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CD Player vs. music streaming

Dear audiophiles:

I am in the cross road for the media choice.  My CD player suffered from abnormal tray movement and consider to replace a new one (maybe the 2nd hand one).  But on last Sunday, I paid a visit to the audio show and find out there are showing many streaming player of the famous brands with  the price range of US$ 5000~20,000.  I feel the sound is not bad with short listening. 

I am thinking about my situation once more, if I buy a HI-Fi CD player, the price might equal to the audio streamer.  Then, if I choose the CD player, I would keep on buying CD. But if I give up CD player and replace it with a audio streamer, my expense might be the monthly subscription expense which cost a CD or so.  Besides,
my kids have no interest in classical music appreciation. There is no meaning for me to keep on buying CD. When I  am passed away, the CD are useless...without not penny. 

Under such kind of   consideration, should I stay in CD player or should I switch to music streamer. 
Any good opinion?
faust168
mgrif104
389 posts
 
Big_Greg,

do you have a dealer where you can demo some units at home?  My experience suggests that there are very large gains in going upstream from the Node 2. Indeed, I think the streamer might be more important than the DAC.  I’m getting pretty remarkable results from an Aries G2 streamer and from an Aurender N100.  They’re much better than the Node 2 I still have.
fleschler
2,041 posts
 
audiotroy Are you indicating that running an SPDIF from an Esoteric P-05X to a COS Engineering D2 DAC is inferior sounding due to jitter problems? I thought this was a rather high end quality musical sound despite not being SOTA. I am using a near SOTA balanced cable. I thoroughly dislike HDMI for audio and am not too keen on USB. I like lots of connectivity with low resistance in a cable. Should I dump my digital system and get a cheap streamer DAC instead to play my CDs through another transport and USB only cable or some other cable you prefer?
big_greg
6,710 posts
 
I went to one of my favorite dealers yesterday (Gig Harbor Audio) and they just happened to have a Lumin T2 set up in their main demo system.  It sounded fantastic.  I'd probably go for the D2.  I have some other priorities ahead of that, but a new streamer may be in my future.
jetter
3,085 posts
 
I think of streamers in the same light as Class D amplifiers.  IMO they are a developing technology and the $thousands you spend today will be worth a fraction of that in the near future.  JMHO


big_greg
6,710 posts
 
@jetter That is one reason why I've held back on spending more than I have on streaming.  Not all that long ago I bought a Marantz NA6005 as my first streaming device.  Sonically and functionally, it was a nice piece, but it doesn't support most of the newer streaming services and its app is pretty bad.  The cheaper BlueSound Node 2 is a much better device in every way.  I consider myself lucky to have gotten rid of the Marantz when I did, it's a boat anchor now.

Ideally, I'd like to get a decent streamer with a good app interface that can be updated as new services become available with no DAC included.
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