CD Streamer is actually a re-release of a nearly identical product first distributed in March of 1998 by Superplanet. This earlier version had no such copy protection and was pulled from circulation for that reason. Only after the copy protection was added to the product did Real aggressively market the product. Existing Real Player users who had downloaded copies of Real Player and who had not unchecked the box indicating they wanted to be notified of related news were sent email on CD Streamer. We examined both products on features, audio quality, speed and compression.
Quality is perhaps the most important area when it comes to digital music.
One reason for MP3's success is the ability to create virtual CD quality reproductions. At this highest rate, audio files sound good but are distinguishable from CD originals. They do have a large host of lower quality levels for which Real is the recognized leader, but of most interest to CD users is the higher quality range. Surprisingly, MusicMatch was markedly faster. A three and a half minute song took 3.5 minutes using CD Streamer to create and only 2 minutes using MusicMatch.