Streaming Bashing

[Jazzfan_NJ (Listening to JAZZ since 1972!)]

@James_I

By the way, someone above commented that they had done a test by uploading a music file to a newsgroup and then downloading it and comparing the original with the download. This is not testing streaming quality. This only tests file integrity. They didn’t need to listen - a checksum or other file comparison would have been sufficient to establish that the file was reassembled properly through the mime-encoding etc.

You are 100% correct. I did the testing I outlined above, as I stated, over 15 years ago when file based audio playback was still rather new, and the audiophiles all had their panties in bunch over FLAC versus WAV and things like file integrity and the “sound” of different storage mediums (such as gold versus silver CDs). I also agree that it is not the perfect test for comparing the sound of streaming versus disk based playback. I occasionally see posts from individuals new to streaming that mention some of these now thoroughly debunked misconceptions (a nice way of saying “myths”). Let’s call them zombie myths since they refuse to stay dead.

One thing that hasn’t been discussed thus far is if there is a difference between the sound of streaming versus disk based playback is does that difference lead to better or worse sound or just slightly different sound?

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Moderator edit: Off topic comments split out … please continue the discussion in the new topic …

Use of the term “remastered” for strictly digital release

I’m also a bit confused by the use of the term “remastered” when labeling a strictly digital release of a recording. Vinyl is produced using a master but is there something similar used for producing a digital file? I doubt that many digital releases labelled “remastered” have even been remixed, let along remastered (whatever that means in the context of a digital recording). Sorry I know that this way off topic and perhaps would be better served with its own topic.