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Can i connect a cd player directly to sonos port without having an amplifier ???


Can i connect a cd player directly to sonos port without having an amplifier

I would like to play CDS through Sonos speakers 

I am looking to purchase a Sonos connect and CD player 

Do i need anything else ie amplifier 

I know i can purchase a NAS and stream but i want to play CDS 

I would also like to add a turntable at some point 

Help required please 

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Best answer by Stanley_4 12 May 2022, 22:48

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34 replies

Got it; perhaps the differences arise from better engineered transports. Electronics downstream of those should be functionally identical.

The 26 year old CD player still sounds the best, though.

 

That is surprising; I would expect it to sound at best the same as the same CD ripped losslessly and played by Sonos from a NAS that has the ripped file. At best only because the ADC additional step in a CDP wired to line in, should, in theory, downgrade the quality although I doubt that is audible in real world use.

The best of the CD capable players - the DVD/Bluray/HD-DVD players don’t seem to play music as well as the old CD specific player. These ‘tests’ were done outside of Sonos, when they were all wired into the AV receiver.

The 26 year old CD player still sounds the best, though.

 

That is surprising; I would expect it to sound at best the same as the same CD ripped losslessly and played by Sonos from a NAS that has the ripped file. At best only because the ADC additional step in a CDP wired to line in, should, in theory, downgrade the quality although I doubt that is audible in real world use.

I put most of my stuff on the NAS before I started streaming, see no reason to trim it down now. Adding new stuff I buy only takes a few minutes. Have to rip it and crunch to MP3 so I can play it in the car anyway.

Having my music available when I want it is a big plus, no problems like folks are reporting on streaming services, no problem if the Internet goes down for a few hours. Cost to keep the Pi based NAS running is pennies.

The main downside to using a NAS is the Sonos limits, which mean swapping music in and out just to get it to ‘fit’. At one stage I thought that the 1Gb storage that I bought in 2010 may be the limiting factor, but it turned out to be Sonos kit after all. Casting via Chromecast solves the limit issue, but seems to run the phone battery down quicker than the Sonos app.

I have tried a couple of steaming services, and while they may be good for more popular music, they weren’t good on classical - they may have the piece, but not the performance.

It has been very useful to keep streaming even when the internet connection is down - I feel that we’re all becoming rather too dependent on the availability of the cloud.

I used to buy CDs at full price to rip, but now most of mine are bought from charity shops - so I’m glad that other people are giving CDs up - more for me :-) When you consider that they can cost 10p per CD, it’s quite cheap to try out different music.

The main benefit to me of still having a CD player linked into my ZP90 is when other people come round and bring CDs with them - the assumption is still that I’ll have a working player, although I could use one of the other players (blu-ray, recordable DVD,  HD-DVD) if needed. The 26 year old CD player still sounds the best, though.

 

Adding new stuff I buy only takes a few minutes. Have to rip it and crunch to MP3 so I can play it in the car anyway.

So all the new stuff you listen to, you buy either as a CD or as a digital download?

In my case, I have come to know and like a totally new to me genre of music - blues - in just the last three years - without buying any of it. All my CDs were largely jazz and Indian classical. Now, I listen to all three genres depending on my mood and the time of the day. Streaming services have proved to be a boon, and in India they are priced to what the market will pay, about USD 2 a month. So, I can even afford to have two subs running and still come out way way ahead on what I would have spend to pick up five hundred or so blues CDs. Which are still sold for anywhere between USD 5 to 8.

The car/travel needs are fully served by downloading playlists of all three genres from either service, stored on the phone for offline listening. The phone can, in emergencies, also be connected to Sonos line in jacks at home to serve when the net goes down, which is happening now in rare cases.

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I put most of my stuff on the NAS before I started streaming, see no reason to trim it down now. Adding new stuff I buy only takes a few minutes. Have to rip it and crunch to MP3 so I can play it in the car anyway.

Having my music available when I want it is a big plus, no problems like folks are reporting on streaming services, no problem if the Internet goes down for a few hours. Cost to keep the Pi based NAS running is pennies.

Some research turned up this, as to how two legal actions, when done together, become illegal.

