Thanks for your reply, Andrew.

I only tried to map a plain old civilian-grade network share on a linux machine (via samba) as well as a windows machine. Not clear as to what constitutes a proper NAS device... Will an NFS mount work? AFP?

Is there an ETA to support SMB shares?

For the mute question, take a look at the screenshot:
http://bartek.ws/s/axiom_mute.png

I suppose I'm expecting the icon on the left to mute, not the one on the right. Also, sliding the volume bar all the way to the left will continue to play, on some streams at a pretty loud volume (http://usa3-vn.mixstream.net:8018)

Wasn't aware of the dual-use for the pause button, but now that you explained it, I understand. Wasn't sure whether pause will stop a stream (and not use bandwidth until resumed).