What are My Options for Ripping My CD Collection ?

@devinplombier  thank you for the detailed explanation and the link.  I will look into that. Eventual failure is a scary thought with all the external hard drives I have filled with years of photos and videos.

@soix  thank you, it's taken me a few years to assemble this systembut I'm pretty happy with it...except the streamer.  I appreciate your thoughts and advice. I will research better cables and an LPS for the Merason DAC.

Cheers everyone. It's 5AM and I'm off to hopefully photograph the Comet in the eastern sky. 

@soix 

Especially as, like me, you’re not a tech person and a Zen Mk3 would be a streamer upgrade along with allowing you to easily rip all your CDs and have all your music in one place I’d just do that and be done.  Life’s too short to deal with tech BS, and some things are just worth paying for IMHO.  Plus you get Innuos’ wonderful Sense app as an added bonus, and you may find with the Zen your streaming sounds good enough to not need to rip the CDs that are available to stream.  Just my $0.02 FWIW, and best of luck. 

+1 ^

I also expect that after you rip a few CD's, and then play them back from stored FLAC files, and compare the sound with streaming directly with Qobuz via Innuos's own Sense software, that they sound too similar to worry about, and you will forgo the ripping and just stream 99% of the time. 

Alternatively this Aurender over the Innuos: 

https://www.aurenderamerica.com/en-ca/products/asc100?srsltid=AfmBOoqYBYy6tXPCgvllbb9oO82tmtATXtz1jSWabpgtB12FPOCDmOMP

@soix  and @mclinnguy good points, thank you. And thanks for the Aurender link.

I second the dB Poweramp recommendation.  I used an $80 Apple optical ripper, attached at one port to my MacBook and saved the files to a 3TB hard drive.  Ultimately I bought a Melco NAS which also a streamer and wound up purchasing the Melco Optical Ripper, but this would be beyond your budget.  I recently pulled out the HD with the db files and played it through the usb port of the Melco and they sounded quite good

HELLO @foamcutter ,

My Frerot DAC does not have a USB 2 in or out, 

Sorry,   the USB hard drive would plug into your new streamer.  Just saying thatit is an easy alternative to have stored music on a usb hardrive, which is essentially the same as having it on an INTERNAL hard drive in your streamer.  Having gone through several streamers, and like many only using the INTERNAL hard drive I specced the streamer with, I have had to move the stored music several times. 

So now I do put it in the streamer, but I also have it on a portable usb hard drive.  this allows me to easily transfer it to a new streamer, cary it to my vacation home and plug it into my streamer there, and share it with friends.  It all started when my friend gave me aTB of high rez music.  Just plug it into the back of the usb input on the streamer and voila.