What do you listen to your music on?

I find a healthy dose of Malbec takes care of that.

Happy to help. It’s remarkably easy and once you go there you wonder why you didn’t do it before. I love streaming because I can spend my limited cash on better speakers and an amp rather than a CD player, record deck, tuner etc all of which become redundant. My set up is now much cleaner and digital to analogue conversion happens much closer to the power stage so sound quality is just incredible.

The basic concept is simple. Music is stored as data and streamed (or cast) to the device. This is a bit of a misnomer as the device has to read the library and request that a file is streamed by the server. If you centralise the data and make it available, it can be streamed to several devices at once, or conversely, much more music can be stored in a single library. The device in question can be as simple as your phone / tablet / smart TV, or something hybrid like an apple TV, a dedicated audio device such as a Chromecast receiver, Sonos, Google Home, Apple Homepod, or even a high end hifi network streaming device. All do essentially the same thing - read the library and request / retrieve the stream. Some will convert to analogue, others (high end particularly) might only have a digital out for feeding a separate DAC stage.

You need:
1. A NAS to hold your music collection if you have one. Get a fast one. I use a QNAP TS869 Pro but would recommend a TS453 Pro right now. Fill it with cheap SSDs. You can configure the SSDs to behave as a single logical drive using something called RAID. For backed up SSDs you can use RAID 0. For regular spinning HDs use RAID 10 for redundancy. Then figure out how to back it up, typically to an external 3.5" drive which you can keep in the safe. If you only have only one listening room and a USB port on your amp you could also use an SSD in a USB enclosure directly connected to your amp.
2. Streaming. Stream over WiFi or wired. The beauty of the setup is is that you can access all your music anywhere on the network, simultaneously. So you need one or more client devices. For the NAS solution you'll need a server application (software on your NAS to share the library). I use Plex but there are lots out there and they're all free.
3. Ripping and adding meta-data. One word, lossless. AIFF, FLAC or ALAC will be fine. It's tedious to do but only needs to be done once. EDIT: Some lossy formats such as 320kbs MP3 are also more than fine.
As important as sound quality is being able to find your music easily. Organise your files in folders by Artist, even though your server streaming software will likely ignore it, Instead they read individual file names and organise the songs itselg. Files use ID3 tags (meta tags) to store all the associated information necessary. This isn't just Artist / album name / song title, but cover art, genre, release dates, collaborators etc. CDs contain very little of this data digitally. But there are tools which work a bit like Shazam in that they will scan the song and write the meta-data.
Are you Mac or PC? I’m a Mac guy and I use filebot, songkick and Metaz to enrich metadata.
The more time you spend with meta-data the better your search experience will be so it's worth investing time.
4. Additional streaming sources. Depending on your preferred music genre there are several cloud based streaming services available to you. Spotify, Tidal, Apple music, Google play which will invigorate your listening and expose you to more music than you can imagine.

Many (young) people these days don't own their music so skip steps 1 & 3 and just stream a cloud service to their phone and then bluetooth to a speaker, or perhaps use a chromecast connected to a decent amp. Results are superb. Even if you're married to your vinyl it makes no sense not to spend £35 on a Chromecast audio (or a bit more on a decent bluetooth receiver) and plug that in to your 1970's beast of an amp, giving you an extra source of music.

That's it! If you decide to move your digital files to a NAS you can of course ditch all the CDs, the CD player and probably a bunch of wires.

There will be naysayers and each to their own but y'know, people used to listen to music on cassettes or reel to reel tape and they don't any more. It's the future 😀

Thanks v much for the detailed walk thru. Shall digest tomorrow whilst browsing for drives. I love the idea of getting shot of the cds, however am now torn with the idea of buying a top end player / streamer ( as above). Need to mull it all over.
[Edit] the context of all this is me going back to solid state media. My current set up is a big Sony AV and Q Acoustic floorstanders , all on the network, with Spotify at being the main source. Prior I had a chunky separates system , with 70s Pioneer amp.and NAD 5120 turntable.

You goddamn hipsters with your magnetised sellotape, frisbees with grooves cut in them and your wax cylinders 😝

Exactly - solid state has much less to go wrong. Hit me up for a chat if you have questions

My S8 plus Samsung phone with Sony XBass Headphones

A couple of Sonos Play3s.
Sound great.
Use to runs a Rega Planar 3 on Mission 770s.
Got to say I love the convenience of the Sonos and the minimal space, but miss my LPs.