What are My Options for Ripping My CD Collection ?

I was referring to the fact that those programs cost money or they don't. If they are "free", you will have to read the fine print to understand why, but there is nothing in life for free.

Nonsense.

If you have a drive its easy enough to rip your CDs to Lossless files and stream through just about any streamer on the market.  Just find any software package, Sourceforge, dbpower amp and may others .  As long as you rip to lossless say FLAC files you are set to do what you want later on.  I have ripped my thousands of cds a few times just because I wanted to do them over as I had a mix of FLAC WMA and WAV lossless the first time.  Now they are all stored on a NAS streamed through my various systems if wanted or just  played in my office 

Take your time do it while you are doing other things.  Rip move in Rip, move on etc... its is very easy to do no real knowledge required once you get it set to go. 

I use a $50 LG Blu-ray CD-R player to rip my CDs, and JRiver software (inexpensive IMO for lifetime upgrades) on my PC. The JRiver does a great job for what I need. But honestly, I don't really listen to much of my digital library. I either stream via Qobuz or play the CDs.  Every CD or vinyl copy that I buy from Bandcamp usually comes with a digital copy that I use for backup. I'm only ripping CDs these days to act as digital backups, as well as having a copy of most of my library on my laptop. That is handy when I travel & want to listen to music off-line.

In the event the internet comes crashing down thanks to our soon-to-be AI overlords, I'll be able to listen to everything I enjoy without relying on wifi. 

@goodlistening64 

The zip file analogy you used is similar but not exact.

My analogy was meant for the absence of losing any bits, with file formats that are lossless.  Even with compression, no bits are lost.  But, yes, how a compressed (or zipped) file is handled by the software will differ in terms of multitasking, which would stress out low-end equipment.

My 2020 Honda Accord is an example.  It plays flac files with no problem.  But it takes 3 seconds to proceed to the next song.  That drove me crazy.  If I wanted to skip ahead several songs, it took half of forever.

With the wav format, there is no delay for me skipping songs.

So I converted all of my flac files to wav files, and use those wav files in my car (still keeping my flac files for everywhere else).

But now, in my car, I cannot search by artist, etc.  Due to wav having lousy metadata capacity, searching or filtering in my car is useless.  The car's display does not even show me the name of the artist.  It often shows "Various Artists", because that is the directory where many songs are, due to purchasing, for example, a One Hit Wonders compilation.  When the songs were flac files, it showed me the artist.

So use flac (or alac for Apple hardware), and use wav if your hardware sucks like my Accord's head unit.

By the way, if anyone has a similar Accord model (and this might be true for any Honda vehicles?), there is a developers / diagnostic menu that you can bring up.  And there is a setting the improves the sound quality.  I used to get fatigued listening for 10 minutes.  But no more fatigue.  With the developers setting enabled, the listening fatigue is gone (or takes over an hour before feeling any).

I found this video, which might be the one I saw 6 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6o0zHZt6KM

The sound quality improvement might not hit you right away.  But it is real.  And if you undo it a few weeks later, you will not like it.

@seymour-krelborn 

I confess (er, realized) that my FLAC and WAV file comparison is in no way scientific or studied, as my DAC peaks out at 192/24. So, I can't really make a valid comparison. A bit is a bit and both files should sound identical but when limited in scope that may not be the case. Call it an amateur observation.

For the record, I prefer the sound of the inverted phase button turned on when using my Yggy, so now you know which side I am on. 

Our cars like WAV files. My wife and I both have Mazda's (2018 & 2020) and they are quite friendly for hi-res files, both FLAC and WAV and play 192/24. Varying ways to choose music. Reliable. Metadata comes from Gracenote, a database used by Mazda that I hope makes inroads and provides some consistency, or compliance, across the industry. I think Japanese-made cars do a great job of giving digital music owners some respect and American cars kind of ignore us. Some new Chevy's don't even have the ability to play USB files. I think, in those cases, you have to use the new USB-C port to dongle a player. Cheap ____. 

But now, in my car, I cannot search by artist, etc.  Due to wav having lousy metadata capacity, searching or filtering in my car is useless.  The car's display does not even show me the name of the artist.  It often shows "Various Artists", because that is the directory where many songs are, due to purchasing, for example, a One Hit Wonders compilation.  When the songs were flac files, it showed me the artist.

That is because your songs are not indexed correctly. Syntax error. Many times compilation music does not include the artist name in the contributing artists field (but shows Various Artists instead), hence it does not index an artist.

In addition, the reason metadata is not downloading artist images to display is because if it has no idea of what photo to show of that Various Artists guy.

You need to fix data on your own database of music before you export it to your USB stick. 

Don't overload your car stereo processor with too many tasks at once or include a large number of files to manage because you are likely pushing it. Probably better to use multiple USB sticks with differing music with say 10 GB on each. Mazda at 15 GB takes about a minute or so to load on start-up. It does have a memory in that it starts where it left off and if I turn the car off and back on it doesn't miss a beat.