixelizes. That’s because congestion on the network causes the bits not to be available in real time. You can buffer, and you can do a lot of tricks to make the problem less acute. Lots of smart computer scientists — my academic colleagues — have worked on this problem for decades. They are some of the most brilliant folks on the planet. Like I said, it’s amazing that we can even talk of 4K streaming. But, we are pushing the limits of the network. Ultimately, what we need, as I said, is some version of what the hedge funds did. High speed optical fiber to everyone’s home with absolutely unlimited capacity. It can be done, but it’s hugely expensive. Transatlantic fiber cables send *terabytes* of data per second over thousands of miles under water. Think that’s easy. It’s an absolute miracle of science that we can do that.

Read the article below to appreciate the technical wizardry at work here. It costs many billions of dollars for us to enjoy the Internet we have. The next generation of quantum computing over the Internet will make our current Internet look like a model T Ford. We will be streaming music using entanglement of quantum bits using scary particle physics. That‘s the stuff I am currently working on, if you want to know, and using state of the art AI technology to make everything you use now completely obsolete. But, it’s not yet practical….

“The concert is in London. You're watching it live from your home in Atlanta. What makes that possible is a network of subsea cables draped across the cold, dark contours of the ocean floor, transmitting sights and sounds at the speed of light through strands of glass fiber as thin as your hair but thousands of miles long.

These cables, only about as thick as a garden hose, are high-tech marvels. The fastest, the newly completed transatlantic cable called Amitié and funded by Microsoft, Meta and others, can carry 400 terabits of data per second. That's 400,000 times faster than your home broadband if you're lucky enough to have high-end gigabit service.”

The Secret Life of the 500+ Cables That Run the Internet

Laced across the cold depths of the world's oceans is a network of multimillion-dollar cables, which have become the vital connections of our online lives.

www.cnet.com

The whole network of undersea cables is the lifeblood of the economy," said Alan Mauldin, an analyst with TeleGeography. "It's how we're sending emails and phone calls and YouTube videos and financial transactions."

Two thirds of traffic comes from the hyperscalers, according to Telegeography. And the data demands of hyperscalers' subsea cable is surging 45% to 60% per year, said SubCom Chief Executive David Coughlan. "Their underlying growth is fairly spectacular," he said.

Network bandwidth is an entirely different issue. No one is going to argue with the fact that someone with a poor internet connection should stick to local files or CD.

 

[Al M.]

For those fans of transports, I understand the assertion that 44.1/16 sounds better via transport than streaming (from local disc or internet) at the same resolution. But are you also saying that 44.1/16 via transport sounds better than, say, 192/24 (or, really, any 24 bit recording) via local disc or internet?

Pretty much.

Ok, stop. Let me qualify. There is great streaming, no doubt. Then format may matter when the mastering is great.

(Even though also here mastering trumps format, and I have heard bad high-res mastering that was killed by a well mastered 16/44 file of the same recording).

Yet there's tons of mediocre streaming which, apparently because of noise in the delivery pathway, has a somewhat synthetic tone compared to good physical disc playback. In that case, yes, "pretty much", as I said. It also depends on the quality of the transport. An Oppo need not apply for the contest.

It's just like 16/44 sounds better on a great DAC than 24/192 does on a mediocre DAC.

And yes, the importance of format is overrated in my view. Its implementation and delivery are a more deciding factor for the end result. So are system setup and fine-tuning, including power delivery, room acoustics and speaker positioning.

 

[Brucemck2]

Here’s a simple experiment you can try in your home. Watch a movie in Blu Ray (or 4K Blu Ray if you have that). Watch the *same* movie on Netflix or your favorite movie streaming service. Is the quality the same? Not by a country mile! The problem is that when you stream bits over the Internet, there’s no way in hell you can guarantee QOS (quality of service). Ask any Internet geek in your social network. The mathematics of Internet is based on the TCP/IP protocol. There’s no way around it….

If you watch a 4K movie streaming closely, you’ll notice subtle variations. I see this all the time with Apple TV+ and Netflix and Amazon Prime. The quality varies all over the place. Sometimes, the quality is almost as good as 4K Blu Ray. But then all of a sudden, it just goes to pieces, and pixelizes. That’s because congestion on the network causes the bits not to be available in real time.

Caveat, I’ve written a lot of machine and assembly level code over the years ….

The analogy to video isn’t particularly relevant to two channel music because the required bit rates are materially different; two channel audio even at “high” (by audio standards) sample rates doesn’t remotely stress networks with reasonable bandwidths, and on top of that, can be remediated with sufficient buffering (a-la PS Audio’s Digital Lens of many years past).

