Why Do ~You~ Still Play CDs?

Listening to music at home on a great system is a wonderful experience.  But it is still a substitute for a live performance where all the musicians are sharing same space with you..  Physical media does provide a gradient where you do have something in between the live performance and enjoying the presence of music at home -- a tangible element to hold in your hand(s) that represents a reasonable facsimile of the actual performance.  While an electron microscope won't let you see all the musicians that performed on the CD, the CD does allow to you physically attach yourself to musical genius, a piece of cultural history, or something that fully resonates with you.  Or, perhaps those you shared the experience with who are no longer with you?  Liner notes elevate the emotional attachment to this phenomenon even further.

Life is full of successes and failures.  A broad CD (or vinyl) collection validates the good decisions you've made in life.  Their mere presence at this time is a validation of the good choices you've made along the way.  Things have come and gone, but those CDs are still there, ready to bring you pleasure on demand in a moment's notice.

And, finally, each CD in the collection represents a chuck of your life where there you were, standing over that CD bin looking for that target CD, or just shopping to find that hidden gem that would be special to you -- even if it's not on the Top Albums list of <fill in the year here>.  Standing at a distance and glancing at your CD collection (displayed in your storage system of choice) is not just looking at your CD collection.  It's a view of your life.

Yes, streaming gets you from 0-60 quicker.  But, as they say:  "It's not the destination.  It's the journey."

“cds sound better than streaming”

That statement has little to no merits. So many variables one must take into account…is it due to medium itself or playback equipment or laziness on someone’s part to setup a good streaming system.

Even an identical album would sound different through Vinyl and CD’s, then why consistently ding Streaming. The only knock on Streaming should be the ‘unknown provenance’ of recording being streamed and secondly, artists are not being compensated appropriately, IMHO.

Streaming, when done right, can indeed rival or even surpass physical media. I listen to CD’s, Streaming and Vinyl. You’re welcome to bring your best SACD/CD’s for a chance to hear how good streaming can sound :-)

Thank you @soix! That's what I'm hoping my Hermes will do. I have about ~20 hrs of play time on Hermes so I haven't sat down for a critical audition to see the difference. Ran into my slight noise/distortion issue which I am dealing with as you know...But I'm going to let her play all day tomorrow and then sit down tomorrow night hoping to hear the difference (with no distortion on certain tracks). I'm hoping bypassing Symphony with USB direct to Hermes will do the trick as I only noticed the distortion on certain tracks while streaming...

That said I will always LOVE my CD's...

I do stream but I still like the tube sound of cd. Primaluna  and old carver sda 490t rebuilt by rowland, bat vk 5sd,shanling cdt100,but my favorite mcintosh mcd12000.it is a time and place in life of hard work paying off the journey of thrift stores to find  a cd and the mesolimbic system of the brain and chemicals it sends out.enjoy the music and life.stay healthy

The better my system gets, the better Redbook CDs sound... 

Having watch the development of the digital-sound market for 15+ years, I prefer the relative simplicity and SQ of CDs and LPs.  

Compared to streaming, CDs tend to have equal or better SQ, are less complicated, are more reliable, and have no monthly fee attached.

While not on par with high-SQ LPs, CDs can sound great (ex. Sam Sklair's Virgo on VTL).  Moreover, I find a Class-A CD player much preferable to the 4, 5, or 6 boxes that most HiFi streaming systems employ. 

Finally, each week multiple AG members initiate threads asking for help with their unreliable content-provider(s) or streaming gear - which keeps me playing CDs!