It’s the time of year for saving money!
Not all audio/video components and component categories are valued the same. I was doing some recent research for a story on HomeTheaterReview.com with Andrew Robinson about 4K UHD TVs versus the pending influx of 8K UHD TVs, which are without question coming our way, and Andrew pointed out to me that the 85 inch Samsung 4K UHD-TV that I have in my living room that was $10,000 retail about four years ago is selling at Super Bowl prices of around $2,695 at a local retail chain, but with the added benefit of HDR. Man, did those prices drop fast, as that is a one hell of a big, bright, state-of-the-art UHD TV for not all that much money. But we know television sets don’t hold value very well when other audiophile components are safer, more blue-chip investments.
If you are looking to do the Safety Dance in with your audio system, you want to invest your money in robust components like stereo preamps, power amps, and speakers. Relatively speaking, the technology on these components don’t change that much over time and the best of the best products today aren’t all that much different than what you could have bought five years ago. Conversely, products like video and specifically digital audio change at a much faster clip. The pressure to sell video as a “white goods” product, fully designed for the mainstream consumer complete with razor-thin profit margins and rock-bottom pricing, makes for more volatile market.
In the audiophile world, the most dangerous category that you can get into is digital audio. We’ve given a lot of attention to the death of physical media both at AudiophileReview.com as well as at HomeTheaterReview.com, and we are right. Vinyl is beyond dead in terms of sales ($400,000,000 in sales according to the RIAA in 2017 out of $8,900,000,000 total sales, and a small fraction of the 12 percent of ever-shrinking physical disc market) while providing about the worst quality audio, but let us not stomp on the grave of the Compact Disc too while we are at it. Compact Discs are not anywhere close to the pinnacle of audiophile performance anymore, even if they make up the lion’s share of most of our music collections, be it spun on silver discs or ripped to some sort of hard drive system.
The fact is: for a little more than the retail price of a single Compact Disc per month, a streaming service like Tidal can provide a CD-at-worst resolution (if not much higher resolution like 96/24) experience for nearly every record ever made. That’s game changing, but you still need a good front end to make your system sound its best.
This is where the DAC, DAC-preamp, or some other level of preamp/streamer-type device comes in. In the audiophile world, no category is more subject to change than DACs (digital to analog converters). Chipsets change. Constantly. Digital audio designs change quite frequently too. There are streaming features, like being a Roon “endpoint,” which is key to get that Kaleidescape-like “cover flow” experience that once cost $14,000 from a Meridian-Sooloos system a decade ago for a mere $500 today. It is hard to imagine living without that level of excellence in metadata, streaming access, and more.
There is so much that goes into a good DAC or DAC-preamp today it isn’t funny, but the fact that the category is ever-changing and ever-improving makes for a dangerous place to invest, relatively speaking. There are low end solutions that are simply fantastic from the likes of Meridian, AudioQuest, and Schiit Audio that will not break the bank for really nice performing but feature-limited digital audio. These can be a great place to start off with a high-end system, but as you a growing your system into an Audio Research, Krell, Mark Levinson, Wilson Audio killer, at some point your digital audio needs to keep up with the rest of the components of your system. But how do you best go about that?
The guys over at ESPN networks warn against being a “prisoner of the moment” when it comes to sports, and that advice is good relative to audio as well. Do you need or just really want an MQA-capable DAC? If so, then the tax will be on you as you will need to buy something pretty new to the market. Do you need a Roon endpoint? Same story. These are cool features, but you have to pay to have easy access to them in your digital audio system. If you can live with older feature sets, you likely will get really good DAC chipsets, fantastic design, and wonder AC power supplies, which all help to make a really good digital audio component.
Let’s be clear: there is no one absolute answer for any one audiophile. Linn Audio, makers of the legendary LP-12 turntable, always said “your system is only as good as your source,” and I tend to agree with them on a philosophical level. At the same time, as you are following your own personal audiophile journey, is it smart to invest most heavily in the category of audio that is most likely to lose you money? Should you not build your system around the products that will make the biggest difference (room correction, room acoustics, subwoofers, great speakers, killer electronics) first and then take your chances in the more volatile world of digital audio as your system gets more sussed out down the road?
In a perfect, Powerball winning world, every component in your system would be at the same high level of performance, but most of us have budget, room, and other limitations in our music playback systems. Over time, we will likely get to the endgame, but this article is about the best strategy to get there the fastest and with the least amount of pain.
Tell us about your digital audio rig today. How do you handle Tidal and Qobuz (if at all)? Do you use Room or other music management systems? Where do you stand on silver discs and what are your plans for the future? Let us know in the comments below.
My digital source is a Bluesound Node 2. I have all my digital music on a QNAP NAS, and I use the native BluOS app on an iPhone for control. At the moment I’m using Spotify as my streaming service, but I just hit the 10 000 song library limit (that I didn’t know existed) so I am considering going back to Tidal. I only buy compact discs if I have to. I’m really happy with the Node 2 as a budget player, but I might try it with an external DAC in the future.
As of today, if you are in the US you also have Qobuz as a higher quality streaming option.
I live in Norway. Qobuz was supposed to launch here in late 2015. We’re still waiting…
I live in Australia and subscribe to Qobuz using ExpressVPN and pay via PayPal €29.99.
