[Jmarz]

I got into DAP/Streaming about a year ago and ripped my CD Collection (about 500 CD's) largely because they were Classical CD's that I had collected since around 1987 and many of the performances were ones that I preferred and most likely would not find that exact recording on streaming services. And I truly think, for the type of music I listen to and the age and quality of a lot of my recordings, I prefer the sound of 16/44.1 flac files on my iBasso DX300 using the Mango OS. It just sounds better than the streaming services I've tried.

I sold my Audiolab 6000CDT and bought a cheap CD player on amazon that did a wonderful job. My PC doesn't have a CD player or I probably would have used that. Also I used dbPoweramp CD Ripper.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08966RWPZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

[leftside]

wanted to have whatever I needed when out on long road trips with poor cell reception.

There's another reason to rip and download to smartphone. Also, if you do a lot of road trips you might eat into your data plan streaming music all the time, although even that isn't so much of an issue these days.

With Roon, I have a mix of ripped CD's, music purchased from Bandcamp and streaming via Tidal all within the same UI.

 

[chesebert]

I’ve talked the wife into getting a NAS for all our photos, videos, music, etc. I have about 1000 CDs just sitting on the shelf downstairs and was thinking of ripping them to put on the NAS when it arrives. However, I’m sure over 90% of it is on our Amazon Music subscription. Is there any advantage to ripping CDs these days?

Yes, if you have time to do the ripping. Self ripped wav/flac generally sounds better than streamed flac - at least in my own testing. The differences are not significant but audible.

 

[gerelmx1986]

I rarely rip CDs now. I biy as FLAC or DSD from qobuz and Presto Music.

But when ai rip is generally so
A)CD to FLAC 16/44.1
SACD to DSF with a pioneer BDP and sacd_extract exe

I tried recently amazon music and to be honest sounwise has poor sound quality, aounds artificial plastic and with no bass for some older DGG Recordings. I was utterly disappointed and cancelled my amazon free trial

 

[bagwell359]

i have been selling my CD collection for years and will continue to do so. in total, i had maybe 2000 CDs; now it is about half that. just no point in keeping the physical media. all of my music is on external hard drives. i cannot remember the last time i used the cd drive of my yamaha player. for almost all new music, i download (purchase) as opposed to buying the media.

Pretty much. My LP collection is less than 2% of 2015. CD about 20%. All my LP's are for sale. Keeping some CD's you can't get on other media. But if I find them - good-bye

 

[MisterMoJo]

The way I see it the only thing that's gonna stop me from collecting physical media is if they stop producing it.

 

[gerelmx1986]

I don’t stream, it’s for me a waste of money renting the music each month for 10€. When one can buy downloads in flac or DSD qnd physical (SA)CDs only once.

I have around 3560 albums, from these my CDs/SACDs are like 400 - 500

I have three external 4TB hard drives, one of them i carry with me. The other two are at locations and only used to backup new media.

Aside to the HDDs, my complete FLAC/DSD library is additionally on two 1.0TB sandisk extreme micro SD cards inside a sony DMP-Z1.

My whole library is 1.46TB in size (100% lossless, 100% classical music), from that, about 606GB are Hi-res FLAC/DSD. About 10.66%, the other 89.34% is 16/44.1 FLAC

 

[originalsnuffy]

That sounds pretty intense but you eased your load with smart technology. My ripping was quite primitive relatively speaking. I think I ended up finding MusicBee to my liking and then tweaking with MP3tag. Just sat down at my PC and gutted it out disc by disc.

Speaking of primitive, a couple years before that I ripped my entire DAT collection to MP3 (hadn't glommed onto FLAC yet!) but at least I did it at 192kHz. My SONY DAT deck had bit the dust and I ended up having to purchase a left-over radio station TASCAM deck off of ebay. I guess I was really determined not to lose all of my music, including some original DMP commercial DATs. I used Total Recorder for the job and it took a long time. When I was done, the TASCAM was just about at the end of its rope and the transport bit the biscuit shortly thereafter. But it did its job!

Most of my DAT library is/was composed of jam bands like the Dead. For a long time I had a Tascam CD recording unit that could take the output of the DAT player and record to CDRW or regular CD. So I just took output from the DAT and fed it to the Tascam. Then I walked away as everything was real time. For a long show I would have to edit a few CDs together. And for longer shows as noted above Total Recorder does a good job on the PC (my Audigy had input for coax and toslink). Of course you needed the right drivers as some versions of the Audigy drivers would cause issues with PC recording.

I still rip CDs even though I primarily use Amazon Music. The rips can be hiccup free whereas every so often I get anomalies on my streamed music (even when downloaded). But for convenience its hard to beat Amazon HD.

 

[originalsnuffy]

I don’t stream, it’s for me a waste of money renting the music each month for 10€. When one can buy downloads in flac or DSD qnd physical (SA)CDs only once.

I have around 3560 albums, from these my CDs/SACDs are like 400 - 500

I have three external 4TB hard drives, one of them i carry with me. The other two are at locations and only used to backup new media.

Aside to the HDDs, my complete FLAC/DSD library is additionally on two 1.0TB sandisk extreme micro SD cards inside a sony DMP-Z1.

