Better / Worse / Different.
After a longish bike ride I came home to shower, and rest on the couch. Hey perfect time to try the streaming thing.
To avoid the dreaded "always playing the same thing" combined with my desire to nap, I set the system to the new toy input and let it warm up with Miles Davis from the phone. I did nap for a bit then decided to try listening to two albums I am very familiar with when I woke up.
Linda Ronstadt "Lush Life" was first. Frankly I do not like that they add bonus tracks. They should have a box to tick if you want those, I just want the album as I recall it. Still it sounded different.
Maybe if I spoke audiophile jargon better I could characterize my impression. It is good sound, but different. Everything is clean and clear, but something is missing. It may be noise actually. Or it may be they remixed the sound a touch. I think the sound is flatter lacking some depth or ambiance, which being a studio thing is probably artificial. Hey it could be that the phono section goes through a tube and this is pure solid state. Don't know.
Next up was Paul Simon's "There goes Rhyming Simon". One of my favorite "test tracks" is the song Tenderness. That one has a backing group of singers that range from deep bass baritone to high tenor falsetto. Off my LP they stretch across the room with height and depth of almost spooky scale. Of the Apple Music Stream lossless it was flatter and impressed with no such scale. Again remixed?
Either one has excellent sound from bass guitar to the metallic ting of a acoustic guitar or the metal of cymbals. Nothing is done badly. Something is missing. The wonder is it something my phono system adds.
One definite advantage of streams is finding lost music. I had Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints CD. I lost it when a car CD player ate it. That ruined both the stock CD player and the disk. I was not able to play it very many times so never "learned it'". I played it on the apple music thing and enjoyed it immensely. He tapped into the African sound of Brazilian music and even had some of the South African musicians from Graceland on it. It is very visceral. Lots of drums as in those giant samba bands. Some must have been recorded outside as those are big groups.
OK as it sits like so many things Streaming is fine as a source. Is it better, hmmm.... It is different? Yes.
The streamer is the Bluesound Node-nano. I use the stock RCA cables, maybe I should braid up some of my own?
I was streaming lossless ALAC from my phone over my wireless network. (not Blutooth)
The rest of the system is the ARC SP 14 preamp, the Franken-Amp, and my invisible speakers.