What are you using to rip your cds to a hard drive?

Nothing beats an exact copy. Apple lossless copy format will sound identical to the cd. If you have the cheapest apple computer and their $200 plug in USB disk drive the operating system can copy a cd to an apple lossless file with automatic rereads of any data that is bad
it isn't possible to get better than exact
jeff

I use a Bluesound Vault 2 to rip to Flac. Played back through my Vault or one of my Nodes, it sounds much better than any of my CD players, which admittedly, aren’t high end. But I suspect that the "bit perfect" rip and the quite good on board DAC is competitive with most CD players regardless of price.

Your "cheap external disc reader" is most likely more than sufficient, unless either -
A) the disc reader malfunctions every now and then OR 
B) you got infected by the upgrade bug and you really want to get rid of that $1,000 :)

I would second Exact Audio Copy (free) or any other bit perfect ripper, suggested by others, to have the best digital files though.   

Thanks for all the good advice.  I'm using an external drive and dbpoweramp to rip flac files to my pc and then move the files to an external hard drive.  The comments in these posts make me feel that I'm not missing any information from my ripped cds.

Let me take this into real dangerous territory.  Do the wires connecting the cd drive to the computer or the computer to the external hard drive or from the hard drive to the DAC make a difference?  I know the question of whether wires make a difference at all is a point of contention, but I believe that interconnects, power cabes, etc. make a difference.  What about those involved in the ripping process?

Do the wires connecting the cd drive to the computer or the computer to the external hard drive or from the hard drive to the DAC make a difference? I know the question of whether wires make a difference at all is a point of contention, but I believe that interconnects, power cabes, etc. make a difference. What about those involved in the ripping process?

Not sure what you are referring to by "wires connecting ... hard drive to the DAC." Did you mean "computer to the DAC"?

In any event, though, the reasons cables conducting digital signals can make a difference during playback, such as waveform degradation and noise effects that can contribute to timing jitter at the point of D/A conversion and/or that can affect analog circuitry in various ways, have no relevance to the ripping process. If the software being used assures that the digital data on the CD is been copied to the hard drive with 100% accuracy, there is no means by which cables that are involved in the ripping process but are not involved in the playback process can affect playback of that data. Unless, that is, for some reason there is unrelated signal activity during the playback process on a cable that is not involved in the playback process. In which case I suppose it is conceivable that digital noise related to that activity might couple into the playback path to some degree. But that slim possibility can be easily ruled in or out by determining if disconnecting that cable makes any difference.

But of course if the files are being played back from the external hard drive you referred to, the cable connecting that hard drive could conceivably make a difference during the playback process, via the kinds of effects I referred to above.

Regards,
-- Al