I can't directly answer your questions since I don't use Soundbridge or the others. But what I have done is built a server and ripped cd's via Windows Media Player in lossless format to my server. WMP gets all the track and artist info and saves it along with the tracks. On my HTPC which uses Meedio as my frontend I can import the tracks and then access the tracks and play them via my receiver. This uses the Meedio player to play the tracks. I can also launch WMP from within Meedio and access my tracks that way. I actually really like WMP 11. I think MS did a really good job with it. I would have ripped my tracks using flac but I had already ripped most in WMP lossless so I'm just sticking with the format.
