I’m thinking of switching my audio system to the Bluesound family, specifically Pulse 2 and Pulse flex, mainly for multiroom streaming. I was interested in Bluesound’s Vault 2 for ripping and storing my CDs, but partly the price put me off and I had practical issues re the need for an Ethernet cable in the place where the unit would be. I’m wondering if there is a way of ripping and storing CDs in lossless quality, perhaps on my computer or in a cloud service, that would not cost so much but which would allow me to play the music wherever it is stored on my Bluesound system. Is there a role for Audacity here, or can anyone give me general advice?
You need to use a “CD ripper”. Audacity does not include a CD ripper, but there are many good and free ones available. Even Windows Media Player and iTunes can rip CDs, though by default they reduce the sound quality by ripping to a compressed format. To retain the full sound quality of the CD, you must rip to a lossless format, such as WAV, AIFF or FLAC. 16-bit WAV is a good choice because the format is supported by just about everything. AIFF is much like WAV, but more commonly used on Apple equipment. FLAC has better support for metadata tags than WAV, and the files are usually around 40% smaller than WAV (or AIFF) with no loss of quality, but you would need to check that your equipment supports the format.