ARC SL to 12 year old CD Player via Ethernet

No. The Arc can play audio it receives from streaming sources, stored local libraries, other Sonos devices, or it’s HDMI-ARC/eARC connection.  It can’t play audio from random audio devices that happen to have an ethernet port on them.  They would not share the same protocols for communication. I doubt your CD player can even send audio via the ethernet port anyway.

No, the Arc will not recognize the CD player. You will have to purchase a Sonos Port or Sonos Amp to play your CD player’s audio through the Sonos Arc.

No it won’t - you need to connect the CD player line-out (if it has that feature), to a Sonos device with a line-in, such as:

• Sonos Port
• Play:5/Sonos Five
• Sonos Amp

Not necessarily.  You could get an RCA/analog to HDMI covertor between the CD player and one of the TVs HDMI inputs.  Turning to the TV to the right input would play the CD audio on your Arc.

Thank you for your suggestions I will now research getting a sonos port or sonos amp.

Or a Sonos Five, which also has an analog line in, and the benefit of being an extra speaker. 

I seem to recall a previous post on this where it was suggested that a TV wouldn’t recognise the Audio only HDMI input without a corresponding video signal and so wouldn’t pass through or play the audio only content. I could be mistaken and/or it may have been a specific brand of TV.

Has anyone successfully used an RCA/Analog to HDMI converter in this way?

I spoke yesterday with Sonos they recommend the Sonos AMP since it has an amplifier. pricey but there is no other solution. CD players are antiquated but we have hundreds of CD’s.

@agomez  - Are you going to get a pair of passive speakers to go with that Amp? If not, the recommendation from Sonos is really, really bad.

Rip your CD’s to a PC or NAS and be done with it.  Trust me, once you use Sonos with a local library, your CD player will be gathering dust.  Playlists, track readout, access from your phone, no getting up, etc, will win out.  I connected a CD player to my ZP100 way back in 2008 and I used it exactly once.  Certainly it shouldn’t be the deciding factor on what you buy because most people never use it. 

Sonos said that the AMP will connect to the ARC thus no need for speakers. 

Riping CD’s to the PC is the new way to go however we don't have a smart phone but have an I Pad. Sonos AP will not communicate with my Mac book pro perhaps spending the time to rip to a PC is the way to go.

That sounds like rubbish to me… The AMP is for use with external speakers, as it has a built in amplifier. If you just wish to get a signal into the Sonos system, the a Port or Play 5(?) would be better and maybe cheaper.

I think you may have misunderstood things - all the devices mentioned in this thread will group with the Arc to playback your CD’s. 
 

A Sonos Five would give you a further speaker / The Sonos Port is cheaper. The only benefit of getting the Amp is if you have, or intend to buy, additional passive speakers to add to the Amp… note if you are thinking of ‘bonding’ the Amp to your Arc for surround audio purposes, the CD player/line-in will not work, as it is disabled in that situation. So you may want to look at the available options very carefully.  

Thanks will call Sonos and speak to a technical person. What you wrote makes a lot of sense.

I started ripping my CDs to a NAS back in 2011, and wouldn’t go back again. I still buy CDs, so that I can rip to FLAC, but if I could buy the FLAC files I’d just buy them instead. I still have a CD player connected, but only use it if someone brings a CD round that they’d like me to listen to - so maybe once every couple of years. All my CDs are just stored away for legal purposes.

I’d recommend a NAS, if your collection is large enough - or even a USB stick in the router, if it the files are small enough.

First of all i want to thank everyone for your advice. I just finished a call with a technical advisor from Sonos and yes the AMP recommendation was not correct. The tech person mentioned that either I connect the CD player to the TV since I have the Sansung 650 series 52” LCD which was the top of the line TV back in 2008 and it has the A/V (RCA) connections or to purchase the Port connect the CD player wired to the Port and the Port will wirelessly communicate to ARC to play music. Decided to go with the port. I will report back on how that went. but many thanks again. 

Amun what is NAS

Network Attached Storage.  It’s a hard disk that is connected to your network which can be connected by a devices on your network.  It can be as cheap as a thumb drive connected to the USB port on your router.   

But this misses the point that there is no need for an amplifier either!. It is hard to overstate how appalling was the advice you were originally given by Sonos Support (assuming you didn’t misinterpret, but i don’t think you did).

Much of the cost of the Amp comes from the amplifier it contains, but this would have been totally unused in the setup they suggested.  The analog signal from your CD player would have been converted to a digital stream, then sent to the Arc.  The Arc would have converted it back to analog (music you can listen to) amplified it and pushed it out through the Arc’s speakers.

All the Amp would have given you was a line in, at huge cost.  The Port will give you the same, but at lower cost (but still unnecessarily expensive just for a line-in).  The Five will give you more than the Amp, also at lower cost.  The Amp is the worst of all worlds if you are only going to use it for a line-in.

Finally, I agree with the others who have suggested that the best solution is to rip the CDs to disk and not buy any Sonos product to accommodate the CD player.