Best standalone music server?

"High on my list is ability to rip my cds directly at the unit itself, access to internet radio and other music apps (Pandora etc)."

How you rip your CD's is very important. If you're not open to ripping your CD's using a computer, keep what you have.

"Get this guy and Roon. You’ll never look back."

It looks like an excellent product, but he would still need to get a dac? Also, what OS does it run on? I'm guessing Linux.

I was going to recommend this piece from Resolution Audio.

http://www.resolutionaudio.com/?page_id=63

The only issue is that you need to rip, tag and setup on a PC. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You'll get the best possible rips and tagging will be faster and easier. When you use an auto tagger, it never gets all the metadata exactly right, so you'll need to edit tags manually, and that's much easier to do on a computer with your choice of tagging app. Once the setup is complete, you control everything with a smart phone or tablet.

A couple other things worth mentioning is that this unit comes with a built in high end CD player. You can't rip with it, but its nice to have because you can rip at your own pace and still be able to use it for everything. Also, this is where Steve Huntley from ARC, Wadia and Great Northern is now, so you know you're dealing with one of the top digital designers in the world. There's only a handful of people that are in his league.

"Foolish maybe but it is what I am looking for right now.
There are a number of higher end units that rip right to themselves and I would be surprised if ALL of them made a bad job of it?
But maybe I will have to revise my position on this, that is the point of asking opinions."

That's not what he's saying.

You wouldn't (not would) be surprised if all of them made a bad job of it. Why? Because you'll never know. With a standalone music server, you have very little control as to what is going on. If you use a PC, you do.

Here's the difference between a PC and music server.

Music Server: You use a computer to rip, tag and store your music files on a hard drive.

PC: You use a computer to rip, tag and store your music files on a hard drive.

As to how much all of this will cost, you'll need to buy a music server that has built in ripping. Depending on what you pick out, you're talking hundreds on the low side and thousands on the high side. If you go with the PC option, its free. You already have the computer, and all you need to do is download this free program.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/overview/features/features-of-eac/

Just to see what were talking about, click on the above link and it will take you to a page listing the features of EAC. No music server has this level of ripping quality. It even calibrates the optical drive that you're using to do the rips.

So, just to clarify, the process is identical either way. You put a CD in the drive, hit a button, and then the rip begins. When its done, the drive opens automatically. When you're done ripping your CD's to an external hard drive with EAC, you unplug the HD's USB cable on the computer, and plug it in to your music server. Also, if you don't get a network player with built in ripping, your choices go up exponentially. You'll have a huge selection of players to choose from.   

"Thank you to all who have suggested computer based systems but I am not going to go that route for my aforementioned reasons whether it may be superior or not."

You don't have a choice. There are no non-computer based options. You're just getting hung up on what the box looks like, and believing sales literature. One of the biggest misconceptions is that "appliance" style solutions are easier. When you have an issue with one of those things, its usually far more difficult to deal with. They remove all the options on them so when something happens, you can't do a simple fix even if you wanted to. Also, most use proprietary apps that pretty much forces you to send the unit back in for any type of issues. Don't take my word for it, look at what happened with Olive. Its considered to be on of the best ones. If owners haven't already, a class action suit will be brought against them because no one can get them to work. Not even Olive.

I know this is not what you want to hear, but to be fair, you can't show me one system that's not computer based.  

"Not saying my ideas are the best but it is what I was considering."

Your ideas are perfectly reasonable. its just that these new all in one boxes are not always as easy as they look. They can be a real PITA. To be honest, even though I have a computer setup myself, most of the time I just use my CD player. 

"Rip directly to the Sony Hap-Z1ES ???  Umm.... i don't see a CD drive on that thing.  I'd likely buy one if it functioned as a CD player too."

If you want one with a CD player, look at the new Resolution Audio. I'm probably going to get one myself. The only issue is that the CD drive can only be used for playback, and not ripping. And you really don't want to rip using an internal drive on a piece like that. High quality rips are very hard on the optical drive, and wear out quite often. Its best to just use external drives.