Better CDP or network player?

I have been wondering about doing this as well. I have an older onkyo player that does sacd and has always sounded great to me  but it's about 8 years old. I have been looking at the Cocktail Audio x45. You can rip cd's and it has a phono stage so you can attach your TT and rip those to it as well. Only problem it cost $3000 though I have seen the previous model the x40 for $2000. Of course like everything some say don't use a single device but use network storage and stream from that because it'S easier to upgrade but like you I look for long term solutions as long as something doesn't go belly up and the idea of a single device which looks fairly simple to use appeals to me. Can't say how it performs maybe some with knowledge of a device like this will chime in. 

You can do both :buy stand alone DAC if I had your system I would buy Bryston DAC and  a CD transport of Cambridge CXC cheap and reliable option.

+1 sbank . RIP silver disc. For $2K an uRendu + RAID NAS is the way forward.

been reading lots of reviews.....my eyes are watering...still can't decide what to do. I could get a great DAC for the money and use the outputs from my CDP.......the 8001 isn't dead yet, just beginning to get flakey...and if it dies, which all things do, I could, as suggested, pick up a very reasonable used player that had digital outputs and get on with my day..............also use it ......I think....to play downloaded music files......I'm a pretty smart guy, but kind of a babe as far as downloading music, streamers, players, NAS, etc..never got into that before, stuck with one box solutions...........Music Direct has the Marantz SA14s1 on sale for 1999 and the DAC can be accessed separately............can you download music files to your PC and then to your DAC?......I did say I was an idiot about these things!! LOL............Is that a "better" option than going with  a network player?...............Sorry, I know a fair amount about audio  but this is virgin turf for me....duh..........I'm always behind the curve, didn't get a CDP until the 90's, so I'm always playing catch up.

With the SA14s1 you can't download your music to the player it doesn't have an internal hard drive. You can connect a computer to it. You can use usb sticks and external hard drives but it looks like it would be a pain to use those since it plays files by date so you would need to basically fast forward through them to find what you wanted. You would need another device to stream from your network to attach to it.  Download the manual from marantz it explains what it can do.