Set the VPN location to France and Qobuz will allow you to join with the 30 day trial period.
So, I can now actually compare the difference on the very same titles, 24 bit/192k uncompressed on Qobuz versus 24 bit/192k unfolded MQA on Tidal. A fascinating weekend coming up, indeed!
A quick notional take, and I’m still mostly pro-MQA, is that if bandwidth is not an issue (and in most cases for me it is not) then the lossless format should be “better” than the lossy format.
However, I seem to recall that some of the MQA “magic sauce” was that the MQA re-mastering engineers are able to offset timing (?) errors in the ADCs used in the recording process. In addition that the MQA folks know what kind of DAC you are using to decode the data (assuming it’s a true MQA renderer-decoder) that the MQA recording will sound better through this whole Master Authenticated structure than would the same bandwidth/bitrate non-MQA recording. So far, I have yet to hear this special advantage of MQA, but at least I have not been able to discern any SQ degradation from the lossiness of the MQA approach.
If that’s mostly gibberish, I apologize, I’m just a non-technical enthusiast trying to wrap my head around some titanic shifts in the technology. If you could correct me on the “magic sauce” point, I’d appreciate it – I see very little mention of that in current literature and perhaps that is no longer operative. Although I think Mr. Hartley still takes that view.
BTW, so far I really prefer the approach to the interface and curation on Qobuz, Tidal does a VERY poor job of focusing on their Classical Music subscribers, in my opinion. I may switch, but I’m just a day into using Qobuz so far.
If classical music is your primary focus I suspect you will find Qobuz more in line with your tastes. I do most of my classical streaming via Qobuz because it’s easier to find tracks.
My digital source is an Auralic Aries G2 streamer with a 2 TB SSD. It’s set up as a Roon endpoint and I use Tidal and Qobuz (I’m a beta tester for Qobuz). I also have a Cambridge Audio CD transport for when friends come over with their music. My DAC is a Lab12 Dac1 SE – thanks to a glowing review by Terry London.
I need to get the room treated as that will give a huge gain. Unfortunately, we’re replacing windows throughout most of the house so I’ll probably have to wait until next year.
I don’t have many CDs but as soon as the Qobuz service goes live, I’m going to upgrade my service from “Studio” to “Sublime+”; then I’ll start buying a bunch of downloads at a great price. Most of the hi-res downloads are about $10 if you have the Sublime+ service.
That day would be today…Qobuz went live in the U.S. Feb 14, 2019…my subscription changed from beta to Sublime+.
@disqus_8FX29x4tiM:disqus – Thank you!! I just switched mine over to Sublime+. Let the downloading begin! 🙂
Nice rig!
Thanks!
I tell people to get a March Audio DAC1 or SMSK SU-8 v2. Small investment and both sound good and measure well.
Tell us about your digital audio rig today
I use Roon on a Surface Tablet that I converted to Ubuntu Linux, which makes for a MUCH more reliable and speedier server. I have that Roon Core hooked both into the network (via a wire) and into the USB In of my Oppo 205d.
Roon is the gateway to Tidal/ Qobuz and my own library, the Roon interface is so much better than Tidal, Tidal no longer is used directly in my environment in any way.
My primary rig uses the Oppo as it’s source, either the Roon feed or the silver discs. I still purchase SACDs, Pure Audio Blu Rays as well as the occasional box set of CDs. I also buy Blu-Rays of Operas, the audio on the internet streams just does not do it for me, by a long shot.
I also have Bluesound speakers in the other rooms of my house, and Roon is able to feed them as well as the primary, non-Bluesound system. That feature, the ability to group heterogeneous systems, is just outstanding.
It is great to see how many people have new-school rigs that are posting here!!!
Well, I ripped all my CDs (>200) to FLAC. I also ripped my SACDs and DVD-A’s (yes, you can rip them – they come out as DSD64/I bit files). They all live on a HD in my Auralic Aries Mini. It plays FLACs up to 382/24, of which I have a few, and plays the DSD files up to 256. Lots of players won’t do this. It can also be a Roon end point. I tried it but didn’t get any SQ improvement. The metadata (or whatever they call it) was nice but didn’t interest me. For paying money, I’d rather have Tidal, which I may get.
“a streaming service like Tidal can provide a CD-at-worst resolution (if not much higher resolution like 96/24)”
So Tidal and the others have easy access to say, Decca or DG master tapes and produce their own high resolution remastered versions of maybe, the Keilberth 1955 recording of Wagner’s Ring, released on CD by Testament?
Or do they just upsample whatever they get?
Neither of the two “high rez” streaming service upsample or even side-sample ANYTHING…they take what the labels give them. Period. No one has “easy access” to anything that the labels do not release to them…just like a record store can’t sell a record that isn’t sent to them to sell…
Thanks. Just as I thought. Sticking to SACD, Blu-ray audio and CD from the labels for the time being.
I use a Samsung All-in-one computer as my pre-amp, with Voicemeeter as the audio program. I stream Spotify and connect to my Yamaha receiver with a HDMI cable. With this setup I can download software upgrades as they are available. I keep the monitor/computer on my nightstand to control the night’s tunes from bed. I can run spotify and my amp with my cellphone, too. It gives me virtual surround on stereo mixes. I couldn’t be happier.