My whole library is 1.46TB in size (100% lossless, 100% classical music), from that, about 606GB are Hi-res FLAC/DSD. About 10.66%, the other 89.34% is 16/44.1 FLAC

If you enjoy Classical music then streaming does become a bit less useful. The music selections can be good on many services; but as I have noted in other posts, there can be audio glitches. That really hurts with classical music.

I bet you play the hi res 10% of the collection a lot more than 10% of the time. One of the best use cases for hi res is Classical.

 

[gerelmx1986]

If you enjoy Classical music then streaming does become a bit less useful. The music selections can be good on many services; but as I have noted in other posts, there can be audio glitches. That really hurts with classical music.

I bet you play the hi res 10% of the collection a lot more than 10% of the time. One of the best use cases for hi res is Classical.

Yes i used to have some glitchy flacs from rips. Now they’re re-ripped at lower speed and my collection is now glitch free.

I used to listen to mp3 @ 192kbps from 2002 - 2010, until somebody lendes me a pair of hi-end headphones and saw the difference between a CD and the crappy mp3 rip (all the artifacts and 2D audio), then briefly switched to apple AAC VBR 256kbps and while it soundest better than mp3, ocassionally artifacted and frequently had dancing channel effect (a problem of joint-stereo). And mid 2011 made the final decision for good to switch to FLAC.

After getting a NW-ZX100 walkman i switched some of my CD FLAC to 24-bit flac downloads (which i continue to do so when i find a remaster). I converted DSD to flac and discarded the DSD files, intil i got a pair of MDR-Z7 headphones and a NW-WM1A walkman DAP, and saw the extreme distortion of the resulting 24-bit FLAC from the DSD (sounded darker with no detqils, eztreme treble roll off, preecho) and decided to get a Pioneer BDP-170 blue-Ray player to rip the SACD to DSD and keep DSD. Ive got more SACD remaster of Phillips, decca and DGG and is when i say goodbye to older CDs as i now have a better remaster in higher quality. The only remastered o have not found a difference between CD master feom the 90’s and the recent SACD Re-master of 2020 if Bach complete Partitas and sonatas for solo Violin with Arthur Grumiaux

 

[originalsnuffy]

Yes i used to have some glitchy flacs from rips. Now they’re re-ripped at lower speed and my collection is now glitch free.

I used to listen to mp3 @ 192kbps from 2002 - 2010, until somebody lendes me a pair of hi-end headphones and saw the difference between a CD and the crappy mp3 rip (all the artifacts and 2D audio), then briefly switched to apple AAC VBR 256kbps and while it soundest better than mp3, ocassionally artifacted and frequently had dancing channel effect (a problem of joint-stereo). And mid 2011 made the final decision for good to switch to FLAC.

After getting a NW-ZX100 walkman i switched some of my CD FLAC to 24-bit flac downloads (which i continue to do so when i find a remaster). I converted DSD to flac and discarded the DSD files, intil i got a pair of MDR-Z7 headphones and a NW-WM1A walkman DAP, and saw the extreme distortion of the resulting 24-bit FLAC from the DSD (sounded darker with no detqils, eztreme treble roll off, preecho) and decided to get a Pioneer BDP-170 blue-Ray player to rip the SACD to DSD and keep DSD. Ive got more SACD remaster of Phillips, decca and DGG and is when i say goodbye to older CDs as i now have a better remaster in higher quality. The only remastered o have not found a difference between CD master feom the 90’s and the recent SACD Re-master of 2020 if Bach complete Partitas and sonatas for solo Violin with Arthur Grumiaux

Now that storage is very reaonable in price, I see no reason not to do any ripping at anything other than uncompressed in the original format. So FLAC for redbook or hi res; ISO for SACD. I have an Oppo 103 that is rip capable for SACD. Must admit I have not got around to that as I had some rips that friends made for me of my SACD collection a while back and we hit the high points already. From the days when the only option was the PS3 with older firmware.

 

[gerelmx1986]

Now that storage is very reaonable in price, I see no reason not to do any ripping at anything other than uncompressed in the original format. So FLAC for redbook or hi res; ISO for SACD. I have an Oppo 103 that is rip capable for SACD. Must admit I have not got around to that as I had some rips that friends made for me of my SACD collection a while back and we hit the high points already. From the days when the only option was the PS3 with older firmware.

I no longer have mp3 nor AAC in my collection. Agree, now that storage is dirt cheap, why use mp3? I keep repeating this but some folks are stubbo n to say there is no audible difference bettwen flac and a good mp3/aac. So i afopted each his own, i keep ky lossless

 

[peterinvan]

I used Foobar 2000 to "rip" my CDs to FLAC.

I don't recall perfectly, but the FLACs sound just as good.

I since dumped two large Rubbermaid tubs of CD.

 

[originalsnuffy]

I no longer have mp3 nor AAC in my collection. Agree, now that storage is dirt cheap, why use mp3? I keep repeating this but some folks are stubbo n to say there is no audible difference bettwen flac and a good mp3/aac. So i afopted each his own, i keep ky lossless

I find it humorous how people can spend tons of bucks on highly resolving DAP units, headphone or IEMs, etc. Yet they feed that hi-faluting equipment with sub-optimal sources. To my mind there is more incremental improvement going to lossless than from buying the latest greatest DAC design.

 

[gerelmx1986]

I use dbPower amp CD ripper with Accu(rate)rip