CD vs.same CD ripped to HD

+2 George

+3 George 

to specifically deal with the OP equipment, I have owned both the Marantz and the Vault2.  They are a good match sonically.  The Marantz rolls off the top end but is great in the midrange.  The Vault2 is more balanced but short on detail everywhere when compared to better equipment.  I would find myself preferring the Marantz, but it isn’t night and day, and yes the convenience of a streamer can be seductive.
  A few points about the Vault2.  It isn’t a perfect ripper.  I had batch ripped hundreds of discs and find areas of skips, some that were truly unplayable.  Make sure you clean each disc prior to ripping.  Secondly, the Vault2 can crash , particularly after the frequent mandatory updates.  Don’t throw out those CDs just yet.  And if you like the Vault2, resist the temptation to add another unit to a different system, such as the Node2, because a lot of issues occur during the aforementioned updates, where one player gets hung up during the update and the other doesn’t.  If the whole home thing is important, try Sonos.
  I personally am very happy with Melco, both sonically and quality.
If you get the comparable player/NAS unit, the N 100 it will cost slightly more than the Vault2 but well worth it. You can use a standard Optical Disc ripper, but their ripper CD/ transport is well worth it

Thanks for the replies, all.  On the whole, it sounds to me as if I should just stop being lazy and use my CDP.  This convenience thing is going too far!

Your heart is telling you please get up off your butt and exercise me , walk the few feet back and forth and change the disks

I’ve gone back and forth between a Node 2i and my Cambridge CXC. Very, very hard to hear a difference. For me. YMMV.

With a CD player, I commit more to listening to several tracks on a disks. It’s nice to have that focus. Yet, on a streamer/HD, I can free associate, jumping from one cut to the next one it inspires. Nothing wrong with that.

Consider how you eat from dinner plate with multiple things on it; do you just eat the steak, then the potatoes, then the green beans, or do you rotate between them as you follow your feelings? Why would it be inherently better to stick with one thing any longer than you desired? It wouldn’t, for me.