CD Player vs. music streaming

It has been proven over a decade ago that a cd will sound better played ripped from a hard drive than from a CD player. The most critical piece of the digital chain is the dac, and not all dac inputs are created equal.

Every music server you buy is a computer. The only difference a music server company will tell you is that it’s optimized for usb 2.0 playback whereas a normal pc/Mac doesn’t have that. Another gimmick trying to get usb to sound decent. There are dozens of other gimmicks/tweaks you can apply to usb to try to get it to sound decent.

If you like playing the silver discs, buy the best dac you can afford and use the i2s input on the dac if possible, coax if you don’t have a i2s input.
if starting from scratch, you can run Roon on a good performing server with 16 GB of ram and multiple cores and put this in a separate room never in the audio room. (I use a Mac either a Mac mini with 16G or an iMac with 24 G of ram, and neither of these computers ran over 20% of its processing power and just use Ethernet going out to the dac).
Get the best dac you can afford. I also use the PS Audio DS sr and DS jr dacs with their Ethernet connections. These dacs also provide i2s connections if your CD player has this output.
Keep it simple using the best gear.

Why complicate things by using a 3rd party music server by anyone? What happens if this 3rd party server crashes? How do you backup or more importantly restore your data when your disk fails? Do you know linux because that’s what most of these 3rd party music servers use (I used linux and Unix for decades in my work but this is not an OS for the computer/audiophile novice).
The music server people will tell you to use a nas which is fine but you will also need to back that up which requires another computer. I have swapped between different Mac computers depending on how I wanted to run things. I use an external drive for my data and my Roon backup and another external drive for my hourly backups. When I want to swap computers, I move the external disk with my data and Roon backup to the other Mac, point Roon to its backup, I restore Roon and a couple of minutes later, I’m back up and running. Try that with any 3rd party server

I found myself in a similar situation. I ended up buying an Audio Lab 6000 CDT Transport and use it with my Schiit Audio DAC.  I could not be happier. I almost spent more money on a CEC transport... so glad I did not do that!

Rbstehno: the reason to use a dedicated music server is because they offer significantly better sound quality than a PC or Mac. I used to run an optimized Mac mini - solid state hard drive, 16 GB ram - only running as a music server. I never used it for anything else.  The music server I bought smoked it - not even close.  This was true even after I converted the Mac’s USB output to SPDIF w/ a nice converter.  Further, I always had to update the Mac.  Updates to the servers/streamers I have are far less frequent. I have 3 different servers and/or streamers.  None have ever crashed. 

I would also say that I now believe the music server and/or streamer is actually more important than the DAC.  I experienced a bigger improvement in sound quality from this upgrade than from the DAC upgrade.  And, I upgraded from a decent streamer (Node 2) to a higher end streamer and again experienced a leap in sound quality.

Lastly, I would note that my better streamer has greatly improved the sound quality of Spotify premium.  I have subscriptions to Tidal and Qobuz.  Both are very good and sound better than Spotify.  But, I noticed a leap in sound quality from Spotify w/ the upgraded streamer.

Regarding the backup issues you note - fair points.  However, in my one system, I use that Mac Mini as my Roon core and file storage.  Guess what just failed.  Fortunately, the Mac is backed up. 

Perhaps the way to manage all this is to use streamers instead of servers - the difference being no onboard storage to lose.  Then, you’d keep the backup ease of your solution but have the improved sound quality and ease of use from the streamer and app.


My $.02
Best,

I just got a Bluesound node 2i to replace some 45 year old pre amp power amp which still work.  In comparison to CD it is a close call.  I know the Little Blusound is not in the league of Naim, but I can say I am very impressed with the little guy.  I have a small town home so 60w is plenty on my custom DIY tower speakers.  I would expect SA CD to sound better but you are correct about some things.  I am over 60 years of age, love streaming because all my favorite play lists follow me everywhere. I use Deezer at present which is working great.  My cell phone for the Jeep, Bluesound from home. Wireless for UTube or other sites off the phone.  I am new to all of this but my two cents is that Streaming is great. I can have the same music all through out the home.  Alexa can even play on it. When I leave this world my grand kids will decorate their rooms with my CDs and use them for nerf gun target practice. I have about 60 million songs and even pod casts ready for me on Dezzer where ever I go! (Exept heaven)