Which is better: CD player or a vinyl player?

From a technical standpoint, digital CD audio quality is clearly superior to vinyl.

Vinyl is fun and nice to satisfy an audio fetish and make you feel you're actually doing something to play your music but for overall sound, longevity, space, and convenience, CD is the way to go.

It's up to your budget.

It depends on your budget, but of course the vinyl player is one love

Yes, You can turn up your stereo just as loud as a CD player. I don't how big of a CD collection you have. but if your CD player doesn't work, that's going to be expensive replacing your current CD's with LPs. When they first came out, CD's were more expensive than LPs. Now, it's the other way around. You might be better off getting a CD player.

They can both be played loud, provided you have a good enough stereo system.

I hope you'll consider getting into the FLAC vs. DSD debate. Some of the available FLAC files at hdtracksDOTcom are 24-bit with a 192-kHz sampling rate, and both values are higher than the specifications for Compact Disc--Digital Audio.

Use VLC for FLAC if you must. Also consider converting the files to WAV format if you wish since the latter is much more common and probably more widely supported on, for example, Blu-ray players. Audacity is a good application, but it's not the only application.

Also, Direct-Stream Digital is probably well-worth looking into.

I have a lot of both. 

CDs are far better for sound quality, particularly if you want to crank the volume. . 

To me, records have only one advantage, 

that of containing material which will never be available any other way.    

And unless your CD player is plainly failing, 

why do you think you should replace it?   

I have units much older than 15 years and they are perfectly good.    

If you already have a DVD or BD player, try it for CDs. 

If it is a decent model it will do a great job and you won't need to buy anything else.    

CD audio is significantly better and the discs do not degrade with playing.

LPs are not as good by a long way; the noise level is only about 60db down vs. over 100db for CD.

The only good reason to have them is if you like the experience of handling and playing them - definitely not for any supposed audio quality.

And unless you get a really good turntable, with a good cartridge and stylus, they will wear and degrade rather rapidly. They do that even on high-end gear, just not as fast.

Compare using LPs to keeping a vintage car - you don't have one because it is "better" than a modern car, you do it for the experience, if that happens to be what you are in to.

I lived through the LP / vinyl era & I remember the 78 disc era before that.

I was as happy to see the end of LPs as the end of 78s, though I still have quite a few original 70s/80s LPs & singles and a good turntable, just for novelty value.

Digital music contains a high frequency tone which we cannot hear directly, but we can hear its subfrequencies buried in whatever we listen to.  Some people find this irritating.  Analog music like vinyl does not include this tone although there is a degree of distortion caused by imperfections in the reproduction technique.  It's largely a matter of personal taste which you prefer.  How loud it is depends on the size of your amplifier and the efficiency of your loudspeakers.  If you go for loud, it's best to avoid vinyl since the feedback from the speakers to the pickup also causes distortion.