Building your music digital music collection

Rip using uncompressed FLAC, WAV or AIFF format. I use DBpoweramp. 
I would recommend ripping only what isn’t available via streaming services. 
Use SSD drive. HDDs are noisy. Create a backup. 

Ripped CDs sound best when the library/SSD is connected directly to your streamer as opposed to “streaming” this via network. Something to consider. 

I got a modest offline library just to rip CDs that I had already owned and from the library.  Otherwise like others have said: Paying $150 a year to have access to millions of tracks is the only way to go. 

Guess I’m the odd man out. I ripped my CD library (probably 1,000), ripped a few albums that are not available anywhere. I have aurrender n200, I tried Q, but felt my ripped sounded better, plus, I always have music. I use the Aurender for streaming music stations to find new music. Cheaper than Q. And having been in IT for many years, Q will be around for a while, but not forever.

I get the benefits of Q, but not enough benefits for me to pay them for it. But that’s just me and I’m out numbered here!

While I agree with others, I also have ripped a few hundred CDs as FLACs and about 150 SACDs as DSF files. I use Foobar2000 and have configured it to output DSD 512. I like that. I still download albums that I REALLY love and they go to my media library. My setup is using the audio server that I have built myself.

Most people use Roon to stream Tidal and Qobuz. I do not do that, since I use Spotify. Its quality is not as good as Tidal/ Spotify, but it has many albums/songs not available in those 2 services. While I am an audiophile, I prefer to choose music over quality. And as others have said above - rare CDs or albums not available on streaming might be a good reason for you to build your own library.

FLAC isn’t compressed.  So if a commercial service doesn’t fill all your needs then either rip CDs to a hard drive in FLAC or or spin silver discs.  If you are setup for DSD downloads that’s great but that is trickier