Upgrade thoughts - time to tap into the collective wisdom of the forum

Have you considered changing from CD to streaming music from ripped copies of your CDs held on your own music store?

Streaming has the potential to sound better than CD play because it does not need the initial decoding of the data as read from the embedded pits on the spinning CD, and because it does not rely on that encoded removesble disk it will not have read errors nor need error correction algorithms interpolating the data to fill gaps. In addition it opens the door to buying music as downloadable files, which often can be sourced at higher resolution than CD. All your music can fit in a box the size of a small shoebox or smaller. Longevity if the player is better, without the wear that ultimately limits the life of a CD player mechanism. And it lends itself to easy backup of your entire music collection for instant recovery in the event of disaster such as fire or theft.

You can browse your entire collection from a tablet or smartphone interface, and from it select music to play, even selecting individual tracks in any desired order, building ‘playlists’, or even random play, if any of these appeal. Also if desired you can permanently delete individual tracks you don’t like, retaining the remainder of an album, or permanently re-order the tracks on an album.

Most streaming solutions also open the door to streaming across the internet from online providers. The better sound quality ones are subscription services, and there are pros and cons to sourcing music this way, but many people do it. Online streaming is often complementary to prople’s own collections, though some people see it as a replacement to owning their own: it depends on you’d needs and preferences, but the facility is there.

A few years ago when my own CD player needed replacement as its worn mechanism was causing skipping and read errors I realused that streaming was the future format and decided to buy a streamer instead - and have never looked back. My initial streamer, an ND5XS, was very similar in sound quality to my old CD player, and was very easy to set up and use. (I soon discovered I could get better sound quality for similar money, while that then opened the door to even higher level performance by changing the DAC - but these are other stories!)

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