Best Way to Upgrade Digital

What are you using as a transport for your CDs now?  I continue to use a Benchmark dac1 pre and a Cambridge CD player as a transport.  Works well and sounds amazing.  Certainly you and I can spend a lot and improve, but we want to keep the cost low.  How many SACDs do you have?  Why don’t you know if CDs sound better than your streaming Bluenode?  I recommend you purchase a transport and listen to your Benchmark dac for a while and then decide whether to upgrade to a newer dac.   I primarily play vinyl.

Ripping as you go with a PC is the easiest way to organize and tag. Whatever method you decide on is best for you.  The only way that the files will sound "better" than the CDs is if you have a crappy CDP.
But the difference is not critical and maybe barely noticeable.

Sell the Node and buy a Vault and just load all your CDs into that.  Then, when you can, upgrade your DAC and you should be in good shape.  Best of luck. 

For low-cost CD ripping: there's a free program called "Exact Audio Copy" to rip your CDs using a Windows PC. Very important to use care with the program settings to get the best resolution with the ripped files.

A step up from this is JRiver Media Center software, which has an easy-to- use CD ripper. JRiver starts at around $60 and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It works well to maintain and play a digital music library, and it has video capability.
Down side for both is the time involved to rip 3,000+ CDs. A good project for a Covid-19 lockdown...

I ripped my collection of 4000+ CDs and before I started I did some research about the best way to do it. I had an ASUS gaming laptop that I set up next to my listening chair and I used dBpoweramp for the ripping. If you rip to FLAC it will retrieve the meta data for each CD and automatically put it with the music files. It also has a feature that will detect a HDCD and rip it at 20 bits (you have to activate this feature).

The most important thing, however, is that I bought a Plextor Plexwriter PX-891SAF burner along with a high quality external case to hook up to my ASUS using a USB3 cable. This writer is well known to be much faster than a built-in burner in a server or a standard CD burner. In my case it is at least 4 to 5 times faster than the built-in CD burner in my ASUS. If you've got several thousand CDs to rip, speed is really important. I ripped the files to an external USB3 4 TB hard drive. For safety I have backed up my files to two other external drives.

My setup allowed me to listen to music and rip a dozen or more CDs per session. It took me nearly 3 years to get the whole job done but it was a good way to do it. You definitely don't want to be getting up and down to load every CD into the burner.

I'm an Innuos fan (Zenith MK3) popping the CD's in and out while I listen to music and it does 99% of the tagging correctly.

You could go Zen Mini

ZenithMK3, USB--> Matrix 2 SPDIF(separate LPS), i2s--> Gustard X26 Pro DAC, XLR-->

Then that all goes to my system

I ripped my 2,000 CDs over a period of years. Then upgraded my streamer and no longer listen to my CDs or ripped CDs. Copying files from a CD allows them to be streamed (ripping). So, this is basically making them available to a streamer. So if you buy a CP player, you are taking away funds that could go to a streamer. With good equipment there is no difference between a CD, ripped CD file on a server or local storage, or streamed from a service like Qobuz. Actually Qobuz frequently sounds better and costs about what the purchase of a single CD per month, $14.99), while your library goes nearly to infinite.


So, if you understand the term sunk cost… that is your CD collection. Mine is now used for wall sound dampening. So, instead of investing more in a transport, better to invest in the highest quality streamer. Which of course requires an appropriate DAC, but then so does a CD transport.

Replace the benchmark with a neutral sounding dac, the benchmark was known to be far too cool sounding (shrill), I would walk into a music room at a show and I could tell they were using a benchmark and walked right out

Not much you can do about changes in technology, but you already have a decent DAC with the Benchmark and player in the Bluesound Node.  The Node has a DAC as well, it isn’t terrible, you should compare it to the Benchmark if you haven’t already.  Buying a Vault would consolidate everything under one component but it doesn’t make sense you already have the Node which doesn’t have a great resale value.  Also it is difficult to transfer files from the storage in the Vault to a different hard drive should you wish to go in a different direction—not impossible, but more difficult than it should be.
  What the OP needs is a place to store files and a way to rip them.  The simplest 
solution is to use a PC to edit metadata,as others have recommended.  You may need to purchase an external optical drive to rip the files if your computer doesn’t have a CD ripper.  Then store them to an external Hard Drive, which can be attached to the Node, or else played directly from the computer into the usb drive of the Benchmark.  If you play from the Node you can use the BlueOS interface, from the PC a separate program.

To my understanding, the data contained on CDs is limiting….please correct me if I am wrong, but no expenditure to update your playing of those CDs is ever going to equal what you can hear from HD digital, presuming that the HD digital files are created from a good master….of course, if the master was crap, no type of LP or digital reproduction will be great ….if you want easier access to those CDs go ahead and rip them, but all you will gain is convenience. Streaming HD from Qobuz, etc potentially will give better sound

So, if you understand the term sunk cost… that is your CD collection. Mine is now used for wall sound dampening. So, instead of investing more in a transport, better to invest in the highest quality streamer.

I like having and will keep my software (CDs)... the vinyl folks love owning their media and CDs are the same, just smaller and shinier! I have ripped 600+ CDs to my Small Green Computer Sonictransporter Roon server, and now I stream them. I haven’t fired up my good CD player in months, but I will keep it. I still buy CDs but I rip them straight away. I do love having the discs in my listening room as a fallback source. I can’t think of a reason to spend $1000-4000 on a CD player now, when server replay is so good (I have heard that the T+A and other high-end players are amazing though).

