Thanks for all your input. If anyone is interested…
I do indeed use Roon with my own server + Qobuz. At the moment, that’s my exclusive mode of listening.
But, I’ve also got a fair few CDs from years ago in storage, and a growing collection of CDs bought recently to support smaller, independent artists.
I thought it’d be fun to have a small curated collection of my favourite albums on CD for more purposeful listening (rather than scrolling through thousands of streamed albums). The Saturn seemed a win-win for the CDP and Dac element. Again, thanks for everyone’s input.
That's an interesting comment - 'more purposeful listening'. I think I understand what you mean; you mean the times when you want to sit and engage with an album of music, made in the way the artist intended it to be heard right?
One of the things I thought might happen when I moved from redbook CD playback to server based playback was just this shift you want to avoid (at least in part); I thought I might no longer listen to albums and would just cruise steadily from track to track streaming music from a cloud based service. Actually the reverse turned out to be true; I listen to whole albums now far more than I ever did when I used a CDP as my primary source.
I think part of this is because having the option to flit around makes you less impatient to move on; I also have found that using Roon as my media interface means I am more likely to engage with the album because of the richness of content associated with it. Also, the sheer musicality of playback I've managed to achieve (somethign I am so utterly and always delighted by - so much joy in my listening room!) means I'm far more engaged.
Using Roon also means I can choose to view my music in many different ways. There are the obvious ones, like by genre, or format/resolution, artist etc, but also the more perosonal ones, for example I can view only albums that i have a stored local copy of. This is my default view - everything I see has a copy I own the rights to on the HD inside the server. All the music I've added from a streaming service (I use Qobuz), which is not stored locally is in a different view.
This way, I keep track of my music collection as my own, i.e. the music I've bought because I liked it enough to own a copy (note that locally stored sounds discernably and notably better than streamed media, at least when played back on a good enoug system), versus the stuff I've acquired out of idle interest. I also use tags and have ones called 'Future Listening' and 'To Buy'; when I've listened to the streamed version enough I either move it into the 'To Buy' category, or else just leave it as is. This is how you would replicate your desire to have a music collection that you engage with for more serious listening.
A few other points that might help develop your thinking. Ripping bit perfect copies to a NAS drive or the internal storage of your server can be done very easoily using DB Power Amp and doesn't take long. I ripped 600 CDs over the course of a few weeks whilst working from home. I've bought (i.e. paid to own a locally downloaded copy) about 60 albums new since moving to the server based system I have. About 90% of these are at bit and sample rates higher than 44/16. The server makes a huge difference in sound quality but finding something that works well can be tricky, not least because the integration can often be complicated (I side stepped this by opting for a custom built music server from a specialist who does installation and set up work but in person and remotely).
Hope this helps your thinking and enjoy yout music.