That being said, I have on occasion observed delivered bit rates for two channel music differing from what I’d expect given the source material (on Tidal and Apple) suggesting that the upstream services are not yet always delivering on their quality promises. Those are, IME, episodic and not endemic.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

This is a meme I've read on several occasions and applied to other threads. It is a comment about posters not content.

The original tone and word choice belong to Paul McGowen. Inflammatory titles are everywhere in every medium, typically to grab attention -- with this thread still going after a year, looks like it did its job. That someone spends a lot of money on or is serious about some piece of technology draws attention, yes, but is not the entrée to respect.

never said the comments were personal. still don't. simply intentional.

 

[PYP]

And yes, the importance of format is overrated in my view. Its implementation and delivery are a more deciding factor for the end result. So are system setup and fine-tuning, including power delivery, room acoustics and speaker positioning.

I don't use a transport therefore I cannot judge the differences, but agree that the other big items that you mentioned and including synergy and vibration control (all of which you have addressed as shown in your setup list) are the first things to address.

But last night listening to a Qobuz version of Moment to Moment with Cava Menzies and Nick Phillips (192/24), I was enjoying it so thoroughly and thinking: I wish everything was recorded this well. If transports can deliver that sound consistently with 44.1/16, then I would understand the sometimes rabid preference for this medium.

The 24 bit stuff on Qobuz might simply be an indication that the recording used the latest versions of software/hardware. I'm not implying the engineering itself doesn't matter, but it is a great advantage to use the software/hardware of today vs. what was used in the 80s, for example.

 

[wil]

This is a meme I've read on several occasions and applied to other threads. It is a comment about posters not content.

The original tone and word choice belong to Paul McGowen. Inflammatory titles are everywhere in every medium, typically to grab attention -- with this thread still going after a year, looks like it did its job. That someone spends a lot of money on or is serious about some piece of technology draws attention, yes, but is not the entrée to respect.

For the sake of accuracy, McGowan’s title and the OP’s pillow fight title are quite a bit different in both words and tone.

 

[Kingrex]

In your experience CD is superior to streaming, it's not the same for everyone. The advantage streaming has is it can be done using low power, batteries for instance. The power source can make or break digital playback.

That's not my experience. Batteries have all their own issues. The speed a battery can discharge. The inverter noise. There are a lot of battery devices out there and many get kicked to the curb or have mixed results. I have heard them sound far worse than the wall when I am done rebuilding the electrical infrastructure. Stromtank is one of the better ones but now your saying you need to plug your gear into a $24k to $55k outlet. Hmmm, what would my CD player sound like plugged into that.

 

[Republicoftexas69]

Hmm interesting comments. Not sure what looking inside has to do with me not taking any of the comments serious. Honestly I'm not sure many do.

On the back of the OCD Mikey YouTubes ?

Well

Is that the tit or the tat fulfilling the old English saying.

Source: The New Yorker

Why the hate for Mike Powell (OCD HiFi) Puritan (he is not even the US Dist) and their products. If this it what works for somebody who cares, congratulations you are getting better sound for less money spent.

 

[Al M.]

The 24 bit stuff on Qobuz might simply be an indication that the recording used the latest versions of software/hardware. I'm not implying the engineering itself doesn't matter, but it is a great advantage to use the software/hardware of today vs. what was used in the 80s, for example.

Agreed. Even for a 16/44 container like CD you want to record and master at much higher bit rates because at every step losses occur. Here modern recording/mastering has an advantage.

I do wonder, however, how they did some of those earlier digital recordings so well. The 1989 digital recording of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony with VPO/Giulini on DGG is a reference for orchestral massed violin sound (especially in the 3rd movement) for a friend of mine and myself, which has held up great over the years. How did they get such high resolution onto CD at the time? Perhaps there was not much manipulation involved, which kept the losses in check. Maybe they started from an 18-bit master or so.

 

[Argonaut]

Well

Why the hate for Mike Powell (OCD HiFi) Puritan (he is not even the US Dist) and their products. If this it what works for somebody who cares, congratulations you are getting better sound for less money spent.

