Bargain streamer missed - do I care?

[dave2010]

A couple of weeks ago I noticed an offer for a streamer - reduced from something like £799 to £399.

I got so far as to look at the specs, and indeed it did look quite good. It has now reverted to the higher price.

However I did pose the question - "Why would I want one?"

The streamer in question was this one - https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/cambridge-audio-cxn-v2

So now that the opportunity has passed, why would I have wanted one? Why would anyone want one?

I have a more than ample supply of CDs, and other ways of playing music. I have several rather good sets of kit.

I have limited interest in playing music from streaming services - though at one time a few years ago I found that useful.

I don't particularly want to have to join yet another online service and pay monthly fees. Some people may like that, and avoid buying any discs [of any sort] and enjoy the space freedom.

Some amps now contain streaming functions I believe. I could imagine having such an amp - if it were good - being useful, and desirable, but then for me it might need to have inputs which are often not included on new pieces of kit, such as a cartridge or tape input etc.

I would consider a high quality one which had most of the functions I might want - to avoid having to make up a rack of a large number of interconnected devices, some of which migh eventually end up in a store cupboard.

Comments?

[Pete The Cat]

Hmmm...the thing with the modern world is there's just too much choice and, assuming you can afford it, too much stuff to fill your house with.

One reason I don't stream is that I can't focus on listening to music properly when more or less every piece of music ever recorded is so readily available to me and I find the whole flitting from thing to thing really dissatisfying. I just feel a kind of snowblind. I need to have a filter and a constraint and to develop some depth of understanding of an album. For me that's part of the appeal of vinyl and CD, not just the ritual that goes with them.

So I research music digitally eg via internet radio or Bandcamp or a bit of Spotify free when I'm busy doing jobs. That just needs a phone and a cheap smart speaker. The stuff that interests me enough I buy so I can hold it in my hands and build my relationship with it on my main rig.

Plus it means I own it forever. I'm sure a time will come when the streaming giants begin to test price elasticity on consumers who've put all their eggs in that basket.

Pete

[Pigmy Pony]

Hmmm...the thing with the modern world is there's just too much choice and, assuming you can afford it, too much stuff to fill your house with.

One reason I don't stream is that I can't focus on listening to music properly when more or less every piece of music ever recorded is so readily available to me and I find the whole flitting from thing to thing really dissatisfying. I just feel a kind of snowblind. I need to have a filter and a constraint and to develop some depth of understanding of an album. For me that's part of the appeal of vinyl and CD, not just the ritual that goes with them.

So I research music digitally eg via internet radio or Bandcamp or a bit of Spotify free when I'm busy doing jobs. That just needs a phone and a cheap smart speaker. The stuff that interests me enough I buy so I can hold it in my hands and build my relationship with it on my main rig.

Plus it means I own it forever. I'm sure a time will come when the streaming giants begin to test price elasticity on consumers who've put all their eggs in that basket.

Pete

Well said Pete, that pretty much covers why I'll be sticking with physical media :)

[hifi_dave]

CDs and LPs for me. I have all the music I will ever want and streaming doesn't appeal for all the reasons you mention.

I do use Spotify and You Tube for music when I'm not too bothered about quality. They are plenty good enough and allow me to experience music new to me without cost or complication.

[Audio Al 2]

Vinyl, tape, CD for me in that order , Hardly any of that streaming ,

I am a stick in the mud :)

[Stranraer]

I replaced hundreds of LPs with CDs back in the day. I'm not going down the same route again for streaming.
Plus I get bizzare, irrational pleasure from watching my luverley Levinson drawer glide in and out.

[rmcin626]

in the main vinyl, with the occasional cd thrown in

[cube-tube]

One reason I don't stream is that I can't focus on listening to music properly when more or less every piece of music ever recorded is so readily available to me and I find the whole flitting from thing to thing really dissatisfying.

Pete

So what you're saying is that because you have thousands and thousands of albums at your finger tips with streaming, you're incapable of sitting and listening to a single album all the way through? You have so many albums available to you that you can only play one or two tracks on a given album before selecting another album a few minutes later to listen to a couple tracks again?

If you feel that you have to "build a relationship" with an album but don't have the physical media in your hands to do it, you can simply look it up online and read it while listening to the album streaming.

I'm sorry, but these are just lame excuses. And this is coming from somebody who originally kind of felt the same way in the beginning, but that feeling was short-lived.

I too have a ton of CDs, vinyl, cassettes and even some reel-to-reel tapes, but I still stream quite a bit and even have a top quality digital front end for it. It's every bit as important and vital to the system as the CD and analogue section.

On top of that, I can't even begin to think of the amount of new music and artists I have discovered thanks to streaming. But to each his own.

[Lawrence001]

So what you're saying is that because you have thousands and thousands of albums at your finger tips with streaming, you're incapable of sitting and listening to a single album all the way through? You have so many albums available to you that you can only play one or two tracks on a given album before selecting another album a few minutes later to listen to a couple tracks again?

If you feel that you have to "build a relationship" with an album but don't have the physical media in your hands to do it, you can simply look it up online and read it while listening to the album streaming.

I'm sorry, but these are just lame excuses. And this is coming from somebody who originally kind of felt the same way in the beginning, but that feeling was short-lived.


That's a bit harsh I think the physical act of holding the album (especially a record) adds to the feeling of connection with the music and not everyone can make the change as easily as you clearly did.

I'm still halfway in the process after about 4 years of streaming. I stream or play rips 99% of the time but I still don't feel like I have the same connection with the music as I did when I played CDs. But even that declined over the years as my income grew and good second hand CDs became easier to find and cheaper to buy, and I increasingly saw them as a commodity and buying an album was no longer a special occasion like when I was a teenager. So this made the transition easier for me.

If I'd stuck with vinyl and wanted only expensive quality pressings then the buying and playing experience would still have that special feeling and I would probably not have made the move to streaming, except maybe for free Spotify or Amazon music in the background.

[cube-tube]

That's a bit harsh I think the physical act of holding the album (especially a record) adds to the feeling of connection with the music and not everyone can make the change as easily as you clearly did.

I'm still halfway in the process after about 4 years of streaming. I stream or play rips 99% of the time but I still don't feel like I have the same connection with the music as I did when I played CDs. But even that declined over the years as my income grew and good second hand CDs became easier to find and cheaper to buy, and I increasingly saw them as a commodity and buying an album was no longer a special occasion like when I was a teenager. So this made the transition easier for me.

If I'd stuck with vinyl and wanted only expensive quality pressings then the buying and playing experience would still have that special feeling and I would probably not have made the move to streaming, except maybe for free Spotify or Amazon music in the background.

The music itself and your system should give you all the connection to the music that you need. The better the system, the better your connection to the music.

[Lawrence001]

I guess everyone's different.