Best standalone music server?

"Foolish maybe but it is what I am looking for right now.
There are a number of higher end units that rip right to themselves and I would be surprised if ALL of them made a bad job of it?
But maybe I will have to revise my position on this, that is the point of asking opinions."

That's not what he's saying.

You wouldn't (not would) be surprised if all of them made a bad job of it. Why? Because you'll never know. With a standalone music server, you have very little control as to what is going on. If you use a PC, you do.

Here's the difference between a PC and music server.

Music Server: You use a computer to rip, tag and store your music files on a hard drive.

PC: You use a computer to rip, tag and store your music files on a hard drive.

As to how much all of this will cost, you'll need to buy a music server that has built in ripping. Depending on what you pick out, you're talking hundreds on the low side and thousands on the high side. If you go with the PC option, its free. You already have the computer, and all you need to do is download this free program.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/overview/features/features-of-eac/

Just to see what were talking about, click on the above link and it will take you to a page listing the features of EAC. No music server has this level of ripping quality. It even calibrates the optical drive that you're using to do the rips.

So, just to clarify, the process is identical either way. You put a CD in the drive, hit a button, and then the rip begins. When its done, the drive opens automatically. When you're done ripping your CD's to an external hard drive with EAC, you unplug the HD's USB cable on the computer, and plug it in to your music server. Also, if you don't get a network player with built in ripping, your choices go up exponentially. You'll have a huge selection of players to choose from.   

"Thank you to all who have suggested computer based systems but I am not going to go that route for my aforementioned reasons whether it may be superior or not."

You don't have a choice. There are no non-computer based options. You're just getting hung up on what the box looks like, and believing sales literature. One of the biggest misconceptions is that "appliance" style solutions are easier. When you have an issue with one of those things, its usually far more difficult to deal with. They remove all the options on them so when something happens, you can't do a simple fix even if you wanted to. Also, most use proprietary apps that pretty much forces you to send the unit back in for any type of issues. Don't take my word for it, look at what happened with Olive. Its considered to be on of the best ones. If owners haven't already, a class action suit will be brought against them because no one can get them to work. Not even Olive.

I know this is not what you want to hear, but to be fair, you can't show me one system that's not computer based.