Ten years ago, I sold my Pioneer Elite PDS-95 transport, a giant of a CD transport, after extensively comparing its sound to a highly modified Squeezebox (both feeding a Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista DAC). The Squeezebox received its bits from a Mac mini via ethernet.
I haven't looked back since. Now with Roon and Tidal, I wouldn't invest in a CD or transport, and if I had one, I'd make the leap into digitizing my collection. Putting it into a digital file (or access via a streaming service) is so much more convenient.
About the only thing CD medium has going for it now is that great players and CD's themselves are pretty cheap these days as the industry moves over to streaming devices/services, and there are probably a handful of SACD or HDCD titles that may not be able to rip or which sound better being decoded by their SACD/HDCD hardware. Although, many of those titles are now available as high res DSD offerings.
I haven't looked back since. Now with Roon and Tidal, I wouldn't invest in a CD or transport, and if I had one, I'd make the leap into digitizing my collection. Putting it into a digital file (or access via a streaming service) is so much more convenient.
About the only thing CD medium has going for it now is that great players and CD's themselves are pretty cheap these days as the industry moves over to streaming devices/services, and there are probably a handful of SACD or HDCD titles that may not be able to rip or which sound better being decoded by their SACD/HDCD hardware. Although, many of those titles are now available as high res DSD offerings.