HiFi question: what is "streaming audio"?
 

Keep seeing it advertised as the next thing.

BUT:

What is it?
Do you end up owning any of the music?
If so, how is it stored? If the streamer breaks down, do you lose it all?
Do I need one?
What's the sound like compared to a decent CD setup?
What's the cost per album/track?

My system is medium to top end, Cyrus: CD, amp, pre-amp, 2x PSX-R and CLS-7 speakers, QED silver anniversary biwires, decent interconnects.

What would be good to go with it? Cyrus do one, but it's £1500......

Well there two types of streaming there's using music from a web site or app like Spotify where you pay a monthly fee, but you don't own the music your just renting the right to play it.
You can listen to as much music as you want and make play lists ect.
you can even make your playlist available off line. Great for when you want to listen to it in your car.


And what I think your on about in regards to hifi is most of them now have Bluetooth or wifi audio streaming, meaning you can play music from mobile device or computer from where ever you are in the house through your hifi.

Just need to connect your phone or tablet to the same wifi network as your hifi and you can play your music through it.

I've not noticed any sound difference between cd's and audio streaming, but my system isn't as expensive as yours.

If you want better quality streaming,with your system you should easily be able to hear the differnce, you usually have to pay a premium for that service.Some info on the different standards is explained here:

http://www.whathifi.com/news/high-re...u-need-to-know

You can find sites on-line to test the formats to see what they sound like before you commit.

Try your local dealer to see if they can demonstrate this with a similar standard system to yours as this will save you investing before you buy.

I have a similar setup to you with a good turntable & cd player so am in the same boat as you & will be looking at streaming audio in the near future.

Unfortunately with all things hifi you can spend as little or as much as you like on this technology.:eek:

At the simplest or purest level, "streaming" just means that audio content is played as it's delivered, rather than an entire file having to be downloaded before playback can begin. This then breaks down further into "live" and "on-demand", with "live" being basically equivalent to a radio service, where other than tuning into a completely different station you have no control over what's played or when, and "on-demand" being more like a juke-box type service, where you can request specific music as and when you want it. As with the real-world equivalents, radio is mostly going to be free, and juke-box is mostly going to be paid-for. You can then break things down further into playback quality, which is mostly determined by bit-rate and/or compression method(s), and format, which will determine what kind of equipment the service is compatible with.

That's the theory, but in practice when a manufacturer uses the term "streaming" they probably mean something much more specific to a given feature or set of features that they've designed into a piece of kit they're selling. It could be for accessing online content (whether free or paid-for), it could be for playing audio you've got saved on a computer, on an iPod or any other kind of gadget over your Hi-Fi, or a whole list of different things. The question you should be asking yourself is what do you need or want it to do, or if you can't answer that, does it do anything that's really going to be any use to you (that you can't do by some other means).

Which is exactly the conclusion I am reaching...thanks.

Following on from this, anyone use such system or has any experience of this. I'm looking into getting a multi room system where I can either stream music stored on the iPhone/iPad/PC/NAS (bluetooth/wi-fi) and from internet services like Spotify via the mobile devices.

I'm looking to get a soundbar to work with the TV and also another speaker system in another room. As an example I've been looking at are the Sonos Playbar and Play5 and similar setup from Samsung 'Shape", Yamaha MusicCast and Sony using Google Cast. Any experiences/recommendations welcome!

Check out the Google Chromecast Audio launched today. Plug it into your Cyrus amp and away you go. £30.

I'm thinking of getting one of those for my THX amp but I will wait and see what people think of them first.