Servers: Are we there yet?

Mattmiller,

The assertion that "Any HI END Server, NEEDS to be connected directly to the router via a cat 5" is not correct.  You can have a high performance, hi-end server that includes its own drive (blu-ray or otherwise) for directly burning music to a local drive - no internet connection required.  A "streamer," on the other hand, requires a network connection, such as via cat 5 cable or otherwise.  (This is an issue that frustrates me to no end, with a number of products out there nowadays that are nothing more than "streamers," with no ability to rip and store their own data, masquerading as "servers").  

Psag - echoing djohnson54's comment, what is your server and what are you hoping to accomplish?  

But Matt if you are not on the internet cover art and to remote to a iPad, iPhone or any  Smart phone is out the picture  and what's the point in that,  that's like going backwards.  I mean the whole idea of a screamer or server is to pick two songs convenient from your chair  and if you don't have a CD drive connected to your music server then you have to use your computer to log on to the server download your new songs to the hard drive inside a unit like N100.  For example when I rip a new song I put a copy to my back up hard drive then I put another copy straight to the music server and then I have another copy going into iTunes. Three backups because I'm not doing this again.

Yes, we are there.  However, they are here, they are real in performance and they are not perfect..... as most things unfortunately in life.  Mine by a large margin outperforms any highly modified transport I ever owned.

However, I cannot for the life of me understand why no one has come up with an auto-loader to systematically load a 2,000 CD collection.  How retarded is this monkey work?

Otherwise, this should signal a large paradigm shift in digital source purchases.

I own the Aurender N10, and I'm content with it. However, without a functional IPad and Wifi connection, you might as well be listening to a brick.

Celtic66 - I cannot echo your comment enough, given audiophile companies' failure to provide mechanisms to facilitate transferring a significant, pre-existing digital music collections to hard drive storage.

The closest I have found to provide such functionality is the  Acronova 100 disc autoloader  (see http://www.everythingusb.com/acronova-nimbie-usb-plus-blu-ray-autoloader-21521.html), but I have not tried it yet, and am unsure as to how it may interact with audiophile level burning software (e.g. ExactAudioCopy).