What are My Options for Ripping My CD Collection ?

@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.

+1 for the NAS with drives/raid. I have over 5 TER of ripped CDs and purchased media...I'm old and been at it a while. I also have a backup drive in a fireproof safe.

@goodlistening64 

That is because your songs are not indexed correctly.

All of my songs were indexed when thy were flac files.  My Accord handled the metadata with no issues.  But the accord’s stereo took 3 seconds to start the next song.

I used JRiver’s Media Center to convert those flac files to wav files.  That fixed the 3 second delay in starting the next song.  But the metadata got tossed.

Note that I am playing all of the songs from a USB flash drive.  There is no connection to a smart phone or any on-line database to retrieve metadata.

As flac files, the metadata was part of each file, and my Accord read and displayed that metadata, including showing cover art.  I was able to search and filter by that metadata.  But once converted to wav files, all of that was lost.  But it remedied the annoying 3 second delay between songs.

Mazda at 15 GB takes about a minute or so to load on start-up.

I have approximately 200 GB of wav files on my USB flash drive.

I can start playing music from my USB flash drive in approximately 30 seconds.  However, the first time that I plugged it in, it took a while to read through all of the files (for what, I do not know).  But as long as I leave that flash drive connected, it does not perform / repeat that lengthy process.

Metadata is lost during FLAC to WAV conversion primarily because FLAC uses a modern, standardized tagging system (Vorbis comments) while WAV relies on older, less consistent structures (RIFF INFO chunks or ID3 tags). Many converters fail to map the extensive FLAC tags to the limited WAV structure, or the converter defaults to stripping them, focusing only on audio data

Im not familiar with JRiver, I just use plain old vanilla Media Center. You can restore that metadata information manually, I assume, but I am not an Apple guy either. 

I am surprised that your car reads 200GB, I thought cars max out at 30GB but I guess not. Perhaps car manufacturer specific. 

Yeah, I use USB storage to play, I do not dongle a player. I meant to say Ford Maverick (last year model), not Chevy, does not include the means to play the files from USB, and I assume will require an external player to do so, but that I cannot confirm. It was the first model car that I drove that I noticed the change/migrations from USB type A to USB type C. The new Maverick has one of each (A &C), but USB A does not recognize or play music. 

And to be clear, I do not see data that contends the music is playing at 192/24 (although I have not really searched for it) but judging from the sound, it is definitely hi-resolution sound. I drive older Chevy's a lot (3-5 years old) and while they play music and have fairly good players/choices, the sound is probably not 192/24 but a lower 48 or 96 resolution.