Looking for CD player for Sonos?

Ripping is best done once and then adequate backups kept, at least one of which should normally be left powered down so nothing bad happens to it. My ultimate ripped music backup is a WD USB external drive that sits on a shelf un-plugged from power and USB except for a monthly check to make sure it is still working properly and exercise it a bit.

Storage is so cheap these days that it is hard to make a case for not having multiple backups. If you want to save money just look for a quality bare hard drive and get a USB to SATA converter. You can use the converter on multiple drives and you don't need a case for the drive, saving money over a combo unit.

I have a pile of old hard drives salvaged from discarded computers that I use to make a drive image backup of any new computer I get. Comes in handy when your drive dies and you need a replacement but the PC maker isn't willing to ship you a new DVD to reload everything. Use the same USB SATA converter for them.

I find a lot of the music I have collected isn't available from the streaming services I subscribe to and as it has no garbage to search through it is fast and easy to pick what I like, works when the net is down too.

Thank you everyone for your input so far. Here are a few options I was thinking about. Currently I only use Sync Cloud Storage to backup my files. Theoretically, I could rip all of my music and put it there but do need a stand-a-lone NAS? I have already had two standard hard drives fail in the past so if I back up any music I want to use SSD's. Here are a few ideas that I had. Please, I need you experts to tell me what you think:

1) Get a Brennan B2. It's a CD player and a ripper that stores up to 2 TB of music. Storage is not SSD but it seems very convenient. I would also be able to continue to play obscure CD's that are not offered for streaming without having to rip them first. It also has a built-in amplifier and the sound quality should be better than using a non-audio NAS device. Check it out here: https://www.brennan.co.uk

2) Get a QNAP TS-453BT3. It has two thunderbolt ports so read/write times should be very fast for ripping CD's and I can get up to 2 TB's of SSD storage. I also need an NAS anyway. My computer is running out of storage space. My photo library is huge.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-453bt3

3) Get a Samsung T3 1TB Portable SSD. Only rip music on the SSD. Connect it to Sonos and call it a day.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T3-Portable-SSD-MU-PT1T0B/dp/B01AVF6UO8/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1526790852&sr=1-4&keywords=samsung+1tb+ssd

4) Get a Microjukebox with a 1 TB SSD. It's over $1,100 and you can not use it as a regular CD player like the Brennan B2 but the SSD is a huge advantage. It will rip my CD's and, perhaps, store them in a more archival place than the QNAP? Perhaps the Microjukebox has better sound quality? https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/collections/audio-server/products/micro-jukebox?variant=14709249348

5) There is one more piece to this puzzle. What about purchasing the Roon Music App instead of the Sonos App? Roon is already integrated into QNAP's NAS devices. I could also use Roon with these other solutions, I think...
https://roonlabs.com

Please, I hope you all will take a look at these links and let me know if you think one solution is better than the other.In the end, do you all see why I am so bloody confused? Now back to my music with my 15 year old Bose Wave CD Radio. It may be antiquated but it is simple to understand.

I like the qnap

Check out dbpoweramp ripper too and rip them all to lossless flac.

I have heard a lot of people like room. I like the Sonos app for playing from my phone or computer but room does give you a diffeeent interface

I have already had two standard hard drives fail in the past so if I back up any music I want to use SSD's.
Any device (or it's associated hardware) can fail, so using any one disk, whatever the type, is not a backup system. Ripping CDs is time consuming, so although you could redo it all if the disks fail, you really wouldn't want to. By all means use a NAS, but then back it up - preferably twice, with one copy off-site.

1) Get a Brennan B2.
Some people like them, but it sounds like it doesn't support all the tags needed for Sonos, so can only use the folder view. As a classical fan this may not be an issue (I usually use the folder view out of choice) but it's worth taking into account. My brother has been very pleased with his, and it looks like they now have an app to control it with, which was one of my main gripes - the front panel display and small remote control seemed quite limiting.

2) Get a QNAP TS-453BT3. It has two thunderbolt ports so read/write times should be very fast for ripping CD's and I can get up to 2 TB's of SSD storage. I also need an NAS anyway. My computer is running out of storage space. My photo library is huge.
Nothing against QNAP, although I use Synology personally.I wouldn't have thought that the ripping process would be improved by the faster ports, as it's more a function of how quickly and reliably the PC can pull the data from the CD.

