best external drive for ripping CDs

I started with an Apple Optical drive. It died after a few hundred rips and I replaced

it with a Bryston Optical player (at the time I was using a Bryston BDP 3.). It was built like a tank, etc, and completely didn’t work. It ripped about 5 CDs, then couldn’t make it through a single CD (it was a “factory refreshed” model from Audio

Advisors). I sent it back to Bryston for servicing, at my expense for shipping. It came back weeks later, after I had to call Bryston, in exactly the same condition.

It is in a landfill now, the worst audio purchase I ever made.

Since I use a Melco NAS, I decided to buy their optical ripper (both the Melco and the Bryston can be used as CD Transports with their respective players). The Melco has worked great, ripping hundreds of discs without error, and yes sounds excellent as a CD transport.

I was in a thrift shop a few months back and bought a used Apple Optical player for a fiver. It ripped a few CDs well. The main reason I bought it is because it attaches to our MacBook and can play DVDs. We take train trips to see family a couple of times a year and Amtrak’s WiFi is no go for most of it, so we bring a few movies for the road

+1 @onhwy61 

I checked with a copyright lawyer before I started burning CDs.  As long as I don’t sell or broadcast or make copies off my HD, it’s all legal.  So I guess we are better than parasites, (un)clearthinker

I am very conscious of the copyright issue.  When CDs first came out I started making cassettes for personal use.  I then tried mailing one to a friend of mine who plays with the New York Philharmonic, among other organizations and with whom I discuss music.  He mailed it back with a strong admonishment.  I had never previously considered the issue before from the loss of royalties.  Later one of my sons graduated from a Law School well known for their work on Intellectual Property Rights, and he clerked for a summer for one of their Deans.  I met my son for lunch and the Dean insisted on buying us lunch at the school cafeteria.  When he discovered that I was a Physician he picked my brain for a while about his issue, and then I addressed the issue under discussion here with him for a while (the good old Barter System).  He also emails me a few articles from Legal Journals.

I absolutely don’t file share and really resent the comment from clearstinker.

  At any rate it’s remarkable that the OP and I had the same painful experience with the Bryston BOT.  My experience extended to the Bryston BDP3, which sounded great but which had so many snafus with it inept Web Browser as to drain all of the pleasure out of listening.  Bryston digital department sullies the decades of goodwill that they built up with their amplifiers.  And yes, the Melco is superb (Melco is the audiophile wing of a large computer peripheral company), but afaik it needs to be coupled to a Melco streamer/server

@jbuhl 

don’t know about the BOT 1 power cord.  Why do you ask?