To rip or not to rip...
Long Long ago, it was not possible to get 16/44 quality from streaming services. Those days, MP3 quality was the most one could get from the internet. That is the reason why many of us opted to rip our entire cd collection at full resolution and put it in a NAS.
If you have ripped your entire collection, you can store it online and access it from ANY location in the world with internet access. (No need for a pick truck to carry your CDs around).
Also you can copy your ripped files to a portable hard drive and take it with you wherever you want (no internet needed).
If you decide not to rip and solely rely on your Tidal subscription, that’s fine. But keep in mind that if at any time you cancel your subscription or if Tidal goes away, your entire library of Tidal albums goes away too and you have to start from zero.
If I buy a new CD (I seldom do anymore), I rip it and copy to my NAS. That way my collection of ripped CDs is always up to date.
Roon can connect to the library in my NAS and also to my Tidal library simultaneously. I can tell Roon which version of an album I want displayed as “primary” and I can “hide” the other version if I wish to do so. Even if Tidal goes away, I still have my own library to play around using Roon.
Ripping my CD collection and using Roon keeps me from wasting time loading CDs, looking for a CD that for some odd reason is not where it should be, finding that the CD case is empty and wondering when I last played the disc, finding track no 10 of xyz CD, etc. To me, all of that adds up to wasted time that I rather use listening to music.
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