CD Alternative

I am realizing that I sound contradictory  when I said something isn't necessarily better because it is newer, and then call the OPs equipment ancient.  I meant to say that streaming, the newer technology, is not necessarily better than CD Replay.

 This all started when I recently went to audition speakers with a few CD's but discovered this was the old fashioned way and instead used a "Roon Streamer" I think. 

   This is a can of worms.  Just because something is newer doesnt mean it is better.
   Streamers can send a "stream" of digits to a DAC.  Sometimes the DAC is built in.  A CD player has transport, which reads the pits from the CD, and then sends them as a stream to a Digital Audio Converter in the player to get sound.
   Streamers can send digital streams that reside on a hard drive or that are transmitted over the internet from dedicated streaming sites in addition to playing a stream from Internet Radio.  Some of them can accept transmission from a tablet, phone, or computer wirelessly using
technologies such as AirPlay, Bluetooth, or Chromecast.
  There is no reason that a streamer should sound better playing CDs that have been ripped to a hard drive than what a CD player or CD-DAC combo can produce.  In fact many people believe the opposite.
   Your equipment is ancient, especially for digital, which changes and evolves quickly.  A new streamer/DAC will likely beat the pants off of your current equipment because it is newer.  Ditto for a current CD-DAC combo.
  Roon is a Ginormous software program that integrates music stored on a hard drive with music from a streaming service so that it all shows up in one place.  It does other funky stuff like suggest new music, tells you what musician overdosed the day the recording was made, etc...  Roon started making their own hardware to run their program so you may have been listening to something called a Roon Nucleus.

OP

if you want to continue to play your CDs, and you are trying to decide between a new CD player and a streamer, then don’t get a streamer.  If you don’t want to rip your CDs, and are content to listen to the same CDs as streamed over the Internet, get a streamer.  At the risk of overstating the obvious, you won’t be able to buy a shiny new streamer AND listen to your CDs without having a way to get the CDs read with some sort of disc spinner