It is legal beyond argument to sell or gift a music CD, after one has enjoyed the music fully and does not want to listen to it anymore. Or for any other reason.

While the law isn’t really there on the ripping actions, RIAA has said that as long as the rips are used for just the listening of the one that bought the CD as new, they will not take any actions against the ripping making it de facto a legal action.

But a combination of the two legal actions above is illegal.

As far as purchased downloads are concerned, by hitting the I agree button needed to be hit before the download is sold, one has agreed to getting just a license to listen to the download for personal enjoyment. And presumably that of friends, in one’s presence. But not of customers in a commercial space. A separate fee is needed for that. I don’t know what happens if one plays a CD in a commercial space for enjoyment of patrons!

I do like to own things, rather than lease/hire them I guess

 

Technically you don’t own the content on the CD in the traditional sense; for instance if you rip them to a NAS, and then even gift them away, the playing of their music by you on your NAS is illegal. Or perhaps it is illegal to gift them away? I am not sure, but I know that this is a tricky issue.

In practice, this fine distinction may not matter, but the digital age is going to throw up many things that haven't been thought through yet by all participants, I suspect.

Pretty much the same sequence of events here - CDs boxed for many years now, and for the last two, even the NAS that contains the content on the CDs is hardly used. Instead the local music I use is a subset of the NAS, only because I can play that via voice commands to Echo Show devices and get the music to play on Sonos kit downstream, with album art visible on the Show. This, via a USB stick that has the content and is plugged into a Raspberry PI.

Why would you want to put everything in the NAS online and not just the content that is not on your streaming service.

I do like to own things, rather than lease/hire them I guess, but the streaming services do now have me hooked. The A/V services are much cheaper than what I used to spend on purchasing vinyl, CD’s and VHS/DVD’s/Blu-Ray’s etc; by a long chalk.

I too use the locally stored library less and less, but I suspect that I’m slightly bothered by the thought that the prices of the streaming services will clearly continue to rise and stepping off the merry-go-round leaves me with very little… er ..nothing… Also sometimes the services can (occasionally) be unavailable. I like to have more than one stream available too from different sources as a backup.

Each decade costs me in the region of £15,000 to £20,000 (on average) and that’s not including any of the hardware to play the A/V sources and so I think it’s nice to look back and have something to show for the money spent.

Admittedly I’ve not brought any albums in the past few years. It’s all now leased, but I’m still reluctant to give up the things I not only once bought, but also spent many hours ‘ripping’ and ‘tagging’ to get them as I wanted them and it’s nice to have all available as a thing to ‘fall back’ on too.

 

I mostly stream from music services these days, but still have my own CD’s (now stored in the loft gathering dust).

Many moons ago, I just used to ‘rip’ the discs and store the tracks (initially on a computer and later on a NAS box) and enjoy doing their tags and album art etc.

but my longer term aim is to find a decent online storage method to do away with the NAS boxes completely and just put everting online.

 

Pretty much the same sequence of events here - CDs boxed for many years now, and for the last two, even the NAS that contains the content on the CDs is hardly used. Instead the local music I use is a subset of the NAS, only because I can play that via voice commands to Echo Show devices and get the music to play on Sonos kit downstream, with album art visible on the Show. This, via a USB stick that has the content and is plugged into a Raspberry PI.

Why would you want to put everything in the NAS online and not just the content that is not on your streaming service?

I mostly stream from music services these days, but still have my own CD’s (now stored in the loft gathering dust).

Many moons ago, I just used to ‘rip’ the discs and store the tracks (initially on a computer and later on a NAS box) and enjoy doing their tags and album art etc.

My ‘slight’ regret is I opted for the lossy 320 AAC format, rather than .flac lossless, as storage was very expensive initially and whilst I could perhaps go back and start over, I just don’t think the time spent doing that would bring about any benefit for my own ears.

I use the NAS Box(es) locally and in more recent times ‘remotely’ too when travelling around in the camper van using Plex & Sonos, but my longer term aim is to find a decent online storage method to do away with the NAS boxes completely and just put everting online.

