Any CD player will connect to the Five’s Line-In. But you don’t need an amplifier. The Five takes a line-level signal, which is what comes out of a CD player’s RCA jacks.

Is there any reason why you wouldn’t rip your CDs to disk and play the digital files directly over the network, instead of messing around with a hardware CD player?

For that matter you could always dispense with the CDs entirely and take out a subscription to one of the online music streaming providers. That way you’d have access to much of the recorded music on the planet, and quite often a better, remastered, version of the CDs you originally purchased.

Thanks Ratty. So we could buy four x Ones and no other Sonos kit and run Spotify off our phones, or a dedicated iPod?

Can anyone recommend a portable device other than our computers, iPads or phones (and a fairly expensive iPod) that would make for a good ‘controller’ for Spotify?

Here’s the info on using Spotify: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1153

I don’t subscribe to Spotify but I would think that Spotify Connect should work with Sonos from pretty much any compatible network device.

As for running the Sonos controller app itself see https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4875

Hear Hear! CD players became obsolete with the advent of ripping CDs to a local server - NAS - which was in turn obsoleted by streaming services. The only caveat is that one should have a reliable connection to these via the net.

If you must have one, a replaced phone should serve just fine.

Okay, thanks folks. So all I need really, if i’’m going to ditch the ace player from my plans would be 3 or 4 x Ones and The Sonos app on my phone or iPad?

*CD not ace

Yes, but do think about ripping your CDs to a lossless format later.

I don’t use my ripped CDs a lot in the house aside from the few that aren’t available over streaming but a down-converted MP3 copy is nice to have in the car and on my laptop for poor hotel WiFi situations.

Thanks. Sorry for another newbie question: If I have mp3s ripped from CDs on my laptop or iPad can I play them wirelessly on the Sonos system (4 x Ones) as long as everything’s on the same wi-fi network?

Laptop library can be added to Sonos app.  iPad library can be played via Airplay, as long as you have Airplay capable Sonos device(s). 

As said you can, but you’d get better sound if playing FLAC or another lossless format so save the MP3 format for places where space for music is more important than sound quality.

I suggest getting at lease one 5 unit, simply because it offers the additional feature of a line in jack that can be very useful for incorporating third party kit like turntables or Echo Show into the Sonos system. Kit so wired in can be then heard on all or any Sonos speaker in the system.