Building your music digital music collection

@saurabhgarg

Building a music library makes sense if,

1) you own a large enough collection of rare CD’s that are sourced from analog masters and currently not available on Qobuz/Tidal. I own over 500 such albums, majority of them still not available on any streaming services and sounds much superior than streaming counterparts.

2) you plan to buy DSD downloads….do this if your system is high resolution and you can honestly tell apart DSD from Qobuz stream, otherwise Qobuz files in 24bit/192kHz is pretty darn good for most part.

I have hundreds of CDs I ripped and I’ve downloaded many files from Qobuz and HDTracks with the intention of doing just what you are planning.  That quickly lost steam once I started to stream with Qobuz and Tidal.  I now almost exclusively stream from those two services.  There are titles I cannot find on either and I use my local files when I want to hear those.  It’s so easy to go down rabbit holes on either service finding new music and listening for hours.  I particularly like the related artists and albums both services provide.

Rip using uncompressed FLAC, WAV or AIFF format. I use DBpoweramp. 
I would recommend ripping only what isn’t available via streaming services. 
Use SSD drive. HDDs are noisy. Create a backup. 

Ripped CDs sound best when the library/SSD is connected directly to your streamer as opposed to “streaming” this via network. Something to consider. 

I got a modest offline library just to rip CDs that I had already owned and from the library.  Otherwise like others have said: Paying $150 a year to have access to millions of tracks is the only way to go. 

Guess I’m the odd man out. I ripped my CD library (probably 1,000), ripped a few albums that are not available anywhere. I have aurrender n200, I tried Q, but felt my ripped sounded better, plus, I always have music. I use the Aurender for streaming music stations to find new music. Cheaper than Q. And having been in IT for many years, Q will be around for a while, but not forever.

I get the benefits of Q, but not enough benefits for me to pay them for it. But that’s just me and I’m out numbered here!