I’ve tried iCloud with Apple Music and Google Play storage, but I personally want more control, where I can rip, upload, edit the tags and play to Sonos through an interface that I can customise for how I like to view my music and maybe still use Plex aswell. I’ve not yet quite found the solution that I’m looking for.. but streaming my own (purchased) music library and still use online streaming services too is what I’m aiming for and the same goes for video/movies, for playing on my Mobile/Tablet/TV’s at Home and whilst travelling. 

Quite right, though albums from these artistes do feature, and more of them on Apple Music. Presumably you can also buy this one as a digital download and then use that for Sonos play via NAS or iBroadcast, so even for this a CD isn't really a must.

When I started using streaming services a couple of years ago, the library size was 30 million songs. Apple Music now has 90 million songs and I suspect so would Spotify. So over time, the population of missing CDs is dropping significantly.

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Actually, the CD I ordered two weeks ago is not on Spotify: https://www.hoornseplas.net/los/


It might not mean anything to you, but posting this here is a good opportunity to mention Pé Daalemmer en Rooie Rinus on a english language forum :-)

That’s an option if missing CDs is the problem, although if a streaming service was to offer this as an add on feature, making playlists that feature missing CDs and also those that aren't would be possible as well as offering a unified interface to all the music one could want.

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iBroadcast is a free cloud service - perfect for ripped cd storage and playback. 

It will take me some time to look up all in a couple of places; the Chants and Ishizaka are there on Spotify.

Any CDs have been privately made and distributed, won’t be there of course; I know I have some of that kind that are not there even on the Gracenote Database.

The portable CD user is silent, and we may never know exactly why CDs are needed to be played at all in her case, so this brief discussion may not be relevant to this thread.

I also wonder if any streaming service offers the option of playing uploaded CDs that aren’t there in the service library. That might be a useful feature even for a small fee.

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I think these were among the ones, not spending the time to dig through the library and verify.

 

I have about 30 CDs of theirs

 

31 CD set
 
Devon Howard - Christmas 2009

​​
Fidlchic - Memories of Weiser 2000

 

Quartzsite Singers - A variety of Music Makers

 

Couple of examples? I can then check on Spotify and Apple Music to see if they are missing there as well because I think the libraries of both are close to identical.

It is quite possible some my CDs are missing too, but I have not discovered that till now! There are many in that lot that I haven't troubled myself yet to look for on Spotify. Or thought of, to stream.

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Don’t have Spotify but my collection has several CDs that are missing from Amazon Unlimited. Some of them are for sale as CDs on Amazon, some are not.

 

 And not all CD's I own are on Spotify

Just curious since all the thousand odd I have seem to be there; a couple of examples of such from your collection?

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This portable CD player.., using line out or the headphone socket?

Let’s see what the questioner says; wiring a suitably long wire to just one of the speakers up high is a one time effort, with the portable CD player still remaining in hand.

All this bother only if she has CDs missing from Spotify!

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@Kumar @jsp290 's speakers are up high, near the ceiling. That could make placement of a CD-player awkward, whence the need for a Port.

He's already decided he wants to play CD's, so I didn't go in to other propositions. And not all CD's I own are on Spotify

Finally, what can you play on CDs that you can't on Spotify, to go to all this trouble?!

 

I do have the right audio cables: that’s what I used to try to connect the portable CD player, which unfortunately stops after 30 seconds. Most DVD / CD players ARE less than 11” deep, so we tried one, with audio-video cables (not sure what they’re called). But the GeekSquad guy said problem was that Port couldn’t handle having to recognize that we were playing CDs. 

 

The last bit, the GeekSquad response, is rubbish.

I assume that in the first sentence, you had connected the portable CD player to the Port and managed to hear music for 30 seconds from the play 5 speakers? If it stopped only thereafter there are some other troubleshooting steps to take, and not to just abandon this CD player.

And once you get this set up to work well, if you wish the CD player can also be connected directly to one of the play 5 speakers bypassing the port. The jack on the connecting wire will be different because unlike the Port that has two input jacks, the play 5 has just one stereo jack that takes signals from both stereo channels. You may actually also solve the 30 second problem this way if it arises at the Sonos end and not the CD player end. So I would actually try this route first to troubleshoot the 30 second issue. You will just need to change out the connecting cable to do so.