If that is aimed at me you are on the wrong happy trail , I found OCD’s YouTube demonstrating the Puritan gear via real time audio to be rather compelling in the efficacy of these relatively affordable products

 

[Audiofile]

Streaming DSD and basically every hi res format destroys any local Redbook CD playback via transport

 

[caesar]

Thank you. The main reason they are excellent points is that Valin’s points are only correct for a non-audio-optimised network.
Networks were originally designed to move data files from one point to another, say from a storage device to a client server or cpu. Thought was given to speed, cost and data integrity of the final file. It was no problem if there were errors along the way, as long as the final file was a bit perfect copy of the original, the goal was met. Audio, it turns out is a very different kettle of fish, but few have actually recognised that fact. In audio, the quality of the bits arriving at the client plays a HUGE role in the quality of the final sound, the DAC produces. It helps if the file is bit perfect but that’s really only one of many considerations. The voltage structure of the actual bits, how accurately and perfectly they achieve the polarity switches (or not), how much voltage noise is included, how many timing errors are included etc. In other words, how perfectly the bits of the data stream are structured or stated in networking terminology, how perfect the physical layer of the final bit stream is. It turns out that a network can be structured to move audio files around, just like the initial network design committees intended. It can be done cheaply and easily using consumer grade electronics to convert and transmit the bitstream and the resulting network will function flawlessly, producing music just like Valin reports.
But, BUT, the network can, in addition, be structured to IMPROVE the quality of the physical layer and thus the quality of the final sound produced by the DAC and believe me, those differences can be huge. Those differences can take a watered down digital rendition of the music, as reported by Valin and improve it to the point it completely blows away the best Analog or Digital in EVERY aspect. Dynamics, detail, imaging, sense of realism, creation of an acoustic venue, feelings and emotions, pace, rhythm, timing, sense of complexity, physical presence, everything.
So how is a network structured to achieve such a miraculous result? The answer is based on network design logic. Let’s say you replace a really poor Puma chipset-based router with something better based on say Broadcom chips. Most halfway decent systems will show a considerable improvement in sound quality. In order to achieve that, that improvement at the router has to pass through the rest of the network components….bridges, switches, servers, streamers etc before it gets to the DAC. This has PROFOUND implications. For that improvement to pass through all the other other components, the network has to operate on a Better in = better out basis. The better the incoming bitstream, the better the outgoing bitstream, in terms of the sound quality it produces. Further, it means that every component within the network has an effect on the final sound quality. It turns out that any improvement in noise reduction, jitter reduction etc can be heard in the final sound. Improve the power supply to a modem or router, or a bridge, or a server and the improvement can be heard as an improvement in sound quality. There are literally millions of piecemeal anecdotal reports about this on every hi-fi forum on the internet. But that’s not all. Far from it!
Let’s say you improve the accuracy of a clock in the router, reducing timing errors. You MAY hear a small difference or maybe not. It depends on what comes later on in the bitstream. If you take an output with a 10 ppm clock accuracy and feed it into a downstream device with a 100ppm accurate clock, you have essentially reset your bitstream clock accuracy to 100pm ie you have lost the benefit of a 10ppm clock. To improve network sound quality, it’s essential that what is constructed is an ‘improvement cascade’ where every component has the same or better performance than the preceding components. That way, you maximised the Better in = Better out aspects and every stage improves the quality of the data stream’s physical layer as it flows through the network.

The biggest difference between an analog and a digital signal is that an analog signal can only deteriorate…ie you can add but not remove noise, whereas with a digital signal, which is converted and resynthesized multiple times, the data stream has the potential for major improvement. Not only that, but the better in = better out aspect means that in an improvement cascade, improvements early in the network keep improving at all later stages, exactly like compounding interest.
I built a network exactly using these principles and i was stunned by the results. There was no law of diminishing returns that I ever found and the resulting sound quality was truly mindblowing.
It turns out that ALL sources of noise have a negative effect on sound qualty. Timing, power supplies, component vibration, EMI, RFI, error correction etc. Galvanic isolation works to reduce electronic noise, better clocks reduce jitter and therefore phase noise, reducing non-audio network traffic by isolating the audio stream from the rest of the domestic network, using low impedance, star earthed cable screening, components optimised for low EMI etc. will all have an effect. Arranging them in an improvement cascade means that the final bit stream hitting the DAC has as perfect a physical layer as you can make and the difference that makes in sound quality is huge
He
Think of network noise as Valin’s water diluting his wine and you get the idea. By the time I’d completed my entire network optimization I was getting sound quality that I never believed possible from digital or from 2 channel stereo of any type. The completeness and believability of the 4 dimensional music the system could produce can only be heard to be believed. Its ability to generate intense feelings and emotions is utterly compelling and completely addictive.

So I’m certain what Valin reports is what he heard. No doubt whatsoever. BUT my point is, it doesn‘t have to be that way if you put as much emphasis on perfecting the network in ways I have outlined as you put into the rest of the system.

Sub-optimized network is an excuse. Streaming has become a norm for most digital guys. $30K on a Taiko, they supposedly dial in and set it up. And it still sucks? they can't figuire it out? for $30K?

come on guys!!! how many guys know how to optimize their network? just buy the entry level transport from china, relax, and enjoy

Maybe you should sell your network optimization techniques