Looking for a component for ripping and playing CD's.


Recently moved to a different state and sold all my audio equipment.  NAD preamp and tuner, Nakamich Dragon, Thorens belt drive turntable with Shure V15VMR, Sony 400 disc SACD player, pair of Hafler DH500's, Krell KMA100's, Definitive BP7000SC's and Polk Audio SDA SRS's.  Sold all my vinyl but kept my collection of approx. 2500 CD's.

New system consists of NAD C538 single CD player, Sangean tuner, McIntosh C-32 preamp, McIntosh MC-2205 amp, Klipsch Forte IV's, a pair of Klipsch RP-1200SW subs and my first ever stand alone DAC, S.M.S.L. SU-1.  I've never streamed before and enjoy Youtube for music and music videos.

My question is does anybody make a hifi component that allows me to rip my CD's and then play them through my DAC?  I really do not want to use a computer to do this.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

EMUAGOGO

 

 

emuagogo

There are a number of ripper / streamers. But in this day and age I would just recommend getting the best streamer you can afford and skip the ripping all together. For $14/month you can get access to over ten million albums, on Qobuz (the best sounding streaming service) you’ll have access to half a million high resolution albums (higher than CD). Streaming can sound the same or better than ripped files depending on equipment. Time and money buying the transport part could be better spent on just a better quality streamer.

My rule of thumb is if you carefully choosing a great streamer for your system is best matched if $streamer = $DAC = $preamp = $amp. If you want to maximize the sound of your system.

I think that what you are looking for is a server with a cd drive that plays and rips cds to internal storage.  Offhand I can think of a couple of brands that have servers that do this.

Innuous, Baetis, Aurender.  Check out those brands and they should lead you to more.

That Oppo is inticing.  Doesn't seem to have any ripping capability.  I want to own the music that I purchase.  

  • Cocktail Audio
  • HIFI Rose

I own an early version of the Cocktail Audio ripper/player. Came with 1TB hard drive and a web app to operate it. Worked great for me.  CD drive eventually wore out but it was easy enough to buy a new, generic drive, open the case, and plug it right in to the standard connector.

 

 

Innuos Zenith MK3 and many other innuos models, that’s the one I have. It is very convenient. Put in a CD and it automaticly rips it into your library. Innuos is an excellent streamer but is optomized for their own control system and not good with roon so if you’re a Roon user, get something else. Jerry

Melco.  I have a N100 NAS and subsequently bought their ripper which can double as a CD player.  The N100 is also a player and used with an app such as mConnect will also play streaming services such as Tidal, Qobuz and a few others 

I also mention the Melco N100 - which comes equipped with either 2tb or 5tb internal HDD, depending on the size of your CD collection and how many high-rez files you might buy over the next decade. The Melco D100 disc ripper/player and the S100v2 switch is a lovely package. And, you can add the matching Plixir linear power supply for each Melco unit.

Of course, none of this might be for you as we have no idea of you comfortable budget or maximum budget. Have fun!

The Bluesound Vault rips and stores cd's and also streams.  Also I like the app on my phone.  So sometimes I listen to the cd's I've ripped and sometimes I stream through Qobuz.  Many Qobuz titles are cd quality and many are above cd quality.

I know you said you don't want to use a PC but I suggest that you reconsider that option. The main reason for this is that you have a lot of CDs to rip and it will take a fair bit of time to do it. I ripped my collection of over 4000 CDs into uncompressed FLAC so the fastest solution was important. It took me over two years to rip the whole shebang.

  1. dB Poweramp (dBP) can rip your CDs into an uncompressed FLAC file. Hard drive space is cheap and I wanted to insure that I was getting the best quality audio file I could possibly get. Yes, I understand that a compressed FLAC is lossless but higher compression rates tax the CPU more than low compression rates. My OCD won this round. There are a couple other excellent programs that do this but I'm most familiar with dBP.
  2. I don't think a ripper/player will give you as much flexibility on things like compression rates as a computer and dBP.
  3. dBP also has several Codecs that can be useful. If you have 2500 CDs you surely have some that are HDCD. This program can read the HDCD coding and rip a 20 bit file - taking advantage of the expanded dynamic range of an HDCD. If you select this option the program does this automatically and reports it to you at the end of the rip.
  4. It checks every ripped song against its database and reports if the rip is 100% accurate. You can re-rip any inaccurate files.
  5. It also does a very good job of looking up the meta data for each CD and putting it with the songs in the album folder including the album cover art.
  6. As I said, hard drives are cheap, and you can buy an extra (or two) so that you can back up your ripped files along the way. I guarantee that you will get very nervous about this after you've spent hundreds of hours on this project.
  7. Using a computer allows you to have the computer sitting next to your listening chair and being able to rip while you listen instead of getting up and walking over the the ripper for every disc. That will get old in a hurry.
  8. Ripping speed becomes a serious issue when you have thousands of titles. You will find that the time it takes to rip a CD varies by several multiples depending on what setup you use. I built the fastest setup I could. It is a Plextor PX-891SAF 24X SATA DVD ($27 Amazon). For the enclosure I used an OWC Mercury Pro 5.25" Optical Drive External Enclosure ($59 Amazon) which is a heavy duty aluminum unit. This drive will rip a CD in about 1/4 the time it takes to rip the same CD using my laptop's internal drive. I don't know about a ripper/player but I'm pretty sure that they aren't optimized for ripping speed.
  9. You need a modern PC with USB 3.0 or higher to get the best performance. When backing up your files the transfer speed is important (it will take several hours to back up the whole thing).

