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.