Music Server format?

I second lostebars on using EAC to rip and FLAC as format

Use Exact Audio copy to rip your CDs to individual tracks. Each song will be a track. EAC is free and will make a bit perfect rip. Verify your rip with the Accurip database to make sure it is error free. Rip your CDs to either wav or Flac. I prefer Flac, They are still lossless but take up less space. Also you can use tags. Since Flac is lossless you can always convert back to wav if you wanted. It is important to get things right the first time. 

Can a WAV file from an existing CD be converted to FLAC or is that pointless? Consensus seems to be FLAC is best for PC based music format. I understand that new acquisitions can be FLAC but what about ripping existing CDs?

Thanks a bunch to all the helper that have posted.

Awooof

Sure, conversion is quite easy. FLAC files are smaller, so more files in same disk space.

Best,

Erik

+1 dbPoweramp and it has a file converter feature to convert WAV to FLAC or any other conversion you care to do, works great, super easy and great sounding copies.

Let me add something about the player for your "liquid" music.
You can find something pretty much for every budget.
A few options you could look at:

1) <200$
raspberry pi3 plus i2s dac (IQaudIO, HiFiBerry, Audiophonics I-Sabre..) using Moode or Rune or Volumio as software.
You can get a very good quality player for about 110-160$ (depending on the dac you choose)

2) Around 500-550$
Auralic Aries Mini
BlueSound Node 2

3) Around 1000$
Auralic Aries

.....