With new CD players now a relative rarity, and a wide range of network players available at all kinds of prices, from less than £200 to more than a hundred times as much, it’s hard to ignore the attraction of having an entire music library stored away for instant access. And with most homes having some kind of broadband connection, and a network – even if it’s only the same Wi-Fi used for web browsing and the like – it’s easy to put all your CDs into some kind of digital storage, then access them using a network player controlled via an app on a smartphone or tablet. Yes, there’s a lot to be said for online streaming services, with their enormous libraries of music, but most of us will have some rather obscure discs, not to be found on Apple or Amazon Music, or Qobuz, Spotify or Tidal, in our collections.

Once, the advice was simple: use a computer to rip (or copy) your CDs using third party software, and then copy it on to a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. The benefits? CD drives for computers are inexpensive, as are the popular ripping programs – from less than £20 for a drive, and while there’s free ripping software out there, such as X Lossless Decoder for Macs (or indeed the import function in Apple Music), or Nero CD Ripper for Windows, recommended programs such as dBpoweramp won’t exactly break the bank.

Add on a NAS with plenty of storage – an 8TB device can be had for under £200, and will store almost 14,000 hours of music in uncompressed CD quality, or almost 29,000 hours using FLAC to reduce the data required, which should be enough for most users. Plug it into your router, and you can access that content from anywhere on your home network.

That was the old way of doing it, but increasingly you’re able to buy network audio hardware with standard or optional internal storage, enabling it to function as both player and storage. Some models will allow you to fit a relatively inexpensive SSD hard drive into them – it’s the work of about five minutes, and all you need is a screwdriver – while others provide USB ports, to which you could connect all kinds of storage devices. An 8TB USB drive will set you back from about £130, and if you’re less ambitious, 4TB drives start from well under £100.

For example, the Auralic Vega S1 reviewed this month can accept USB storage and one of those inexpensive CD drives, and with those you’ll be set up and running with a self-contained player and library all in one unit.

The same goes for models such as Naim’s Uniti range, the flagship Uniti Star coming complete with a CD drive for playback and ripping, and like the Auralic it can also rip CDs and store their contents to network storage.

Meanwhile HiFi Rose’s network players, such as the RS250 model, have that little hatch in their baseplate, ready to accept add-on SSD storage.

Designed to make things even simpler is the Leema Sirius, available with between 2TB and 8TB of storage onboard: post a CD into its slot-loading disc-drive and it’s ripped and stored, ready for playback or sharing all around your home network.

A similar facility is available using the Bluesound Vault 2i, a compact unit with 2TB of storage and a disc-drive built in – and remember, 2TB’s enough for more than 7000 hours of music, or getting on for 10 months of non-stop listening.

And with network audio players starting for under £100 with the little WiiM Mini, designed to plug into any hi-fi system, and with full multiroom capability when paired with the brand’s other devices, the process of storing your music into a digital library could be the start of filling your entire home with music. You’ll also be complementing the excellent online streaming services now available with the entire contents of your own music library, all available anywhere in your home you have a network audio device – which really is not just the best of both worlds, but a whole new world of listening.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Gramophone today