Streaming

Call me a Ludite but I'm not very confinced by the various 'Streaming products' that are available. The idea that something being 'more convenient' is a step forward whether it sounds better or not seems to me to be a little strange. Hifi is about recreating a realistic and enjoyable performance from a recording ... I actually quite enjoy sitting in front of my LPs having a sift through to find something I havent played for a while. Most streamers have a quite clunky interface that will go straight to whatever artist comes to mind ... I find I tend to play the same things this way as I've lost that randomness that comes with trying to find an album ... but coming across another that you had forgotten about. It's all a bit sterile.
The other SLIGHT issue I have is that I have yet to hear anything streamed that sounds acceptable ...OK you wouldn't expect real hifidelity from an iPod, but I'm talking 3k+ units. It's all a bit reminiscent of the early days of CD ... people were so bowled over by the fact that they could track select, they failed to notice that the reason they were flicking through the tracks in the first place, wasn't due to their new found control over the medium, but that CD was boring ... it had no soul! I also have a suspicion that early CD caused the big drop off in recorded music sales too ... the amount of customers I had in the late 80s who said they had lost interest in Hifi or didn't listen to music anymore. Its only since players have improved and a large proportion of people have gone back to vinyl that the rot seems to have stopped....It worries me more than a little now that I'm hearing the same reasoning about Streamers as I did about CD...convenient, storage issues, new tech so it must be better!

Lets wait and see ... I dont think CD is dead just yet ... look at Vinyl

http://www.cheshireaudio.co.uk/