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Want to rip my CD collection to a NAS and play through Sonos Connect. Need advice

Hi all,

I have around 1500 CDs that I want to rip to a server, so I can stream to my Sonos Connect, which is connected to my Music-Hall CD / DAC then to my Music-Hall integrated amp. The Sonos Connect has RCA jacks and ethernet interfaces,and coax out to the CD / DAC.

I work from home when I’m not travelling, and use my work laptop as my personal PC, so I don’t currently have a standalone PC. My work laptop has a small HDD so I can’t rip my CDs to it. So I would like some advice on how to proceed. Do I get a purpose-made NAS? Does the NAS have CD drive? Or do I get a PC with a CD drive and set it up as a NAS?

I would really like to have my server be small, so I can place it on the bookshelf where my other components are, and connect it directly via ethernet to the CD / DAC if that would be possible, but then it seems that to be so small would preclude a built-in CD drive.

Or maybe a PC set up as a NAS in my office (separate room) and connected wirelessly or via cat5 under the floor to the Sonos?


******  edit:  I just took a look at my wife's PC and she has four USB ports so maybe I use my USB CD drive and then get a 2TB USB external HDD and rip wav files rightto the drive?    Then make that drive accessible from Sonos over the home wifi (or via cat5)?



Sorry for these elementary questions, but I think this forum isa good place to get this advice.

Thanks in advance,

Eric Zwicky
Richmond VA


ezwicky
audioengr
3,282 posts
 

You can get a PC laptop for around $600 with 1Tbyte drive in it from Costco.

You can rip of your files to FLAC or wav to this disk, using dbpoweramp.

You can run the Connect to a Synchro-Mesh reclocker to reduce the jitter to 7psec. Here are the before and after jitter plots:

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154310.0

The Synchro-Mesh connects to your DAC with a second cable.

I highly recommend using good BNC cables like Empirical Audio Standard BNC for $275.

You will have a world-class digital source for around $1900 for Sonos Connect, Synchro-Mesh, BNC cable and Laptop.

This will outperform ANY transport or server you can buy. It will also give you another personal computer to use for other things.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

nekoaudio's avatar
nekoaudio
489 posts
 
You can use your wife's USB ports with a USB CD-ROM drive to rip, and if that computer will be on all the time then ripping to an internal or external hard disk and sharing the files from that computer using SMB should work.

If you don't want to depend on your wife's computer running all the time, then a NAS is convenient. Synology and QNAP are popular NAS brands, and they have some compact relatively inexpensive units.

In that case, use your wife's computer with a USB CD-ROM drive to rip onto the NAS file share, and then access the same file share from Sonos. This way you just leave the NAS running all the time, independent of whatever work your wife needs to do on her computer.
ezwicky OP
26 posts
 
Thanks nekoaudio,     I think I was making things more difficult than they needed to be.   I ended up getting a USB hub and a 4TB external HDD.    Using iTunes to rip to the drive using Apple Lossless.     Added the new drive to Sonos and I am making progress.   This is going to take a long time :)

Thanks to everybody who replied.

Eric
djones51
4,947 posts
 
The only thing I would suggest ezwicky is at some point to make backups in case of HDD failure as I doubt you want to rip 1500 cd’s more than once.
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