After ripping with EAC, what?

I think you want a good player, like foobar...

Definitely go with USB repeater cables for a run that length.

If you rip to WAV, then the tags are not going to be recognized.

I use EAC to rip to FLAC, which you can integrate with EAC to add tags. Check out this site for detailed instructions.

http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eac-qs-en.htm

Also this site will help with setting the compression options in EAC for FLAC.

http://www.teqnilogik.com/tutorials/eac.htm

I use a Squeezebox to connect my computer to my audio system. The computer is in a different room than my audio system. With Squeezebox you can hook it up wirelessly or with ethernet cable (even without a network if you use a crossover ethernet cable). The Squeezebox is controlled by a program called Slimserver, which reads the tags that you created in EAC/FLAC, and you can search by song, artist, album, date, genre, etc. and you can set up playlists.

You can get more info on Squeezebox and Slimserver here:

http://www.slimdevices.com/

Good luck. By the way, I am not affiliated with any of these products....just a happy user of them.

+1 on the Squeezebox... great solution.

As said, FLAC provides tags (wav doesn't), so FLAC imo is friendlier, not to mention the benefits of (lossless) compression.

You can use a combination of folder structure and tags to organize your music. I use a folder organization of artist\album\ .flac Folder organization can be set in EAC so that when you rip it names the files with whatever naming convention you like (can include artist, album, track#, etc etc) and create the folder structure and put the files in the correct place. This is done on the "Filename" tab of "EAC Options". I use:
%D\%C\%N - %T

Tags will be pulled from freedb while ripping if you set that up in EAC. As mentioned most of the players will use the tags to help sort and provide album/track info, so it's vital to get good tags. Inevitably you'll have some cleaning up to do - use either TagScanner or Tag&Rename (or one of the other good tag editors to your liking) to help make sure your tags are useful to you.

One of the nice advantages of the Squeezebox software (slimserver) is the ability to organize and search on tags - all the files' tags are stored in a SQL database.

Another advantage is that it seems that FLAC computer-based audio produces relatively high-quality audio compared to even high-end mechanical transports, according to what some of the folks here have been saying, perhaps due to reclocking/jitter-reducing inherent to computer/network technology used to play the files.

Good luck!

(lots more good info on hydrogenaudio.org)

This is very helpful. I have a lot of reading to do!

Is Squeezebox a DAC as well? I already have the DAC. Is there another cheaper option?

Thanks!