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I second the Squeezebox nomination. If you have a home network this thing is just about the best toy to come down the pike in a long time. Very good D/A chips, Burr Brown 24 bit I believe and great sound. Supports all kinds of formats and works great. I use mine wired over gigabit ethernet, not wireless and have never had a problem. Over time I can see it replacing my CD player for most listening. However, and not to flame the MP3, AAC, FLAC, etc etc, at what ever bit rate, etc etc....sounds as good as CD argument.....BUT....I have done side by side blind listening tests and there is a difference. VERY slight, but it is there. I encode most of my music at either 320 or VBR 0 depending on the music and ripper. I can hear no difference between a 320 MP3 or FLAC, but both of those are better than AAC. Most people cannot tell the difference. But a good CD transport / player with a well Engineered CD played over a good system is still going to sound better. Albeit very slight. So for new music that I buy it still goes in the CD player. After I've heard it a while it gets ripped to the server and the CD gets stored away.

BTW, the thing also coneects seemlesly with Pandora. www.pandora.com which is also very cool if you have broadband. Program music that you like. it's a 128k stream and it sounds very good for internet music. Not as good as CD yet but I bet that changes in a couple of years.


I'll say that if you rip into a lossless format, and use the same DACs.....it will be even less than a slight difference.