These topics have no conclusion. It will come down to personal tastes and circumstances.
On one side the, “I love flipping open a jewel case and stepping right in to the album” brigade, on the other side, “look at all the space I’ve saved, I can listen to almost anything I want without covering a wall in my lounge with plastic discs” camp.
The right choice is also dictated by time, money and space.
If you have time to make a format choice just for the hell of it before listening to something, keep the CD player.
If you don’t need the cash from selling the CD player to fund something else, keep it.
If you have enough space to either set it up and use it or store it out of the way, keep it.
I had a CD5XS most recently, I sold mine as I had it in my system as a transport to an ND5XS2 and later NDX2.
I gave it over a year like that and having used it barely a handful of times, decided I could live without it.
In my case its cash value was a priority, if that weren’t the case I may well still have it somewhere but space for the CD’s is part of the problem of course as well, another constraint I have!
You could also build another system for another room like a kitchen or bedroom and have it there.
that is a question that really moves me as well…sold my cd player, my vinly lp12, streaming only now. many magazines, reports, audio sites (f.ex Darko or Twitteringmachines) tell that CDs are coming back! and many hifi vendors are in CD player or CD transports again (Pro-ject Audi, Cambridge CDP, AudioNote now with belt drive, Shiit will annouce soon)…
Motivation will be in part driven by an individuals investment in a CD library. If it’s in to the upper 1000’s or 10,000’s and beyond there’s a reason to probably keep hold of a player even if it’s use is secondary.
There is occasion where things can’t be streamed based on availability or publishing and there a decent CD player is helpful, you can always digitise any CD of course and stream it from a local storage location.
I have a CD library large enough to need to design a room around accomodating them all. Having recently moved house there is no obvious home for the CD’s and additionally, all the vinyl I have, in comparison my NDX2 and a Mac Mini take up minimal space to achieved the same goal. They aren’t even in the same room/listening space.
I have a similar issue though with cassettes which I kept over the years and now have a desire to listen to and to digitise for archive and sharing purposes.
Been streaming for 5 years. The last forty CDs I bought or received as presents were never played in a CD player (I had removed it). Instead they were immediately ripped using dBpoweramp and added to my NAS. Quick, simple and effective.
I do that, and rip them as soon as I get home then return them to the charity shop from whence they came, often the same afternoon. I don’t really get the need to fondle a plastic case when listening to music, and the state of a lot of charity shop CDs makes them not the sort of thing I’d want to keep in the house, let alone the living room.
I too got rid of my last CD player years ago and don’t miss it one bit.
When I buy CDs they are immediately ripped to my NAS and the CDs conveniently assigned to one of a number of large plastic boxes in the attic, although nowadays if I want to listen to something new I simply listen to it via Roon/Tidal.
However, I do still get occasional satisfaction from the physical and nostalgic element of playing LPs on my turntable or (even more occasionally) playing 10" reel to reel tape on my tape deck. I have never felt that same sense of satisfaction from playing CDs on a CD player, and simply never fell in love with the cassette tape and deck format at all.
I retain little nostalgia for the CD format, and none whatsoever for the cassette format. Streaming using Roon, whether locally or externally sourced has on the other hand been a complete revelation and a joy over recent years.
These weren’t from a charity shop - they were brand new. Recent releases on such labels as ECM too.
Rarely do I find the jazz oriented stuff I am interested in in Oxfam and its like, which is usually full of battered copies of Demis Roussos and similar guff so not even worth the effort of taking a look usually.
How dare you besmirch the name of the Big D. I will bear a grudge against you Forever and ever
No, cd player not neceserry anymore, buy a Melco ( which sound really. great! ) rip your cd’s, store them on your Melco and buy/download new cd’s in high resolution WAV format at Qobuz…great solution!!
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