The noisy end of my system are a venerable, recently tittivated, pair of Mark Levinson 33Hs…have been hankering after them for years. Speakers are Kef Ref5.
New in is Vivaldi Dac and NwB . Roon Nuc for downloads and Naim Uniti core for cd ripping…i dont stream…
Currently have a Townshend Allegri reference preamp…no other inputs beside Dac used…
Question is do I leave things as they are or sell preamp, NWB and few other bits I have plus cash and get an Vivaldi upsampler?
I recently changed my Network Bridge for a Vivaldi Upsampler to my Vivaldi v.2 DAC.
Worth it? Oh yes once burned in! Keep the preamp though. Direct connection has never floated my boat ( nor for many others looking at the preamp v. no preamp threads).
BTW: Start investigating streaming. You will not regret it.
Neither did I until relatively recently. Given you have the NWB, why not try a free Tidal account then use the Mosaic DCS app? Suffice to say, I have not bought a CD since even though I have a Rossini player.
Every now and again I compare a cd to the stream and sometimes the CD sound better but that is more down to the mastering than the format I think. But more often than not, the stream is more refined and nuanced and dare I say more analogue.
Anyway, free to try given you have all the hardware. Nothing to loose?
Prior to moving up to the Vivaldi DAC, upsampler and clock I was using the Rossini Player and clock. One reason I didn’t add a Vivaldi transport to my set-up was in all the time I owned the Rossini I never once played a CD. All my listening was via the music I had burned to a drive or music streamed via Roon/Tidal. I now get rid of more CD’s each year than I purchase.
I’m a veryboldie fashionedie HIFi listener. Started wirh Vinyl, move to cd and niw have ripped my entire cd collection to the Naim Uniti and use the Roon Nuc sroragebdor any Downloads…
I may use streaming as a methid of finding new srudf ro listen to
Anyway new stuff to listen to, but I prefer to download a whole album and streaming as a concept (at the moment) isnt where I see myself. Not at the monthly rates they are anyway. And the Vivaldi Dac has shown that there is life in Cds yet.
But having said that ive had the Vivaldi since April…so there’s a longway to go.
You have a Vivaldi yet seem to be baulking at paying 14.99 a month for “everything you can eat” on Qobuz? From a UK perspective that was around the cost of a single full price CD in the medium’s heyday or, to put it another way, it is around £3.50 a week which is less than two cups of coffee in most of our coffee shop chains.
Today alone from Qobuz I heard the newly released Beethoven Bagatelles from Paul Lewis ( hi-res) , the new live recording of Zemlinski’s Die Seejungfrau on Pentatone (hi-res) and heard an archive recording of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra from 1960 on a recording from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France ( mono and unique to Qobuz). All of that in just one afternoon and I have 6 more days to find even more value for that £3.50!
Obviously much the same applies if you prefer other genres of music.
Further, if you prefer to download, everything on Qobuz can be purchased and downloaded and if you pay upfront for a year’s subscription to Qobuz Sublime+ you will get very attractive discounts on much of it. Downloading one discounted album a month covers the cost differential.
Don’t get rid of the Reference pre until you’ve had a chance to try it with your upgraded system. My Reference makes a material difference by allowing me to not rely on the Vivaldi for volume attenuation.
I strongly encourage you to try streaming I’m a big fan of owning my downloads, but there isn’t anything quite like the ability to try music you read about in reviews or on forums like this one at the click of a button or two. I love to start a listening session with some music of my own, and then let Roon suggest new stuff to try from there. If I like something I hear, I’ll check out the album and add it to a playlist to try at another time. Can streaming get expensive over time? Only if you don’t use it or buy everything for personal ownership. [FWIW, Qobuz has a “free-&-clear” ownership model called Sublime. I don’t subscribe to it yet, but I am considering it.
Greg don’t forget the discounts. I recently bought a back catalogue box set which in hi-res can cost <£63 from other vendors but is £24 from Qobuz and £16 with a Sublime subscription. A saving hard to ignore IMO.
Not everything is discounted though. It depends what Qobuz are able to negotiate with the record labels.
Yes I too am a big fan of owning downloads of music which is important to me. I cannot guarantee that any of the streaming services will either be there or will be offering the same service in, say, 5 years time. However I hope to be here still and listening to those tracks.
Definitely wasn’t forgetting it; that was my point, but you’re right; I should have made it clear. If you only buy a couple per year discounted through Sublime, and buy just one disc less per month, you come out ahead with Sublime. At least, that’s my arithmetic so far. Qobuz acknowledges they haven’t gotten discounts available on the entire catalog, but they’re working it.
My three decade+ CD collection contains probably >50% that I now never listen to (Anita Baker, anyone?)
I laboriously ripped hundreds to hard drive, then streamed locally for a couple of years, and rediscovered some nice stuff for a while
But honestly with the advent of higher res streaming services it now sits on my Synology unused
For me it would be expensive to purchase my music choices of the month when I may not listen to half of it again
I guess I just don’t have a large list of classic albums that I revisit every year
Should my streaming service raise prices too high or go out of business, I expect I’ll still be able to switch service or purchase hard copy of what I still want at that stage
I have no desire to acquire and maintain a large music collection. I am rigorous at culling my music collection and eliminating music I have either not listened to in a long time or have no desire to hear again. The number of albums I grew up with and that still interest me is small. I am always searching for new (to me) artists and releases. There is so much music available via music services that I never worry about having deleted a title from my library. As I peruse Roon I often ask myself why given titles are still there.
A couple of years ago Spotify ( I think it was them) mentioned that of the titles on their servers 80% ( yes!) were never accessed. It is a bit like advertising ; only 50% works, the problem is no one knows which 50%.
I don’t think that any streaming service could market themselves successfully as " instead of the 40 million tracks of our competitors we only have 2,000 but we think we picked the best ones"
I took Jim’s rhetorical question to refer to his tracks, not the streaming stuff,.i.e., “why do I still own these?” I’ve wondered that as well at times. But for me, music, like books, is not something I throw away.
Sorry that I wasn’t clear. I should have stated “When I peruse “MY” Roon, why I still have certain titles in MY library”. I am sure I will probably never listen to it again so why haven’t I deleted it yet.
I never throw, or give away any music. In fact I’m the person who will buy/save your collection that for some reason you no longer require. In part, listening to music for me is nostalgic. I enjoy remembering when I may have first heard a song or a piece of music. Or maybe a piece of music reminds me of an event For example, Bruckners 9th symphony reminds of when I travelled on train journey through the mountains of Switzerland. Listening to the symphony on a Walkman cassette seemed to perfectly match the grandeur of the scenery, and, when I hear that symphony I am reminded of that journey.
Or maybe I’m just a massive horder who can’t throw anything away!
No Henners 1957 you don’t use it on a Galaxy or an MS Surface. You have a dCS NWB. It runs on dCS Mosaic. Unless you mean that you run Mosaic on a Galaxy? If so you have something wrong as Mosaic runs without any difficulty on both my Sammy Galaxy Android and Apple iOS devices.
Otherwise look at the “Services” page. It runs more or less just the same as your local files except you have an extra page to select New Releases, Favourites etc.
new stuff to listen to, but I prefer to download a whole album and streaming as a concept (at the moment) isnt where I see myself. Not at the monthly rates they are anyway. And the Vivaldi Dac has shown that there is life in Cds yet.