Cd ripper player

[deanchri]

I have many many years worth of cds, probably 10, 000 or more. I liked to play them in my car ( Not all at once) but bought a new car recently that has no CD player. Thought maybe it’s time to join the latest century and figure out the best thing to do to allow me save and listen to my cd collection both at home and in the car.
Done a bit of research ( well quite a lot really) and come up with the following idea:
Astell & kern cd ripper.
Astell & Kern player with bluetooth capability.
Set of decent Bluetooth speakers tbc.
I hope this would allow me to rip all my cd collection onto the A&K drive and then download onto my A&K player. I would then use the player to play my cd collection in the house via bluetooth connection and in the car also via bluetooth connection ( or wired maybe as I’m told wires are still better than bluetooth?).
I know you can get hold of and can stream music via other avenues etc and I guess it’s a bit of nostalgia, but I have lots of obscure cds you cant buy anymore and I want to keep and play my old music forever but without having to rely on a CD player.
Any opinions out there on my suggested method or a better way of doing it? I’d also considered a Brennan unit but not keen on that idea.
Many thanks
Deano.

 

[Gray]

I have many many years worth of cds, probably 10, 000 or more.....

That's gonna take some time Deano, especially if you do it properly.
(I think it took me around 7 months to do 1000).

By properly, I mean with correct metadata and the best quality cover art.
There's no need to buy any fancy device specifically for the purpose of ripping.
If you've got a PC, have a look at EAC (Exact Audio Copy), which is a free and something that a few of us have happily used.

Older laptops (such as my own Lenovo) have built-in CD/DVD drives, but they can be a bit flimsy. An external drive should be cheap enough and a better option (it's what I used).

3 things to ensure when ripping CDs:
Rip to uncompressed files.
Check early on that metadata is looking how you want it on the playback device.
BACK UP ALL OF YOUR RIPS.....ONTO MORE THAN ONE DEVICE.
(If you lost 10,000 rips, it would seem like the end of the world).

 

[Cork]

I ripped my ~950 CDs to flac using dbpoweramp, which worked very well in both ripping and giving multiple options for metadata. I play everything using either Plex or Yamaha MusicCast (pointed to the Plex server on my PC).

I play the CDs in my car using a USB drive, which I've loaded with all my CDs. It requires another copy, but works well.

The A&K CD Ripper looks nice (haven't read reviews) but is expensive (dbpoweramp is $50). I couldn't find the A&K Player and I'll keep looking; but using such a thing is the car feels unwieldy.

 

[skinnypuppy71]

I have around 1000 cd's ripped to flac files on my pc. I also have them on a ssd drive in my novafidelity n15d, but I really don't bother trying to get them to the car for playback, I just download a bunch of albums /playlists to my phone from my tidal account and play them via Bluetooth in the car, less faff imo....oh yeah and don't bother saying "but I won't have my 10 thousand albums to choose from " lol, I very much doubt you took 10 thousand cd's with you in the car previously....and.....you wouldn't get anywhere for the vast library of music to chose from.😁
Ps..if you can afford 10 thousand cd's, I doubt a music streaming service subscription is unaffordable.

 

[Vincent Kars]

Rip to uncompressed files.

Slip of the pen?
I would suggest lossless with excellent tagging so FLAC

 

[podknocker]

B3 Overview

The Brennan B3 is a CD Ripper, Hard disk Jukebox and Complete Audio system. B3 rips CDs and stores them losslessly on SSD/HDD using FLAC. There is an internal 20W+20W RMS power amplifier to drive external wired speakers. B3 can also play through wireless Sonos speakers in different rooms - up...

brennan.co.uk

Not heard if this company.

 

[daveh75]

B3 Overview

The Brennan B3 is a CD Ripper, Hard disk Jukebox and Complete Audio system. B3 rips CDs and stores them losslessly on SSD/HDD using FLAC. There is an internal 20W+20W RMS power amplifier to drive external wired speakers. B3 can also play through wireless Sonos speakers in different rooms - up...

brennan.co.uk

Not heard if this company.

He's been around years, and the B3 is a Raspberry Pi in a posh case

 

[Gray]

Slip of the pen?
I would suggest lossless with excellent tagging so FLAC

I meant audibly uncompressed, but it helps to make these things clear 👍

(EAC actually does point out that you're compressing as it rips to FLAC).

 

[Vincent Kars]

Astell & kern cd ripper.

Had a quick glance at it.
Looks like it rips straight to the player, it doesn't have storage of its own.
Wonder if you have the option to correct the tags.

My advice would be to use a PC with a CD drive (external over USB) and a big disk, HD or SSD.
Use dBpoweramp to rip
- fast
- excellent meta data
- supports AccurateRip (they invented t)
- easy to configure.

You might have a look at taggers like MP3Tag or a media player like Musicbee to maintain your library.
Basically I suggest to be in full control instead of relying on a black box.

Bluetooth is lossy compression, not the best way.
You might consider streaming over the Wi-Fi if you want the convenience of wireless combined with lossless transmission. Maybe the WiiM is an option if you do have a good DAC already.

In noisy environments like a car, Bluetooth is fine. As Bluetooth bypasses the DAC of the player, you might use a mobile as well. Mine has a 1 Tb micro SD so I have my entire collection with me on the road.

