I have an Apple Mac Mini M2 Pro presently running my Core OS. I also have a Nucleus upgraded to 4Tb and a Nucleus One on order and an 8Tb SSD for the One. I have solicited advice here before on ripping my CDs (Only have several large sets plus some Qobuz downloads. I had several users here recommend using Dbpoweramp which I downloaded. Only hw issue is what USB cd/dvd/blu drive to use. I do have a full size OWC Bluray and OWC cd/dvd drive should those work well? What are some accurate ones would you recommend?
I have plenty of drive space. Mac Mini with 1Tb SSD internal and three external drives, 1 drive 7200rpm, 1 4tb NVME, 1 that is 4TB SSD, and an external 10Tb ext hd. I would like to choose a good capable ripper to use with DbPowerAmp.
These should work well. dbPowerAmp, when you configure the drive in it, can tell you whether all the useful features are supported. In the end, if the CDs you are ripping are reasonably popular, it will tell you if the rip is good or not after comparing it with accurip data.
To rip hundreds or thousands of CDs crosschecked against AccurateRip and/or CUETools Database, you really should not be using drives worth more than around $30, or as you wear out drives, buying replacements worth more than that.
The best drive is always having on hand and configured at least 2-3 inexpensive drives from different manufacturers. When a CD proves problematic in one drive, try a different one. When a primary drive dies from repeated use, switch to a secondary one and order a new primary.
I also recently took on the project of re-ripping all my cd’s to have a clean new rip with all same style metadata and look. Not quite finished but about 1300 cd’s done.
I purchased dbPoweramp and it was worked really well. There have been a couple handful of discs which did not have data to pull from on Discogs or musicbrainz so those I had to manually enter but has been very few. So far, only one disc had issues with Roon identifying correct data for some reason with dbPoweramp.
I have been using this one for all the discs so far and seems to work great - $24.99 at Best Buy. Just plugs in via USB direct to computer.
Many years ago I asked Linn how I could best get a signal out of my Linn Karik CD player so as to rip my collection.
Their advice was not to use the Karik but to buy a cheap drive and wreck that not the Karik’s drive.
The ripping process will almost self correcting and using dBPoweramp the Accurip feature will analyze the rip to see if it fits in with the n thousand rips of that disc done by any users.
I first had a flat LG external drive like the one Christopher mentioned above. But with those you have to press the CD onto and pull it off of the center spindle, which I found to be a pain. Had to hold the drawer down with the other hand to pull the CD off. So I got one with a motorized drawer that you just plop the CD into. I went with the Lite-On “premium” unit supposedly “professional-use”