I tend to place a great deal of emphasis on harmony between the different parts of my life. When there is some sort of discontinuity, it vexes me. This can play out in pretty serious cognitive dissonance.1 It can also filter down to less consequential choices. One struggle I’ve always had is around media formats for music.
I like to be able to experience my music in the same way for any given release. At times, this has been very difficult. Back in the 90s, for example, it was common for indie bands to put out 7" record singles but only release their albums on CD. That drove me nuts. Occasionally, I was placated when labels would collect a group of previously vinyl-only singles on CD. There were gaps, though, and when you wanted to create a playlist listening experience, you had to turn to the versatile cassette tape. Vinyl, compact disc and cassette all had their strengths and weaknesses. It always felt like there were tradeoffs to be made with any choices.
One of the major changes in the musical landscape recently (apart from the overabundance of availability due to streaming) is convergence. Just about everything is now available in a digital format, residing on a hard drive somewhere. Digitization has been a great equalizer and been a great enabler for the musically promiscuous among us. However, there are still reasons to prefer analog recordings and physical media.
Roon’s announcement of the Roon Relay technology and its compatibility with the Victrola streaming series of turntables adds a bridge between the digital and analog worlds. The implementation is laid out in a review of the Victrola Sapphire, the flagship turntable in the streaming series.
Roon Relay allows you to stream your vinyl in hi-res Flac format. This enables use cases like listening to your records streaming from your phone on a set of headphones in an entirely different space from where the vinyl is spinning. It also allows you to put all of your music into the same format.2
In the early aughts, my perspective on music media was that vinyl would become the premium format, with CDs unable to differentiate themselves from what came across the intertubes. This is indeed what happened, but now it seems easier than ever to combine the strengths of physical media and cloud assets.
It’s worth noting that you don’t have to shell out $1300 for the Sapphire, as Victrola has other turntables in its streaming lineup that have the same capabilities.