 

[jjbomber]

, I just download a bunch of albums /playlists to my phone from my tidal account and play them via Bluetooth in the car, less faff imo...

He's already said there's a lot of obscure ones on there, so Tidal, etc, is a non-starter.

 

[Rodolfo]

My smaller collection consists of about 1K ripped albums, 12K tracks, and about 250 GB of files. I add continuously, but also cull regularly to focus on LISTENING versus collecting. I've been ripping owned and borrowed CDs for years, using a setup like Vincent Kars describes above. I have a CD drive connected to one of my NUC PCs, and I use MusicBee to rip mostly-FLAC files and to manage my ripped collection. I then use File Explorer to transfer my music to microSD cards that are installed in each of 3 devices: a Hiby R3 Pro Saber player, a Microsoft Surface Pro (that also has MusicBee installed), and a Samsung phone. All three devices have audio jacks and Bluetooth. The HiBy is mostly used with wired headphones connected to its balanced output, the Surface Pro is set up in my listening/living room almost exclusively to connect through Bluetooth to my stereo setup, and the phone connects automatically to my car and easily to one of a couple of Bluetooth speaker options I have for portable indoor and outdoor listening. The HiBy player and Samsung phone also have LDAC for playback on LDAC-equipped headphones to make my FLAC files sing beautifully even through the limits of Bluetooth.

I also subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited for convenience and to stream music that I don't own, as well as for portable listening, BUT I spend about 90% of my listening time playing back my owned ripped files.

Given all the time you will spend ripping your large collection -obscure and otherwise, BACKING UP your music IS CRITICAL. A PC solution allows for this and regularly copying files to multiple devices yields redundant backups. MusicBee and other software have syncing options for portable devices, but I just prefer drag-and-drop options. BTW, MusicBee runs fine on my Windows 7, 10, and 11 installs, but note that it is Windows only.

Enjoy your patient ripping, organizing, and especially listening!!

 

[deanchri]

I have around 1000 cd's ripped to flac files on my pc. I also have them on a ssd drive in my novafidelity n15d, but I really don't bother trying to get them to the car for playback, I just download a bunch of albums /playlists to my phone from my tidal account and play them via Bluetooth in the car, less faff imo....oh yeah and don't bother saying "but I won't have my 10 thousand albums to choose from " lol, I very much doubt you took 10 thousand cd's with you in the car previously....and.....you wouldn't get anywhere for the vast library of music to chose from.😁
Ps..if you can afford 10 thousand cd's, I doubt a music streaming service subscription is unaffordable.

Thanks for your response. Everyone has their own reasons for their choices and mine is that I DO I like to have the choice of any one any of my 10000 cds at anytime. A lot of my CDs Can't even be found via streaming., I used to be a rock DJ. My affordability is not the issue here, it’s easy to forget that CDs came out 41 years ago which is why I could afford it 😉

 

[Cork]

Doh! I finally realized what your meant by the A&K player. Not a bad idea, but you're going to be short on space. My ~950 CDs take about 340 GB (lossless flac); so 10000 CDs will be upwards of 3.5-4 TB. The A&K 's only handles 1TB. Fiio is also good and their top three models hold 2TB. I suppose you could get 4 microSD cards and break up the CDs across them; otherwise you're probably going to have to look at a built-in car system (of which I have no experience, but I assume they're available with larger storage).

I really didn't mid ripping the CDs. I did it in the background while I was doing other things. Still, at 5 minutes a CD that'll be around 833 hours (5 min x 10k CDs / 60 min/hr). At 2/hrs a day that's over a year.

 

[deanchri]

My smaller collection consists of about 1K ripped albums, 12K tracks, and about 250 GB of files. I add continuously, but also cull regularly to focus on LISTENING versus collecting. I've been ripping owned and borrowed CDs for years, using a setup like Vincent Kars describes above. I have a CD drive connected to one of my NUC PCs, and I use MusicBee to rip mostly-FLAC files and to manage my ripped collection. I then use File Explorer to transfer my music to microSD cards that are installed in each of 3 devices: a Hiby R3 Pro Saber player, a Microsoft Surface Pro (that also has MusicBee installed), and a Samsung phone. All three devices have audio jacks and Bluetooth. The HiBy is mostly used with wired headphones connected to its balanced output, the Surface Pro is set up in my listening/living room almost exclusively to connect through Bluetooth to my stereo setup, and the phone connects automatically to my car and easily to one of a couple of Bluetooth speaker options I have for portable indoor and outdoor listening. The HiBy player and Samsung phone also have LDAC for playback on LDAC-equipped headphones to make my FLAC files sing beautifully even through the limits of Bluetooth.

I also subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited for convenience and to stream music that I don't own, as well as for portable listening, BUT I spend about 90% of my listening time playing back my owned ripped files.

Given all the time you will spend ripping your large collection -obscure and otherwise, BACKING UP your music IS CRITICAL. A PC solution allows for this and regularly copying files to multiple devices yields redundant backups. MusicBee and other software have syncing options for portable devices, but I just prefer drag-and-drop options. BTW, MusicBee runs fine on my Windows 7, 10, and 11 installs, but note that it is Windows only.

Enjoy your patient ripping, organizing, and especially listening!!

Thank you some excellent advice there!!