Storing Cd's on Hard Disk

I'd say a good ripping solution + a decent DAC out would be the best way to go. A properly set-up EAC on Windows is probably the best option (which you can also use in a virtual machine in OS X like VMWare or Parallels). However, XLD (X Lossless Decoder) is a very good option natively on OS X, though not quite as solid as EAC.

From there, encoding to Apple Lossless and managing the tunes in iTunes is probably the best bet for you.

After that, it's about getting the audio out. Many speak very highly of the Apogee Duet Firewire DAC, but I have no personal experience with it myself. Clearly there are several folks here more experienced with that end of things, so... listen to them? :)

I agree with Ckorody's eloquent statement above. I have been using a
MAC/iTunes/ALAC for over three years and it is seamless.

I have a really dumb question. I use iTunes for my music streaming to a squeezebox (not for critical listening) but how do I know if I am listing to it in a Apple Lossless format?

MS Windows? Browse to where your iTunes files are stored. Open an album folder - look at the tracks. Do they end in .m4a?

If you are not showing file name extensions, you can engage that through Explorer - Tools - Folder Options - uncheck "Hide Extensions for known file types" and look again.

Aliter, right-click on a file and select Properties. Does it say MPEG-4 Audio File as the file type?

Sorry, I don't know the Apple methods.

Regards,

I think there is the temptation to think that software is all that is important and that any computer's hard drive will survive. In my experience, this is far from the truth. I own four Macs yet I use one as a remote desktop to control my Exemplar Music server with a Windows XP operating system. I use ExactCopy despite its dumb control system. Similarly I use Foobar to play back the music on the hard disc drive. I have copied cds on Macs in Applelossless and FLAC and used the same dacs as with the server for playback. The music server is far superior with greater resolution and detail.

I would love to have something the equivalent to ExactCopy with an Apple operating system, but not a Mac. I don't want it doing anything other than play music. Frankly, I would much prefer to listen to music on an fm station than anything off my computer. You can imagine what I think of MP-3 or putting vinyl on cds.