When I have seen people listing their systems lately

I think stand alone CD Players are mostly dead, but I don't think the Redbook CD format is dead.  I differentiate CD players from universal disc players that player SACD, CD, DVD, and Blu Ray.

My old standby player was a Rotel RCD-950.  Having an IT background, I always have more computers laying around than I need.  Back in 2009 I decided to rip a bunch of music using EAC into wav, and compare the sound quality to my CD Player.  My PC was connected to my Rotel RSX-1056 receiver with an optical digital cable, and my CD was connected with the usual analog RCA cables.

Had the same song playing on both systems and synced up.  I could barely tell any difference between the two when switching between sources.  I then brought my wife in and had her listen as I switched back in forth.  On a few different songs she thought the PC source sounded better.  At that point I ripped all my Cd's to files and have never looked back.

To this day I still buy some CD's. They are simply used to rip into FLAC, and then are put in storage out of sight.  Personally, I can never see going back to having racks of CD's in the living room, plucking a CD from the shelf, putting the disc in the player, and pressing play.  I play vinyl when I want that level of interaction.  I have purchased a few high def music files if I'm sure they were not upsampled from redbook, but I still buy lots of CD's.

About six years ago, I gained the ability to rip cds and HD tracks to a hard drive and to have these digital tracks passed onto dacs capable of playing them. For several years I retained the cd players I had, main OPPO models with mods.

As long as my music servers worked properly, there was no question that they were far superior. When they were not working, I had to revert to vinyl as I sold the cd players. I still have a universal player, but don't use it as the sound is just no good.

I really think that downloads are the wave of the future, but I do know several guys that live with streaming, but I find them unlistenable. I retain all of my many thousands of cds, as ripping is getting better. I own about 500 SACDs and have had most of them transferred to DSD rips.

In all cases where I have a cd and a DSD of a recording as well as an album, The double native DSD play back is far superior and, of course, most convenient. 

I grew up with physical media and, gratefully,  have held on to my lps, cassettes and cds along with the devices to play them. I've no problem with most folks using a computer/variant as source. Just  not gonna move on from what I have. Much new music continues to show up on cd from artists I enjoy,  and I've generally had good luck buying used lps. 

Me as well jb0194-
I grew up w/ physical media and this will never change!
Happy Listening!

I am buying a Krell Cipher before they stop making them...thousands of irreplaceable CD's to listen to!!