My take on the harddrive use has been to buy a Squeezebox2. I you haven't ever looked at one before, take a gander at www.slimdevices.com. I haven't settled on whether or not the Burr-Brown DAC inside the Squeezebox is the DAC I will use in the long run. So far so good, but since the Squeezebox has an optical out, I can always pipe to another DAC later if I want.
The COOL factor with the Squeezebox has delighted me. I really like being able to navigate my CD library without having to go and reload a disk every time I want to hear a CD. And the Squeezebox will play lossless formats like WAV and FLAC, so I can listen to quality recordings. What I'm unsure of is whether or not I can rip DVD-A or SACD to pipe over the data lines to the Squeezebox.
The technology still seems a bit experimental, but I sense that this is the future: the music companies deliver all the bits and sampling that they can muster to me over my high-speed internet connection and then I pipe that to my Squeezebox over my LAN to the room(s) with my stereo equipment to play music over as good a 2-channel or surround system that I elect to set up.
For now, most the industry focus on music-over-internet is on 'lossy' formats. This does not bode well for audiophiles unless the industry gets the word that we're waiting in the wings for hi-fi formats on either a pay-per-play or ownership basis.
Anyone else out there using the SB2?
The COOL factor with the Squeezebox has delighted me. I really like being able to navigate my CD library without having to go and reload a disk every time I want to hear a CD. And the Squeezebox will play lossless formats like WAV and FLAC, so I can listen to quality recordings. What I'm unsure of is whether or not I can rip DVD-A or SACD to pipe over the data lines to the Squeezebox.
The technology still seems a bit experimental, but I sense that this is the future: the music companies deliver all the bits and sampling that they can muster to me over my high-speed internet connection and then I pipe that to my Squeezebox over my LAN to the room(s) with my stereo equipment to play music over as good a 2-channel or surround system that I elect to set up.
For now, most the industry focus on music-over-internet is on 'lossy' formats. This does not bode well for audiophiles unless the industry gets the word that we're waiting in the wings for hi-fi formats on either a pay-per-play or ownership basis.
Anyone else out there using the SB2?