I think the word 'archival' is the key word in this sentence:

>> A losslessly-encoded stream is near-worthless compared to a lossless rip, which is actually useful as archival material.

GP isn't comparing on the basis of quality; rather, GP is pointing out that streaming services don't function as an "archive".

It's a reasonable point. Modulo reasonable backup procedure, owning a copy of the track is a more robust as an "archive" than a streaming service that might stop serving the track at any moment.

However, I'm confused by the rest of GP's post. First, I'm not sure why pirating is necessary to get a lossless rip. Second, and perhaps tangentially, I've never understood collectors (of cards, or of coins, or of music tracks).

To rip an SACD, you either need a hacked PS3, or you need to download the rip through a torrent kindly provided by a pirate community member who does have a hacked PS3.

If you signed up for a pirate community to download those SACD rips, you might as well stick around and torrent lots of ordinary CD rips so that you don’t actually have to buy those CDs.

> Second, and perhaps tangentially, I've never understood collectors

I travel a lot, including in countries where mobile data is not cheap and wifi is thin on the ground. It’s nice to have my entire music collection with me on a small portable hard drive.

Secondly, film collectors are inclined to collect, not stream, because they have been bitten by films disappearing from release due to rights issues. Look at how many Criterion Collection releases are no longer available to purchase or stream, for instance, but it’s nice to have your own copy saved on a disk.

It can, in fact, be quite difficult to obtain the 5.1 surround sound layer of an SACD as a digital download for many releases. That is why people are inclined to rip the SACD or torrent someone else’s rip.