Ultra HD = AM Radio?

[hjames]

FWIW. I listened to that Rickie Lee Jones album this afternoon - "Just Walk Away Renee" was just repetitive, meh,
but when I got to "My Funny Valentine", her voice was shrill like nails on a chalkboard, and I had to shut it off.
Not impressed.

 

[Poultrygeist]

You will cringe if artist, artist management, record label, or others decide to yank what you like to listen to. With streaming, this can happen. And you lose access to it.

Won't happen as my musical tastes are too broad.

 

[whell]

The op's point, I think, is this: to get really great SQ used to require a fair bit of time and $$$. You could go less is more like Heather's Raspberry Pie set up, but most folks don't want to invest the time and effort to do that. Historically, I've run more wires and moved more gear in and out for going on 50 years in this hobby than just about anybody would want to do. I echo the comment above regarding the time and money spent in record stores over the years.

Face it, we're a vast minority. Most folks don't want to go through all that, but we do it for fun.

Now you can go buy a Wiim Mini, plug it into just about anything from an amp to a receiver to a Bluetooth Speaker, to a powered soundbar. You then have access to all the music you could ever want with a subscription service like Qoboz or Amazon HD for a few bucks a month.

Simplicity, flexibility, and selection that we couldn't begin to imagine 20 years ago.

 

[whell]

You will cringe if artist, artist management, record label, or others decide to yank what you like to listen to. With streaming, this can happen. And you lose access to it.

Valid point given what's happened recently over at Spotify. However, the artists that jumped from Spotify were, for the most part, artists that have already made their bones and their money over a long history in the music biz under the old revenue model that existed for years until the streaming services came along.

I suspect Joni Mitchell, for example, was having her music streamed on Spotify with less frequency than newer artists. A loss for Spotify for sure from a "completeness of catalog" standpoint. However, given the new economic realities of streaming services - a business that's pretty hard to make a buck in right now unless you have a diversity of content (not just music) - it's not a surprise that Joe Rogan podcast is still available on Spotify and Neil Young's catalog is not.

Also, because I happen to have subscriptions to music services - Spotify for my kids and Amazon for me - I've not stopped listening to my music collection. I'm sure I listen to that collection a bit less, but only because punching up a music station on Amazon and letting it play during the workday is sometimes easier than accessing my collection. Throw in Radio Paradise, Naim Jazz, and other internet streams, it put a serious dent in the percentage of time I'm listening to my music collection versus streaming.

However, when I just want to listen to music and focus my attention on just the listening experience, that's when I turn to my music collection. Streaming is easier, but at least a the moment, I still prefer the sound quality of my collection versus streaming. If I want to listen to Neil Young or Joni, I likely wouldn't have been doing it on Spotify or Amazon anyway. I wonder how that tracks with other fans of those artists that left Spotify? If it does, maybe those artists and Spotify didn't need each other all that much to begin with.

My Pioneer TX-9500 tuner? Yeah, that's off most of the time now, unless the internet is out.

 

[titanstats]

You will cringe if artist, artist management, record label, or others decide to yank what you like to listen to. With streaming, this can happen. And you lose access to it.

I’ve had it happen to a couple of songs, but it’s not something that I’m gonna lose sleep over. My subscription is worth it just for the sheer volume of quality new music that I can access from a bunch of different devices, including my car. Hi-res streaming is just another source, I still own plenty of physical media, but have never found a better or easier way to explore new music than this.