Streaming vs Physical Media

In my case, music ripped to a hard drive sounds equal or better than when using a transport. Qobuz can sound as good, depending on the release. I have the same streamer as you.

Yep, ripped better than my last cd transport. Access to so much more music via streaming vs. cd makes streaming a no brainer to me, and I have at least 2500 cd's. Streams  Qobuz and Tidal via Roon also pretty much on par with rips, so sound quality should be of no concern.

@mdonda

As many above reported, streaming sound quality is now on par with CD playback and CD rips. Instead of investing into a CD player, I would explore ways to improve your streaming experience (if you haven’t already done so). One of the ways to improve streaming sound is inserted a noise filter like ‘Network Acoustics ENO’ between U1 mini and your router. The ENO is offered with no questions asked 30 days return policy. There are other ‘cheap’ thrills to isolate noise but I found none to be as good and effective as ENO.

I have gone 100% streaming but still likes to selectively buy high quality CD’s. Instead of maintaining separate CD and streaming playbacks, I invested into a solution that allows me to rip, store and playback of my modest 400+ yet precious CD collection. All of the above tasks are painlessly accomplished by Aurender ACS100. Again, there are cheap alternatives to rip, store, stream your CD collection and cloud based streaming but none are as elegant and superlative as ACS100.

@lalitk 

I wonder how the Aurender compares to the U1 Mini in streaming quality.  What improvements did you notice with the ENO in your system?  Thanks

One thing I can say is that streaming through WiFi as I’m doing now is vastly inferior to the same recordings played through my transport.  After speaking with some folks here they were pretty adamant that a good streaming setup outperforms using a transport, so needless to say a good streaming setup is in my future and I agree with upgrading your streaming equipment over using a transport.  When you start incorporating things like better routers, fiber optic connections, upgrading the streamer, etc. you should have as good and likely better performance through streaming with all its other wonderful benefits.   Best of luck.