But facts is facts: Streaming is now the only mass medium for listening to recorded musicthe primary carrier for musicand has been for a few years now. According to RIAA statistics, the crossover year was 2016. That's when, in revenue terms, streaming outpaced physical formats. By 2022, the latest full year tabulated, streaming accounted for 84% of US recorded-music revenue.
So what's a long-time audiophile, born into the analog world, with strong roots in physical media, supposed to do?
As with all signal-conditioning devices that operate completely in the digital realmespecially those that work at packet level (more correctly referred to as "frame-level" on the local side of the router, but that's a distinction that even few experts make)the sonic efficacy of audiophile network switches is debated, the debate being, as usual, mainly between those who insist they hear a difference and those who insist, on theoretical grounds, that no difference is possible.
We all know everything sounds like what it looks likeright? It also sounds like what it's made of, who made it, and how much it costs. Well, the $13,500 Lina D/A converter could hardly look more different or feel or cost more different than the $46,500 dCS Vivaldi. The Lina is dCS's lowest priced streaming DAC, so it has to sound less good than my long-term reference Bartók, or the Bartók Apex I reviewed in Gramophone Dreams #75. That's just logical, right?
