What are My Options for Ripping My CD Collection ?


I'm not a tech person and I'm looking for options to rip my 1,300 CD collection.  I've been looking at a used Innuos Zen Mk 3 with internal CD ripper because it would also be a considerable streamer upgrade.  However this is $1500 or more on the used market.  I can live with my current streamer if there are less expensive options for ripping with comparable sound quality (FLAC or better).  We are MAC based. Thanks.  

 

 

 

foamcutter

As the guy said use DBpoweramp. I have windows not mac but DB is compatible, if you rip them in full value 1440kbps your collection is only 1tb, you could use a Netac 1tb usb drive for $80 to store, which would be fine and make a backup copy at some point with a Micro SD card and adaptor. I never did like FLAC, but found Ogg Vorbis running at 500kbps to be a Gas. All you need is an external cd drive, an HP or LG, otherwise you will get errors. Connect and away you go. I have stored all my collection on PC in Full Wave and when Qobuz is working correctly it is about the same. For me Qobuz seems to dump titles and have no data so I have ceased using it. Incidentally to play music from a PC you need at least a constant 3.2Ghz and A minimum of Quad Core or it's time lapse all the way

I still buy CD's and have a vast collection.  DBPoweramp sounds like a good solution for ripping software.  I simply used Apple music software (formerly iTunes) to rip to Apple Lossless.  It's compatible with most streamers and works for me, and easy to use.  If you don't have a CD drive you can purchase a USB drive for cheap.  I have one that will read/write to CD, DVD and Blue Ray and it was less than $40.

For storing, a cheap solution would be an external HD or SSD.  I have my collection backed up on several drives, but mainly use a NAS for my computer and device backups and to store my CD collection for easy playback.  My NAS is configured in RAID 1 which allows for redundancy as mentioned in another post.  I have two 8TB drives so a total of 8 TB storage, plenty for all my backups and music with room to spare.  A NAS is not that difficult to setup and easy to maintain.

I took the advice of several folks here and bought a used Innuos MK3 Zen ripper/streamer and it has been a superb choice for me. Reading the responses, though, if I had over 4000 CD's it would have taken forever. Instead, my several hundred that I dragged out of several storage boxes, took me about 2 weeks to finally get completed. It allowed me an opportunity to recall each CD and some of them had been long forgotten and it was an opportunity to renew my enjoyment of some music (for example, Dark Latin Groove’s DLG CD). As a huge and lucky bonus, the guy who sold me his used MK3 Zen asked if I would like him to leave his music on it, so I ended up with a very eclectic selection of music! I have finally figured out how to back it all up to my Roon Nucleus (which has been pretty superfluous to me compared to the MK3 Zen and Qobuz streaming) and it’s all been good.

To confirm, NAS are set-and-forget.

Granted, you can get fancy and give your NAS Internet access so you can stream your tunes from the other side of the world, or set it up as a media server, or to record the numerous surveillance cameras that dot the grounds of your vast property. 

But for audiophile use, it will work great with just a basic setup (network, RAID, send notifications) that takes minutes and doesn't require tech skills.

If you’re planning to rip hundreds or thousands of CDs, consider a OWC Mercury Pro USB enclosure fitted with a 5.25" Plextor PXL-910S drive. It will plug right into any PC or Mac with a USB port and read CDs at 48x speed. It’s a workhorse. Make sure you use Exact Audio Copy or similar software to ensure bit-perfect transfers every time. Good luck!