Source settings and my lack of understanding

Well I started ripping my CDs decades ago, so an exact time duration would be difficult to quote, but a typical CD takes only a few minutes on a PC with a CD-ROM drive using Exact Audio Copy. If you rip to WAV you will still need to add metatags to the tracks so the DMP-A6 can search for them in your library, however if you rip to Flac you can bypass this step as to the best of my knowledge EAC automatically adds the tags if this option is selected. I might be wrong as I don't rip my CDs to Flac. I just ripped a random CD to WAV - 45 minutes playing time took 8 minutes to rip with a high level of error correction enabled (it was a second-hand CD that was a bit scratched).

An alternative is to buy a cheap external CD-ROM drive that connects via USB to your DMP-A6 and use the CD Ripper software in the DMP-A6 to do this. I purchased a cheap under AUD20 drive on eBay to try this out and it does work. The DMP-A6 gives you the option to rip to WAV or Flac. It even goes off to a database to add the track, artist, album metadata and cover artwork automatically for you but in my experience it was slower than using a PC especially if you had a lot of discs to rip. I think they added this feature for when you buy a new CD and simply wanted to add it to your library, but I think it would be too time consuming to use this method for hundreds of titles. Also the basic functionality is a bit limited compared to other ripping software like EAC or dBPoweramp.

You may not realise any improvement in SQ using USB over coaxial S/PDIF through your Michi X3 although there are probably plenty of others who would have other opinions on this. Just bear in mind the DMP-A6 will "query" the USB port on the X3 to try to determine its digital signal capabilities. If it is successful and the X3 reports it in a format that the DMP-A6 recognises then everything should work fine up to the capability of the X3. Now there are entire threads on this forum alone dealing with incompatibility issues of the DMP-A6 and USB DAC interfaces so please be aware you might possibly run into unexpected "issues".

 

I can’t see me doing so anyway because of the time and the redundancy but I notice many people do it.
I’ve done so in the past just to get my music into iTunes so I can use my iPhone. A major PITA to rip that many CD’s.

 

I would probably guess the SQ difference would be negligible and I agree with you. Still, I might give it a go at some point. I have played around with the many different filters native to my CD player in the past and could barely hear a difference then. At least not to my old ears. And not one the brain will recall 20 minutes later.
Anyway it’s not like I dislike the sound I have achieved with the X3- S2, my Monitor Audio Gold 300’s and now the Eversolo. I’m happy, but the same as all of the other audiophile nuts, always curious what the next tweak will bring.