Need Help Ripping My CD Collection

Hey jond,

I'm also getting ready to rip about 2000-3000 CDs. I've built an inexpensive music streamer/renderer using a Raspberry Pi 3 and HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro and it works pretty well with an external CD containing about 1500 tracks in AIFF format that I ripped via iTunes.

How many CD's did you rip on your laptop cd-rom drive? Did you rip to an external USB driver, internal drive or NAS? What are you doing for playback? 

reubent,
I ripped about 800 cds to my internal drive in batches and then transferred those to an external HD via USB. I've since transferred all of that drive to a NAS and play back through an Auralic Aries Mini outputting to my AN dac. I've accumulated many more files since then about 15, 000 tracks.

I would look into the Bluesound Vault 2. It's about $1k but it's an all in one, 2TB of space, a CD player to rip and store CDs (no pc required) and a streamer. It plays and streams both ripped and Tidal music.  I heard this unit recently and it sounded great. Not as good as an Aurender but better than the Aurlalic Aries. For its price and functionality I thinks a good value. 

Mac or Windows? I ask because you need software to play them back and there are various platform specific solutions. iTunes won't play FLAC for instance. However, if you get started and change your mind there are programs to convert between formats.

I used iTunes on a Mac to rip, AIFF. There are various good guides on how to optimize this. There are certain settings in iTunes you need to pay attention to.

http://www.musicservertips.com/how-to-articles/ripping-cds-to-itunes/

You can play back with iTunes too but a better solution is Pure Music for anything other than casual listening.

There are many, many, many opinions on what is best for hardware and software so be prepared. IMHO a bit perfect copy from whatever source is a bit perfect copy but many claim they can hear differences. Good luck trying sort the fact from fiction.