I have good reason why I don't use subscription-based streaming services: you can't fix the various mastering problems that are encountered while streaming.
After achieving flat amplitude and minimum-phase
5.1 loudspeaker response in-room and acoustically treating the room to control early reflections, it's very easy to hear the effects of bad mastering once the variables of loudspeaker performance and room acoustics are handled in-room. (And after demastering well over 20K music tracks, my ability to hear those issues is now quite acute.)
I look for a version of the album with at least a
DR rating of at least 8 dB (which will typically convert to 12 dB after declipping, rebalancing the overall album loudness downward to 0 on the ReplayGain scale). I generally
demaster all the tracks on CDs, and increasingly I find that BD-audio and DVD-A (including multichannel DTS) need to be declipped and reduced in loudness. You can't do that with streamed music.
Sometimes I'll give a bit on the "dynamic range of at least 8" requirement on recordings that others are saying they're using for their reference recordings, but I've often been very unimpressed with what I hear. When I see recommendations from others or perhaps hear music played on YouTube, I'll search the DR Database to make sure that I can find a version of the music album with at least reasonable dynamic range. Trying to resurrect any music tracks below a DR rating of ~8 is usually not successful, and looking back historically, I end up not really listening to the album again.
I went through a fairly long period of replacing my lower dynamic range CDs (typically sold as "remastered" editions) by acquiring older CD versions with measured & audibly higher dynamic range. After demastering these older CD tracks, these new demastered versions of the albums usually beat any other version that I've heard...and by large measure.
I've been mostly concentrating on finding the best quality recordings lately...particularly multichannel recording SACDs (which can't be demastered), DVD-As, and BD-audio discs. Price is still important but in general finding good quality
used multichannel discs is sometimes difficult to do. Many of these come from EU resellers so shipping costs are also something significant. These discs are usually the best sounding recordings that I own.
Here are a couple of multichannel SACDs that I think might appeal to a wider-than-usual audience--that sound superb on a dialed-in multichannel setup:
https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=2893
https://www.hraudio.net/showmusic.php?title=1159
I strongly recommend playing these back in native DSD format (i.e., not allowing your disc player or computer to automatically convert to PCM first). In order to play back DSD in native format, a player that handles DSD-over-HDMI is needed and an AVP/AVR that handles native DSD playback using the internal DACs is required (or you can use discrete analog outputs directly from the player's DACs--but I've found many issues with player-based DAC conversion). Once the tracks are converted to PCM, something is apparently always lost in the listening pleasure and sense of realism of the music. YMMV.
Chris