I'm reading reviews of top end streaming gear and DACs getting truly amazing playback from standard Redbook CDs. I don't hear much if any difference between most of my CD rips and MQA or Qobuz hi-res streams, but my system is "only" an $11k system, so not the highest resolution. My 64 year old ears aren't the highest resolving anymore either, to my dismay.

MAHLER123, love our suggestion of using a  external optical drive to rip the CD's.  Question can I Rip CD's directly onto an external Hard drive? If not, I assume I will need to rip through my MAC into the external hard drive?  Are there any external optical drives that RIP CD's Quickly?  I have a few thousand CD's. 
Is there a difference in external optical drives?   I saw a few in Amazon for $20-$30, seem rather inexpensive, not use to such pricing in this hobby.  As for the external hard drive will any external hard drive do?  If anyone has good results with certain gear, I welcome suggestions, thanks again to all.   

You absolutely can rip files to the external hard drive.  You just designate the HD as the ultimate destination for the files to be stored.  If you decide to go that route you need a ripping program such as dbPoweramp or Exact Audio Copy.  Make sure that your computer has enough USB ports to be attached to the Optical Drive and the HD simultaneously.
  I used an Apple Optical Drive for a while.  It’s fast but it did make a few errors here and there.  I now use a Melco Optical drive but it has to be used with Melco HD and Player and that is beyond your budget but the rips are pristine.  If you keep your current DAC and Node then you have a lot of budget to spend on hard drive and ripper.  You want to do the rips well, particularly if you are discarding the CDs afterwards .  You may want to investigate the computer peripheral market to see what the best optical drives are
  As far as HD go, if you decide that you might be playing the files in more than one system, then you might want a server (Network Associated Server, NAS), but if one system is it, then a simple HD will suffice 

You want to do the rips well, particularly if you are discarding the CDs afterwards .

I've thought about what to do with my CDs. If space was at a premium, I would store the discs in CD binders in disc pages, or some method, and ditch the jewel boxes. I'd keep the liner notes. I could probably store all 600+ CDs in 2 book boxes, but I would have them as backups or to re-rip. For now, they are in a wall rack that holds about 800 CDs.

Exact Audio Copy EAC. FREE!
A little setup is required and once you work out the naming conventions you want your music ripped to, you simply lookup the inserted disk on the online database, it fills in the names of tracks without the need to type, select the album cover and go do whatever you want and come back in 10 mins.

It has built in checking of data integrity and checksum, if you're not getting 100% perfect rips, you can polish the disk for another rip of just the songs and write over the imperfect rip.

I use a laptop, rip new discs to a USB stick and drop in into my server when I am ready.

You might want to rip the ones you want to listen to most, and while you're having a listening session, do a dozen every couple of days, most enjoyable to least enjoyable?

“HD Quality “ as used by the streaming services can be confusing.  Many of them are using the term for Redbook CD Quality recordings.  Amazon and Apple are particularly guilty of this.  Audiophiles think of High Resolution as 24/96 minimum.
Would I rather listen to a 24/96 Qobuz file than a red book CD from my collection?  In general, yes, but not all HD files are truly High Resolution…so Buyer Beware 

Keeping your CDs is of course fine. Liking the ritual to play, or copying them to a hard drive. The pursuit is for enjoyment in any way you choose. But make no mistake about it, there is no similarity between vinyl and CD discs. CDs have a set maximum fidelity as @jw944ts points out. Vinyl and streaming offer significantly greater sound quality. 

Oh, geez, does anyone really want to reanimate the CD vs Vinyl argument? 

+1 @mahler123...As my DAC shows the configuration of the file being played, it is absolutely true that a file listed as HD may not actually be so, which is most disappointing....and, of course if the original master  was crap, no HD conversion is going to make it sound good; all HD can promise is the best available digital conversion from analog....AND if some engineer chose to mess with the master recording while doing the conversion, well, then it might not be what you would expect, either....MANY unknowns, all along the way from the performance to you ears, sadly.....

Bryston BDP series might be an option they will sound better than Blu Node. There is a BDP Pi over on Usaudiomart for $550. BDP-2 can be found for around $1.5K This could be used to stream a service like Qobuz and the Manic Moose interface can be used to control a optical drive such as a blue ray player. You can attach a external drive and rip CDs to and external disk. If you got 3K CD’s you could rip them to a NAS or TB storage. Keep your DAC1 now and upgrade it later.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/bryston-bdp-1-digital-audio-player-bryston-bdp-2
There is a BDP-2 over on USA audiomart as well with the upgraded sound card (BDP-3 I believe)   for around $1.7K.  Make them an offer.  Thats a sweet unit for that kind of money.

review: https://www.audiostream.com/content/bryston-bda-2-and-bdp-2

Lots of great advice here.  I used DB Power amp and it worked well. As for HD cd it must be checked from a menu to be used correctly.  
An excellent streamer, roon ready is the Pro-Ject Ultra Stream box S-2.  I bought mine from Audio Advisor due to the trial and return option.   Has its own app and connects to streaming services as well as cleaning up files if streaming from a laptop.   My ripped CDs are streamed from this and it accepts a thumb drive in the front.

Addition to above post:   The project streamer couples with a used Black Ice FX Dac will hit your target budget goal.     I don’t have a budget system but these two devices will keep you happy for quite a while (As much as an audiophile can be)