Sound Quality

Don't make it too complicated, at least at first.  Most music out there is CD quality and that should be your first goal.. but it isn't quite that simple.

Playing CDs was simple but you were a slave to the DAC in the CD player, which was often poor.  Then we started getting excellent standalone DACs.  And we switched from CD players to CD transports to use with our standalone DACs.  

Now once you have a good DAC, streaming just requires a good streamer.

Upscaling is the one thing you listed that might be worth pursuing at first but don't worry if it doesn't fit into your budget.  I have a Grimm streamer with built in upscaling but don't know what other models have this.

Keep it simple and enjoy.

Jerry

@navyachts are you referring to SSD drive mounted inside your N200 that contains that music library?
Few things based on my experience…it depends on the recording. Not all DSD files are by default better sounding than redbook or hi-res streaming. It also depends on the DAC. You will be able to feed the M1S2 a native DSD signal and take full advantage of the Bricasti DSD DAC.
In addition, the N200 sound quality streaming Qobuz is slightly better than Tidal (at least to my ears in my system) but in general it is on a high enough level to not have to bother with ripping CDs. I’ve tested it against CDs and most of the time preferred hi-res streaming.

To answer your question on what to use to rip 💿 - I use dbpoweramp and rip to uncompressed FLAC.

Part of the problem with streaming quality is that the services don’t care about what they upload; if the version they buy the license for is crappy, the resolution doesn’t matter.  Yes, Many CDs are crappy too, but one can often find better versions.  That might explain the differences people hear between CDs and streaming.

Thanks all, OK, I Iike the idea of streaming only then backing-up files on the HD.

I was thinking then of formatting the existing SD card (instead of purchasing a new one and starting fresh. So how do I get the file ripped files on the computer on to the SD card in the N200?

Even further to that, how can I take the files that are on the SD card that's in the N200 and move them elsewhere?

I understand that up sampling, DSD and HQ Player can even bring better sound to the table, but I'm having enough trouble with just the basics here, that stuff is way over my head. 

Meh - I find the difference there to be much less today than 30 years ago.  IMHO most of what you are hearing is a slight variation in the digital filters.

I'd like to rip a couple of my own CDs to a new SD card and try it to compare with the SD card that came with the N200. What is the best method to do this?

From a sound perspective, most tools are going to be equivalent, but from the standpoint of metadata management (author, composer, etc.) I find MediaMonkey on my PC to be superior.