There’s no easy answer to this which means, it is an obvious answer… do both. As a kid, no one ever asked the question “should I buy records or just listen to the radio?”. From my perspective, it’s a similar question. In those days, radio was the means for exposure to new music. Today, at least for me, that’s what streaming services do. Personally, I still buy what I love and would never want to be without. And stream the rest.
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Correction, all CDs that will play in a CD player are 16/44.1 format. This is the so-called “Redbook” standard for all CDs. When some CDs mention 20 bit or 24 bit etc. on their covers, they are talking about mastering. A bit of puffery in advertising. If it plays in a regular CD player, the content is 16/44.1.
And +1 for dbpoweramp. I’ve ripped over 6,000 CDs to FLAC with this program, at 16/44.1 (native resolution).
I strive to create a bit-perfect, archival copy of what’s on the original media. One slight exception is with HDCD dics. Since I no longer have an HDCD capable DAC, I do allow dBpoweramp to rip these to 24-bit (partially) HDCD decoded files rather than remaining truely bit-perfect. But, I do no upsampling otherwise.
What many people don’t realize is that upsampling while ripping is actually a lossy process. If you rip all of your CDs to 24-bit, 96 kHz, there’s no way to recover the original samples that were on the disc. This form of upsampling adds no new information; it’s just a playback optimization since many DACs sound a bit better at higher sampling frequencies.
But, if you later purchase a DAC that sounds best at DSD64, and all of your CDs were ripped at 24-bits, 96 kHz, you now have to convert formats again…and that conversion will again be lossy.
It’s best to maintain an archival copy of exactly what’s on the media and then allow Roon Core, HQPlayer, or some other solution to upsample later if desired. If you must have a static copy of the upsampled content, use dBpoweramp’s batch converter to upsample your entire library to another hard drive, but keep the original bit-perfect archive safe so that you can use it as the master copy for your next format conversion.
I’ve used a number of optical disc readers. I have three that I switch among occasionally when a disc fails to read. Sometimes, a different drive will have better luck. Drives are from Asus and LG. Extermal 5.25" SATA drives in USB 3.0 chassis. I do not use an AudioQuest Diamond USB cable as part of my ripping process. 
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Good reason not to buy any of those DACs, right? Any oversampling DAC worth buying should have digital filters that are much better matched to the rest of the DAC than a generic software upsampler. Yes, I know about NOS DACs, I’ve owned several, still own one, and I have another on order. If I needed a software upsampler to make them sound better, I might as well get a good oversampling DAC (I own a couple of those).
Excellent points and I agree 100%. By the way, I even rip my HDCDs without the dbpa DSP for converting to “HDCD/24 bit”. This way I have a bitperfect copy of the CD. Separately, I may convert these flac files using dbpa and the HDCD DSP, creating the 24 bit “HDCD decoded” files. But I typically only do this on the CDs where important aspects of HDCD were used (e.g., Peak Extension). There are some HDCD CDs that are HDCD, but don’t actually use the important aspects of HDCD. Google this for more information than most people want to know!
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That would be nice, but the whole point of software like HQPlayer is to do a better job of upsampling than the, generally somewhat crappy, oversampling that happens in many (most?) DACs. These things are built to a price with limited silicon and capabilities.
Now, if you have a Chord Hugo TT 2 DAC with Hugo M Scaler, then sure. No need to mess about with upsampling in Core or HQPlayer. Much short of that combo, it’s worth experimenting to see if a more computationally expensive/sophisticated upsampling algorithm running on a powerful computer can improve on the filters in your DAC.
You don’t need to pay that much for excellent upsampling, which you can find in DACs like the Schiit Bifrost or Yggdrasil, or the Soekris dac1541 (now supplanted by dac2541), just to mention DACs I know well.
Sure. However, I would not assume that all, or even most DACs in 2020 have better internal upsampling than what’s available from Roon or HQPlayer. If you have the software, it costs nothing to experiment and discover what you prefer.
Measurements that I’ve done so far indicate that there are worthwhile amplitude and time-domain benefits (albeit small) to enabling upsampling in Roon for most of the DACs that I own.
Roon with Tidal might just be for music what Mylio does for me for photography!
I adopted iTunes Music very early on to replaced CD purchases with digital content purchases (when there was still DRM content). I stuck with it until the Apple Music streaming service arrived and then switched to exclusively relying on streaming content. Apple allowed for uploading my music library, including CD content not in their repertoire, and it integrated quite well into playlist and music discovery, at least in my opinion.
What perhaps annoyed me the most were the random disappearances of titles from their lineup as their license arrangements with labels and artists changed. Not only applied this to streaming content, but also to content I purchased! Unless something comes up to dramatically alter my opinion and conclusions, I will be back into buying CD from now on. Simply put, the only way to ensure content I like is going to be available when I wish to listen to it is by acquiring the physical media and then ripping it to FLAC.
Having been trialling Roon for a bit now, I love the Tidal integration. It works great for discovering music. But anything I care to keep I will be purchasing to avoid the mess that comes with those streaming services agreements. I suppose I could buy FLAC tracks from Tidal or other services, but if I do so I still need a solid way of retaining some reliable physical backup. Maybe a CD/DVD burner is an option? Although I am finding that much content is equal or lesser cost on the new or used CD market.
To prove my point, I just went through curating my iTunes purchases - which I luckily had diligently downloaded and backed up. I downloaded all purchased content from the Apple Music service. Nearly 1/4 of my previously purchased tracks are currently not available! That is a significant chunk of content!
Allways rip what you have
Streaming platforms do not pay for the licenses of certain music forever.
I have numerous examples of albums on Qobuz and Tidal and spotify which were suddenly no longer licensed and were gone from their catalogues…
Tidal do not sell digital music files, however there are a number of other companies that do (including Qobuz). Rather than copying these to a CD for backup purposes have a second copy on a separate external HDD - which is easy to do (I actually do two backups to two separate HDDs). You will save yourself money (digital downloads are usually cheaper than the CDs), time (don’t have to bother ripping) and CD storage space.
That is a change since I last subscribed - unless they do not sell in the country where I live.
I ripped all of my CD’s a long time ago. I got tired of keeping track of over 800 CD’s and having them take up space in my living room. I still buy CD’s or pay for downloads when I want to support musicians or when the music is not available on Qobuz. Any CD’s that I buy are immediately ripped to disk. It is nice to have music that I can listen to using Roon if the internet connection is not working.
Using Roon/Qobuz (or Tidal) has changed the way that I listen to music. With streaming, it is very easy to discover new music, or just listen to something old that I have not listened to in years just to hear again and remember it. It is also fantastic that some older music has been remastered in hi resolution and streamed from Qobuz sounds way better than it ever did in CD or LP format.
In my system, most music that I have ripped sounds pretty much the same using Roon streaming through Qobuz as it does streaming from the hard drive connected to my Roon server.
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