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Ripping CD Optimally

Hello,

I no longer listen to CD, but I have a substantial CD collection (few hundreds). I want to sell or give away those CDs. But before, I want to rip it so I can play in from Roon or other software.

I'm sure number of people did that in the last decade and l'm hoping I can benefit from some experience and lesson learned from this community. More specifically, I'm looking for advices on 3 aspects:

1) Audio Format

I want to keep the maximum AQ but I know digitalize a CD will not create quality, so I doubt DSD 1024 would make sense. What format/container would be the best to preserve the CD quality?

2) Ripping Software

There are many out there all of them claiming to be the top/no. 1. Does paying for one worth the price or a free / open source is equally good? I'm on macOS.

3) External CD (and DVD) reader

There are plenty on amazon on the 25-40$ (CAD) price range. Anyone have good, or bad experience to share with those? Any brand or model to consider or avoid?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. I hope this questions belong to this topic. If not kindly point me toward the right one.

 

Papyneau

papyneau

Showing 2 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,891 posts
 

Nice!

 

I use dbpoweramp to flac lossless format. Music server is Plex and library resides on a usb drive connected to PC running Plex server. I often use airplay to stream to various hifi devices at cd quality from iPhone mainly. Plexamp is my main app on iPhone for streaming via AirPlay. Also use other music streaming apps that stream at cd res like radio paradise.

Picard is free and also useful for auto tagging when needed to supplement tagging in dbpoweramp. Also dbpoweramp provides the manual tag editor that is useful in rare cases when auto tagging fails.

 

Also digitize my vinyl collection slowly over time and add to my music library. Use a Rega mini phono to Audacity digital mastering software on PC for that.

I may try Roon at some point if I add a high res streaming service like quobuz but with thousands of ripped albums and growing and Spotify to explore when needed (decent sound but not cd res) I have more than enough to listen to for a long time.

I recently replaced separates with a Cambridge Evo 150 all-in-1. Review coming here soon.

mapman's avatar
mapman
21,891 posts
 

Dbpoweramp to lossless compressed flac format and any good quality cd drive and you are good to go.

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