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Cantstayhome
Contributor I
March 22, 2021
Answered

Connecting a CD Player

Looking for a bit of advice: we’ve recently moved, and are offloading much of our old audio equipment. We already own 3 OneSL speakers, which we love and want to keep. However, I have an extensive collection of classical and international CD’s, and am looking at a new CD player to integrate with our current Sonos speakers. Putting aside the longer term need to copy all of my CD’s to electronic files, I am looking at two options for CD playing, and am unclear if the Port or Amp is needed. One option is to purchase a Bose Wave music system, which would then provide the speakers for that room. The other option is to purchase an Onkyo 6-Disc CD carousel, which does not include speakers. I lean toward the second option, so I can just load up a day’s worth of music. I suspect the Port would do for the Bose, but the Amp would be needed for the Onkyo. Any advice (other than I need to offload the CD’s) is most appreciated! Thanks!

 

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Ken_Griffiths
Ken_GriffithsAnswer
March 22, 2021

I have just a slightly different opinion to @GuitarSuperstar, but you may need to double check what I very quickly read online…

You can certainly use the Sonos Port for the Onkyo CD Player - as it has RCA line-out to connect to the Port’s Analog Line-In, but I don’t think the Bose wave music system has such a line-out connection? At least, I couldn’t see one mentioned in the manual I quickly glanced through.

So you may want to just double-check my thoughts about the Bose Wave Music System, if you do decide to take a closer look at that player instead.

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CantstayhomeAuthor
Contributor I
March 22, 2021

Excellent! Thanks for the solid information!

    Stanley_4
    Stanley_4
    Grand Maestro
    March 22, 2021

    I wouldn’t invest a lot in playing CDs, once I got busy ripping mine I have never had the CD cabinet open. In fact I gave away the CD player. 

    Putting your music on a NAS is fairly easy and far more convenient.

    1. You need an SMB v1 compatible NAS or a computer that Sonos supports to host your music.
    2. You want to rip it into a lossless format, I used FLAC but others work well too.
    3. You want to use a tag editor to get all the music’s tags set to work well with Sonos. A few special characters in them or the names can cause issues.
      106rallye
      106rallye
      March 23, 2021

      But if you own a lot of CD's you could reach the 65k limit on Sonos’ database, for which Plex is a work around (since Plex on Sonos does not have a folder option).

      ccgegg
      Contributor II
      March 23, 2021

      I wouldn’t invest a lot in playing CDs, once I got busy ripping mine I have never had the CD cabinet open. In fact I gave away the CD player. 

      Putting your music on a NAS is fairly easy and far more convenient.

      1. You need an SMB v1 compatible NAS or a computer that Sonos supports to host your music.
      2. You want to rip it into a lossless format, I used FLAC but others work well too.
      3. You want to use a tag editor to get all the music’s tags set to work well with Sonos. A few special characters in them or the names can cause issues.

      I hadn’t thought of doing this with my old CDs. I mostly stream to Sonos from Apple Music but assume that a lossless ripped CD would produce better quality audio? Or is it similar enough that the time spent ripping a few hundred CDs just isn’t worth it? Appreciate your opinion. 

      John B
      March 23, 2021

      I wouldn’t invest a lot in playing CDs, once I got busy ripping mine I have never had the CD cabinet open. In fact I gave away the CD player. 

      Putting your music on a NAS is fairly easy and far more convenient.

      1. You need an SMB v1 compatible NAS or a computer that Sonos supports to host your music.
      2. You want to rip it into a lossless format, I used FLAC but others work well too.
      3. You want to use a tag editor to get all the music’s tags set to work well with Sonos. A few special characters in them or the names can cause issues.

      I hadn’t thought of doing this with my old CDs. I mostly stream to Sonos from Apple Music but assume that a lossless ripped CD would produce better quality audio? Or is it similar enough that the time spent ripping a few hundred CDs just isn’t worth it? Appreciate your opinion. 

       I would rip them as first choice, just stream the music as a second choice, and use a CD player as third choice.  No, actually, That wouldn’t even be my third choice.  My main reasons would be convenience and sound quality, although I don’t think you will notice a huge difference in quality.

      If you just ripped 20 a week they would soon be done, and you can do other things while ripping.  Don’t use iTunes or Windows Media Player, they both have their eccentricities.  I used dbpoweramp, although that is Windows only, not Mac.

        ratty
        ratty
        March 23, 2021

        13+ years ago I spent a solid 3 weeks ripping several hundred CDs to FLAC (EAC, foobar2k, etc) and scouring the web for art.

        Given where we’re at now, I think I'd just subscribe to a lossless service and only rip the CDs that I couldn’t find online.

        I’ll typically play the latest online version anyway, even when I have a rip of the original album, as the recording’s often been remastered into a ‘deluxe’ version.

          John B
          March 23, 2021

          My one reason why I would still rip today rather than just stream (and this reflects my use of the system, not claiming it is right for everyone), is that I have lots of my favourite tracks in Sonos playlists consisting entirely of locally-stored tracks.  I don’t want playlists tied to a particular service.

          Like @ratty , I do now mostly stream (lossless) all the same.

          Stanley_4
          Stanley_4
          Grand Maestro
          March 24, 2021

          I love my ripped CDs for many reasons, Sonos is what got me started but I use a down-converted MP3 copy in the car and on my laptop. Handy when there is no Internet.

          I don’t hear well enough these days to tell the difference an an Amazon Music stream or a FLAC ripped CD. 

          I approached ripping as a project, fired up every computer here that had a CD reader, added my USB CD readers and loaded them all with CDs. Had about a dozen running in parallel so I was busy swapping CDs. First shot at uploading them to the music library turned up a few compatibility issues but a batch-mode tag editor fixed them in a few seconds each. Fiddling the Genre tags to get the albums grouped as I like took longer.

          I’m not close to the 65K limit and I don’t think I am close to the other storage limits either. Never bothered to submit a diagnostic and ask Sonos staff to give me my storage numbers, they aren’t visible to users.

            CantstayhomeAuthor
            Contributor I
            March 25, 2021

            I can see that I will have an ongoing project to work on over the next year. Thank you for the collective wisdom!

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