Why Do ~You~ Still Play CDs?

“cds sound better than streaming”

That statement has little to no merits. So many variables one must take into account…is it due to medium itself or playback equipment or laziness on someone’s part to setup a good streaming system.

Even an identical album would sound different through Vinyl and CD’s, then why consistently ding Streaming. The only knock on Streaming should be the ‘unknown provenance’ of recording being streamed and secondly, artists are not being compensated appropriately, IMHO.

Streaming, when done right, can indeed rival or even surpass physical media. I listen to CD’s, Streaming and Vinyl. You’re welcome to bring your best SACD/CD’s for a chance to hear how good streaming can sound :-)

Thank you @soix! That's what I'm hoping my Hermes will do. I have about ~20 hrs of play time on Hermes so I haven't sat down for a critical audition to see the difference. Ran into my slight noise/distortion issue which I am dealing with as you know...But I'm going to let her play all day tomorrow and then sit down tomorrow night hoping to hear the difference (with no distortion on certain tracks). I'm hoping bypassing Symphony with USB direct to Hermes will do the trick as I only noticed the distortion on certain tracks while streaming...

That said I will always LOVE my CD's...

I do stream but I still like the tube sound of cd. Primaluna  and old carver sda 490t rebuilt by rowland, bat vk 5sd,shanling cdt100,but my favorite mcintosh mcd12000.it is a time and place in life of hard work paying off the journey of thrift stores to find  a cd and the mesolimbic system of the brain and chemicals it sends out.enjoy the music and life.stay healthy

The better my system gets, the better Redbook CDs sound... 

Having watch the development of the digital-sound market for 15+ years, I prefer the relative simplicity and SQ of CDs and LPs.  

Compared to streaming, CDs tend to have equal or better SQ, are less complicated, are more reliable, and have no monthly fee attached.

While not on par with high-SQ LPs, CDs can sound great (ex. Sam Sklair's Virgo on VTL).  Moreover, I find a Class-A CD player much preferable to the 4, 5, or 6 boxes that most HiFi streaming systems employ. 

Finally, each week multiple AG members initiate threads asking for help with their unreliable content-provider(s) or streaming gear - which keeps me playing CDs!

I still enjoy listening to CDs because I still collect them. However, I'm more selective in what I buy in vinyl or CD format for my music collection these days and focus on specific artists rather than genres or simply collecting a vast amount of physical music formats.

I have CDs that aren't available on streaming platforms and the SQ, as others have mentioned, tends to be better on CD than streaming. I enjoy looking at the album art and the value to $ ratio tends to be better than vinyl in many cases. There are also some artists that I listen to that have CD-only releases as well. 

I bought a mid-fi CD transport a few years ago after having been digital-only for years and rediscovered stuff in my CD collection that I hadn't listened to in ages. CDs I didn't really want anymore I re-ripped as FLAC for my digital library and I plan to trade those in at a local store for credit so I can buy more music.