Streaming vs Physical Media

OP,

”Would a CD transport sound better than a streamer of similar quality/price? “

It depends.

The important thing is that a streamer can sound better than a transport. Knowing that… it is critical to work on the streamer… once achieved, it will give you a nearly infinite library for almost no cost, and it is the future… no comparison… work on streaming.

I have spent decades trying to get digital to sound as good as analog… in my system it does. It can in systems of different values. My systems are shown under my USERID.

no comparison

If this is referring to sound quality I could not disagree more. Simply not true. It is however an open discussion forum so certainty all opinions are welcome. Up to the OP to decide for himself.

Charles

Unless you have a large number of CD's, or very rare music on CD (which is doubtful), I'd go just with streaming and not spend it on a CD player. I myself did have a large number of CD's (600+) and went with a Bluesound Vault and burnt them to the hard drive, and it also had streaming with it. Now I have gone up to an Aurrender. I do not find either stream or CD to be better then the other, so unless you have a good reason to copy the CD's you have, sell or give them away and spend the extra money you save not getting a CD player again on a really good streamer. Just another opinion, but I have been there and for my collection of CD's, it made sense to burn them and have streaming for anything I didn't have. Hope this is helpful.

@deadhead1000

Personally, I just can’t do that. Perhaps my age, and the ‘need’ to have physical media. Dunno.

As example, I have the Jerry Garcia Band live recording from 1990, recorded at Club Front.

I have it on my original double cassette I bought back then (still have it, and a Nakamichi tape deck), have it on CD, and also a rip of the CD on my server, also on Tidal if I want it there….and just bought the 4 1/2 LP box set that was recently released.

If I want to listen to it, I grab the vinyl first, no doubt about it. Then, maybe the CD, Or even the cassette which sounds great still. The only time I stream it is if I’m feeling extremely lazy, or listening on my bedroom system without a TT.. The vinyl is bar none the best choice SQ-wise.

That said, yea, I listen to all formats, and all are important to sound good to me regardless.

My two bits....

I definitely get better SQ from my CDT, but I own maybe 400 CDs. Streaming Tidal gives me millions of choices, so I spend far more time listening to Tidal.