Big source improvement using CD player

To the OP I copied all my discs to flash drives I connected to my roon core on a NUC I assembled and I don't hear any difference between the ripped version or streaming Qobuz. Same for playing the CD so I sold my player any new CDs i get I'll RIP. If you still want to spin CDs there are plenty of good players around. Marantz, Cambridge are a couple that come to mind.

If I am feeling lazy, then I use the music server, if I want to listen to my system at its best, I use the Esoteric player.
George, am I on the right track?

Yes you are, like many others that have found out and gone back to "a good" CD transport to listen to, not a rubbish one with all it’s error correcting and jitter.

Some just can’t see (hear) the forest for the trees, they have their heads up
https://www.ripleys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ostrich-head-in-sand.jpg

Cheers George

Or you could join the world in 2020, and realize that what was true in 1992, when flash memory was $100/megabyte, ram was $30-40/megabyte, and a good DSP was at least $20-30 is not the same world as today, when I can get all that for a couple dollars in reasonable volume, and it is more than enough to handle enough pre-buffering to never run out due to minor speed fluctuations from the transport, and would do so at far less power (i.e noise), than even the ECC chips in late 80's, early 90's gen processors.

Some people are lost in the forest, and are quite happy to be there. Problem is, they want to drag other people into the forest with them.

Stereo5, most likely is that Esoteric sounds the way you like. Not technically better than another DAC, but sounds the way you like. Playing off a local SSD or memory card offers the potential for far lower noise than the electronics required to run a CD transport and error correction/interpolation. Rip your CDs to storage, and many programs will tell you exactly how many uncorrectable errors there are (if any). Many will even take multiple passes in an attempt to get an error free read. Everything is done "offline" so any transport or other issues disappear. At that point, it really comes down to the DAC, and if integrated, you pretty much eliminate any jitter from an optical or electrical interface.

@roberttdid,

My Esoteric player is dated 2008.  Ralph at Spearit Sound told me it was the third best player he ever heard, the other two were made by DCS.  I really didn’t believe it at the time but this player sounds so right.  The music server is a Sony HAP-Z1ES which Stereophile rated an A+ and it received a very high rating from TAS.  The Esoteric player is better, not by that much but it is more enjoyable sound.  

Hey @puffbojie ,
Other than Spotify you never mentioned what the streaming config was?  setup can make a significant impact.  Streamer, DAC, Network config, interconnects etc.

Like a said before I have been streaming for years and been making little upgrades along the way each with SQ improvements.
I stream internet radio.  The station stream FLAC 16/44Khz.  One of my configs is to stream off a URL via  ROON.  The other is to go directly to my endpoint using an app built specifically for the radio station.  Significant difference in SQ for each implementation.