Any info on sqeezebox slim devices?

Wow, Prpixel, sorry to hear about your condition. I can see where that would drive how you do certain things. I very much appreciate the detailed response. I've posted on AA as well, and it seems that in fact Slimserver should have no problem with FLAC tracks and gaps, as it were. So I'm not going to eat up a lot of time trying to get too geeky with this. I too have a killer CD drive (a Plextor Premium) set aside just for this job. With that, EAC, and 700 GB worth of storage I think I can finally start this thing.

With 700GB of storage you should be able to store about 2800-3000 CD's. Remember to backup occasionally. You don't want to loose all that time spent ripping.

Good luck and happy ripping,

I've never really looked into DAC's. How much should I spend on one?

As THEY say, money is not everything.

Some people consider a cheap NOS DAC like the DAC-Ah gives them the organic sound that beats many expensive DACs. Whatever that means.

You really have to survey the market and determine the optimal price/performance combo for yourself.

A hotly contested price point is $1k where you can find Benchmark DAC1, Apogee Mini-DAC, Lavry DA-10 and a whole bunch of other DACs in stock or modded form.

I am extremely happy with my SB3. I have it running into an Audio Note DAC and I think it sounds fantastic.

I use the Linksys NSLU2 for network-based USB hard drive storage.