STREAMER/SERVER/DAC
The concept of streaming digital music files over distances great (as with internet-streaming services like Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, etc.) and small (from a home-PC hard drive, NAS, or networked music server) became mainstream only recently. But it was already brewing during the late 20th century, with people illegally downloading low-bitrate MP3 files made from CD rips and coming close to killing the recordedmusic industry.
That wasn’t streaming exactly, or not in the current sense, because the files needed to be downloaded, stored locally, then either played out of a computer or loaded onto a portable player, but from that point forward it was a steady march to the streaming-dominated present.
Never mind Napster—the first subscription audio “streaming” service was one you probably wouldn’t think of: Audible, the audio book service now owned by Amazon, which started up in 1995. I did beta testing and editing work for early-days Audible, and around that time, I started loading up home-ripped MP3 files on a pocket-sized Rio MP3 player (which by then had replaced Audible’s proprietary player), using it in place of a portable CD player. This led to experiments with a PC music library/player running Linux, controlled by a Handspring PalmOS device connected to the stereo system via a Sound Blaster 16 card.
In the 1990s, downloading a CD’s worth of data would have taken forever, and storing a big library of lossless tracks required a serious investment in hard drive storage. Over time, internet service got faster and storage got cheap enough that lossy compression was no longer necessary. Over the last few years, I’ve built up a massive digital library of CD rips, content from HDtracks and other download services, and my own HD digital transfers from LPs and tapes.
Then came lossless and high-rez streaming. To my thinking, this new world, which provides access to most (but not all) of the music ever recorded plus my own collection, all available on-demand via my cellphone and played back in high fidelity, is a dream come true. I don’t think the young me—a card-carrying member of the 1980s Walkman Generation, saving my money to buy records, putting up with commercials and FM DJs’ questionable tastes, and prowling the LP stacks at local libraries for home-taping opportunities—could have imagined this world of near-limitless, near-instantaneous musical exploration.
Many software and hardware options are available today to the avid streamer. Roon is at