However, Sonos only supports SMB1, so the current advice seems to be to have a sacrificial NAS purely for Sonos, storing all your important information (e.g. your photos) on another NAS using SMB2 or 3. For 500 CDs and Sonos, a cheap WD 1TB version would be more than adequate.

There's nothing wrong with your concept of having a cheap CD/DVD player, providing that you have a Sonos device that will take it's output via a line-in. I rip all my music to NAS, but still retain a CD player as sometimes people come round to listen to music and (gasp!) actually bring CDs with them. As the music that they bring is often totally new to me, I'd be a bit silly to lose this facility.

Thank you, Amun, for your considered advice. Do you see why my head is spinning? Too many choices and I am not tech savvy. To add fuel to the fire, I have a couple of more options:

6) Get a NUC. Up until yesterday I had no idea what it is and I'm still clueless. Does it come with a 1 TB SSD? With a NUC and can run Roon "Rock" (software) and have a dedicated and stable music server separate from my NAS.
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Windows-256GB-Gunmetal-BOXNUC7I5BNKP/dp/B077B5CSWZ/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1526842228&sr=1-4&keywords=intel%2Bnuc%2Bi5&th=1

7) Get Roon's proprietary music server, the Roon Nucleus. I'm even more confused...

I don't like the proprietary nature of the Roon server.

The NUC - well that will run about anything - not a bad option. You could hook a rather cheap external drive to it as well and run backup software to make regular backups of the SSD drive. This NUC option gives you a lot of flexibility in running more server software then the QNAP.

SSD drives are very expensive for storing low bandwidth stuff like music and their failure rates are not impressive compared to regular hard drives. They are nice due to the lack of noise, low power use and no spin-up delay but the trade-off is price.

USB 2 is more than fast enough to support ripping a CD directly to an external drive so going to a faster interface for that reason doesn't make sense. You probably don't want to do that (CD to external) anyway as in most cases you'll want to do some tag editing on the files and that goes much faster on your computer's internal drive. Once done the copy to the external media would go faster but I wouldn't spend a lot of money to save a minute or so per CD in file transfer time.

A real low end NAS is plenty for serving music, I'm using a Raspberry Pi micro-computer to serve up my music and it is far faster than I need even feeding four different streams at the same time. A WD Live drive is a bit more expensive but less effort to set up and again is far more performance than you need to serve your music files.

Since you have to enable SMB v1 to support Sonos and it has security issues I'd not want to trust a NAS using it to also store and protect my important files. Having a higher end NAS for your other data and keeping a copy of your music is not a bad idea but unless you lower your security by enabling SMB v1 Sonos won't see it as a music source.

I'm really sold on just using Sonos for my music source, either to a Play or Connect skipping using other sources for the convenience Sonos offers.

Thank you, Amun, for your considered advice. Do you see why my head is spinning? Too many choices and I am not tech savvy. To add fuel to the fire, I have a couple of more options:

6) Get a NUC. Up until yesterday I had no idea what it is and I'm still clueless. Does it come with a 1 TB SSD? With a NUC and can run Roon "Rock" (software) and have a dedicated and stable music server separate from my NAS.
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Windows-256GB-Gunmetal-BOXNUC7I5BNKP/dp/B077B5CSWZ/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1526842228&sr=1-4&keywords=intel%2Bnuc%2Bi5&th=1

7) Get Roon's proprietary music server, the Roon Nucleus. I'm even more confused...

I'm not a big fan of proprietary systems. One of the benefits of Sonos is that it works with a set of normal files - so rip to a NAS and the Sonos kit indexes it for use via the Sonos apps/software. If there's ever a problem with my use of Sonos, then I can just look for anything else that reads the files and plays them. All the data is kept safe and part of a normal backup routine. I feel that you may be over complicating things... Yes, there's loads of kit on the market, but what do you actually want to achieve? It sounds like Sonos kit, a NAS and a CD/DVD player would satisfy your requirements - or scratch the NAS if you only want to use the Sonos for streaming.

The NuC is even less proprietary than an nas as its just a mini i7 windows 10 pc.

The NuC is even less proprietary than an nas as its just a mini i7 windows 10 pc.
True, but a NAS just presents as a file store, and they're generally very reliable - I've never had one cause problems, and never had a problem with updates. Win 10, on the other hand....