Best Way to Upgrade Digital

I ripped my collection of 4000+ CDs and before I started I did some research about the best way to do it. I had an ASUS gaming laptop that I set up next to my listening chair and I used dBpoweramp for the ripping. If you rip to FLAC it will retrieve the meta data for each CD and automatically put it with the music files. It also has a feature that will detect a HDCD and rip it at 20 bits (you have to activate this feature).

The most important thing, however, is that I bought a Plextor Plexwriter PX-891SAF burner along with a high quality external case to hook up to my ASUS using a USB3 cable. This writer is well known to be much faster than a built-in burner in a server or a standard CD burner. In my case it is at least 4 to 5 times faster than the built-in CD burner in my ASUS. If you've got several thousand CDs to rip, speed is really important. I ripped the files to an external USB3 4 TB hard drive. For safety I have backed up my files to two other external drives.

My setup allowed me to listen to music and rip a dozen or more CDs per session. It took me nearly 3 years to get the whole job done but it was a good way to do it. You definitely don't want to be getting up and down to load every CD into the burner.

I'm an Innuos fan (Zenith MK3) popping the CD's in and out while I listen to music and it does 99% of the tagging correctly.

You could go Zen Mini

ZenithMK3, USB--> Matrix 2 SPDIF(separate LPS), i2s--> Gustard X26 Pro DAC, XLR-->

Then that all goes to my system

I ripped my 2,000 CDs over a period of years. Then upgraded my streamer and no longer listen to my CDs or ripped CDs. Copying files from a CD allows them to be streamed (ripping). So, this is basically making them available to a streamer. So if you buy a CP player, you are taking away funds that could go to a streamer. With good equipment there is no difference between a CD, ripped CD file on a server or local storage, or streamed from a service like Qobuz. Actually Qobuz frequently sounds better and costs about what the purchase of a single CD per month, $14.99), while your library goes nearly to infinite.


So, if you understand the term sunk cost… that is your CD collection. Mine is now used for wall sound dampening. So, instead of investing more in a transport, better to invest in the highest quality streamer. Which of course requires an appropriate DAC, but then so does a CD transport.

Replace the benchmark with a neutral sounding dac, the benchmark was known to be far too cool sounding (shrill), I would walk into a music room at a show and I could tell they were using a benchmark and walked right out

Not much you can do about changes in technology, but you already have a decent DAC with the Benchmark and player in the Bluesound Node.  The Node has a DAC as well, it isn’t terrible, you should compare it to the Benchmark if you haven’t already.  Buying a Vault would consolidate everything under one component but it doesn’t make sense you already have the Node which doesn’t have a great resale value.  Also it is difficult to transfer files from the storage in the Vault to a different hard drive should you wish to go in a different direction—not impossible, but more difficult than it should be.
  What the OP needs is a place to store files and a way to rip them.  The simplest 
solution is to use a PC to edit metadata,as others have recommended.  You may need to purchase an external optical drive to rip the files if your computer doesn’t have a CD ripper.  Then store them to an external Hard Drive, which can be attached to the Node, or else played directly from the computer into the usb drive of the Benchmark.  If you play from the Node you can use the BlueOS interface, from the PC a separate program.