BTW, I use Qobuz but I ripped my collection anyway. I can transfer these files to my DAP or to a memory card to put in my car's media slot. And it makes me happy that someday if the Zombie Apocalypse comes I can recharge my DAP with my solar panel and listen to my collection until they eat my brain. I like to own my music.

BTW, a note on sound quality. I'm using a Jay's CD3 MkIII transport and Berkeley Alpha Reference 2 MQA + Alpha USB DAC in my main system. The PC is an ASUS gaming laptop along with the external Plextor drive. For playback I use Foobar 2000. I've compared several ripped titles with their CD counterparts and I can't hear any difference. 

With this setup you sit down for a session with a stack of CDs and rip them as you listen from the comfort of your sweet spot. What could be better?

Yes, from my understanding, the OPPO105 does rip.  I have the BDP-95 and it doesn't rip.  My understanding was this was the primary differentiation for the newer model.  Later they added the Darby video enhancement to the 103/105.

Of course this infers that the 103, 203, and 205 also rip, though the #3 models do not have the HQ audio circuits.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/28569-sacd-ripping-using-an-oppo-or-pioneer-yes-its-true/

I use a  Aesis Masterlink ML 9600 to record cd its built in hard drive recorder and transfer to cd burner thats built in. Easy to use

Take a close look at the Naim Uniti Core.  It rips CDs and sounds great.  I have a 4TB SSD installed in mine.

The only problem I've had is with the backup from my previous server, a Cocktail Audio X45, which didn't work too well restored on the Uniti Core.  Some artwork and most artist names are missing, but all the music's all there for me to wade through.  You won't have this problem when ripping CDs.

The reason I dumped the X45 was its poorly functioning app.  The Naim app works perfectly on my iPhone and iPad.

"I use a  Aesis Masterlink ML 9600 to record cd its built in hard drive recorder and transfer to cd burner thats built in. Easy to use"

 

Then where do you store your digital copies?

Thank you everybody for the suggestions.  It's a lot do digest.  I've been completely out of the loop since I retired 10 years ago and been thinking about trying different ways to listen to music.

Hello EMUAGOGO!  What do you think those fancy devices for ripping CDs are?

They are special pourpose computers. There is no reasonn not to you a laptop or desktop computer for the ripping, storage and playing of yyour CDs. I've bee doing it for at least 30 years. Enjoy the Music!

Lots of good suggestions here but I second gdprentice. I have gone the route of selling large collections of albums and cds and getting a good streamer  no regrets  You obviously love having  a large selection of music  and choices. You will get that with qobiz or tidal and you will save a lot of room. You can create your library with roon in about 5% of the time. I thought of doing what you want to do but decided not to go that route. that's a lot of time  save yourself the brain damage you won’t look back 

As long as you are ripping to a FLAC file, a laptop or PC will be fine. If you want to 'roll your own' I'd recommend using an external NAS (Network Attached Storage) from someonelike Synology.

If you want easy, it's hard to beat the Bluesound Vault 2i. It includes a CD drive and a 2TB disk. 2TB will hold over 34,000 songs or 3,000 albums ripped at 96K X 24 bits. The BlueOS software works well and the overall BlueOS 'ecosystem' is reasonably well established. 

When I was ripping songs to CD’s I used a Tascam CD recorder. I’m not sure if they still exist.

Later on, I copied all my music to an 8TB hard drive. I used a Tascam DA-3000. It can record up to 24-192hz. and DSD. Again, not sure if it is still available, And Tascam is the worst company for repair service.

ozzy

ozzy

@emuagogo 

Eversolo Streamers 

 You just add storage and a cheap CD player.