Your sentiments are exactly the same as mine. The feeling of taking the vinly out of the cover and placing it on the turntable carefully and the putting the needle on the record awesome.
It just enhances the experience. Then the sound quality, unforgettable feelings pure heaven . I always argue we are not robots we have ‘analogue’ ears . Which is why vinly and reel to reel tape masters will always out class digital. IMO
Yeah man that is exactly what I meant, perfect analogy.
While you may prefer the sound of vinyl, by any objective measure it’s short of the quality mark set by Redbook. I’m pretty sure I’m sane…
No doubt your very sane and intelligent. And no disrespect for your. Preference to digital. I meant no offence on my comments and was made in jest.
But IMO it’s what you hear that counts not , data readings, marks advise, recommendations set by others.
And for me vinly is the best.
Of course, there’s no reason you can’t do this before you play a digital version of the same album, if the experience is so great. (I don’t remember it as being so wonderful, but that’s just me.) And that way, you only need to have one vinyl record! You can use the same one, no matter what you are going to play!
Hi Ryan
Do you have those cheap lausy switching mode power supplies in your streaming path ? Get rid of them and try linear power supplies. Do you have optical isolation ( FMCs = fiber media converters ( for audio, not for computer), with linear power supplies) AND get an audiophile switch( Uptone audio, Aqvox, Melco, ( expensive) etc., This should be a way to make it better. I know, I went this path, difference is night and day.
You can make streaming sound good.
Harri
No need to get you panties in a ruffle because someone likes to hold the album cover look at it and read the liner notes.
What I have is a wifi router with 4 inputs by a company called Amplifi. I takes an input from my Comcast internet box and also has a couple of wifi extenders that are plugged in a couple of spots in the house and they do a good job of extending the wifi range, that is why I got it. I also run a long run of ethernet to another building that has an Apple Airport extreme that gives me wifi in that building too.
The Roon Nucleus + is plugged in to one of the 4 input/outputs on the router via audioquest diamond ethernet then another audioquest diamond ethernet runs to the DCS Rossini DAC
My thoughts are this is probably the weak link. DCS says to hook it up this way so that is what I did. This might be the reason my physical media sounds better in part. This was my initial thought to maybe discuss this with others who might know more about this than I do. Seems like my best move might be to get an audioquest diamond USB cable and run from the nucleus + directly to the DAC and skip the router being the middleman. Though I still have to have the ethernet connection to the nucleus + from the router since it doesn’t do wifi and requires the hard wire connection.
I was not trying to get everyone so freaked out and charged about this I thought I was pretty easy going in post about describing this and not trying to threaten anyone by saying my physical media sounds better. I know just saying I use expensive digital cables alone is enough to get me chastised by many.
I was listening to tapes and dowloaded WAV files all morning and now have just switched to streaming an album from Qobuz and it’s leaving me cold so I don’t think what I’m hearing is wrong here, not saying others don’t experience magical streaming sound, just not me at the moment. I’ll certainly take it over nothing but I do not get trancendant moments of listening via streaming.
It’s not just you. For me, it was a bit stressful. Making sure I don’t touch the grooves when taking it out (which is not easy with small hands), the occasional crackle of static electricity, attracting all dust, making sure the stylus was in the right position before dropping it etc. The sound of the stylus falling in the groove made me cringe a bit, just like the whole idea of a needle scratching a piece of plastic, shaving off a tiny amount every time, knowing it will be a tiny bit worse the next time… And if the record had a hole just a bit too narrow, the struggle to take it out…
Technology should serve us, not the other way around. The faster we get to “Tea, Earl Grey, hot”, the better.
Harri is absolutely correct. Streaming is no doubt better than playing CDs. I used Meitner EMM Labs CD player with high quality discs like XRCD 192khz 24 bit and it still can’t beat streaming of 44.1khz 16 bit file. What important is the upstream and need a decent streaming unit.
This won’t work. The “router” is doing more than routing to make your network work. It needs to provide various services to both the Nucleus and the streamer in the DAC.
Not really. As I get into “better” gear one of the shining benefits in transparency. In order to be more transparent to the source there is less filtering so noise and gremlins get to now be part of the show where lesser gear was filtering those out… at the expense of dulling the playback. It’s also true a company that can be really good at SPDIF may end-up with an absolute garbage USB or network implementation as they pull something off the shelf they don’t understand, make it “work”, check the box, and sell it. It’s worth testing all inputs on gear as its no secret some sound better than others based on where the manufacturer focused resources.
It’s sad that ‘digital arguments’ are used to compare (digital) streaming to (digital) CD’s or even analog. Like a lot of people here have already argumented, the path from the source (the provider’s content) to the DAC play no role. That’s the nature of digital (lossless digital, of course, not 192K MP3’s).
The comparison between streaming and CD’s is thus not the path, but the source.
And for the analog believers (it’s religious, yes): the only thing that’s better is the artwork (I miss it). That may sound harsh and not very respectful, but LP’s even played with the best turntables, tonearms and needles are a nostalgic thing. If it sounds better, it’s because of the only thing not possible to measure in the whole hifi chain: your brain.
If I had spent that amount of my hard earned on a DAC that sounds better on CD input than Ethernet input, I would ask for my money back.
So far it is the fault of the DCS Ethernet input, SMPS, the router, the non-audiophile switch or maybe the ‘sound’ of the Ethernet cables.
It would be nice to get some input from DCS into all of this.
Now, this is an oversimplifying and generalising statement, and you know that!
Or are you the one, designing overpriced-high-end-thick-face-plated-voiced-only-by-ear gear?
I uploaded this text to Medium, and edited it a bit and added a few more thoughts and a chart.
You should have to check the loudness and the volume for the different sources. First and foremost. If the streaming output is just a bit (let us say -0,5 dB generally less louder), you can find it flatter, more boring. If you do a comparison. You do not need any fancy loudness measurement unit, as we are talking about relative not absolute levels. Any mobile phone would be fine.
As I have mentioned in my article above, there is a chance that the gain structure is a bit different when you use the Cd and listen to the streamer.
Not at all. The exact same data doesn’t mean it sounds equal! You have to eliminate jitter and noise.
Our ears are very sensitive to timing. And a high amount of jitter does affect the timing. Probably your CD player delivers data with less jitter towards the DAC.
All devices attached to your ethernet add electrical noise to the network. Especially computers are very noisy. And your nucleus contains a computer as well.
Reclocking your signal, getting rid of noise and a better streaming device can do a lot.
In my case, the USB Reclocker from Innous brought the biggest improvement in my whole digital chain.
Heh - this comment make me think of one very specific expensive DAC - cant remember the company/model now (some esoteric boutique company and device), but I do remember seeing numerous posts across several forums from various frustrated users having issues with it in anything other than its special snowflake setup 
At this point in the the discussion I am thankful that age has dulled my hearing and I no longer have the ability to detect minor variations in the audio stream. Aging is bliss 