So Annalee asked me, on behalf of her father, what an audiophile should do if he wants to rip all his CDs and leave shiny disks behind forever. I figured others might be curious, too, so here's what I wrote:
#1 iMac as rip station -- any recent iMac will do (once you put a 500-750 gig drive in it, or buy an external NAS). Rip the music using iTunes, probably as AIFF (Apple Lossless is smaller, but then you're stuck with Apple forever; AIFF is uncompressed and better than WAV b/c iTunes can keep metadata like album covers, titles, etc in the file itself, I believe -- maybe Apple Lossless is OK, however, since most whole-home audio solutions are licensed to play it).
I like a Mac as a ripping station because you can just pop CDs in the tray, and iTunes will automatically rip it and eject when done (see setting in Prefs). Then the next time you notice the tray open, you pop the next one in. Plus Macs generally have good optical drives, and iTunes has relatively good error correction (make sure to check that setting in the Prefs). [You could probably do this with a PC running iTunes, as well, but I can't vouch for it. Plus they're noisy and ugly. The main issue is to make sure you're not getting any errors when you rip.]
#2 iTunes as your main music library hub -- iTunes is great. I have 13000 tracks and it just works. It syncs iPods neatly. It has album art. It has a fast, configurable interface. It's the gold standard in the space [special note: it sucks for classical -- but everything sucks for classical, since the metadata is totally nonstandarized]. When you really need to create playlists, burn CDs, edit metadata, etc -- there's no substitute for a real GUI with a keyboard. You don't want to touch it every time you want music, but you want it for those few times you do. I wouldn't worry that iTunes will choke -- at least on the Mac. Just make sure *everything* is backed up (not just the music files, but also the iTunes Library and XML files where all the metadata files are kept).
#3 Sonos as your whole-house distribution system and daily interface -- I haven't used it, but everyone who does LOVES it. Once you have all the music in a computer, you're going to want it around the house, where the stereos are. Sonos solves that wirelessly, and gives you a nice, elegant, LCD-equipped handheld remote for navigating the music without having to touch your computer. The interface is the key here -- a wheel and LCD seems the best solution that doesn't tether you to a big monitor and keyboard. Runs about $1000 for the remote plus two "zone players". The ZonePlayers can either have a 50w amp (not really high fidelity, however), or you can have them with a digital output, which you can then feed to any DAC/receiver, for real fidelity. You can buy more ZonePlayers for as many rooms as you like. Cool.
For a real audiophile, you would hook the digital output from a ZonePlayer to a quality DAC like:
-Benchmark DAC1 ($975): extremely well-reviewed by audiophile press
-PS Audio Digital Link III ($1000): new, but early reviews are very good (e.g., Absolute Sound, March 2007).
#4 Backup? -- this is a harder question, but critical. Once you've ripped, rated, playlisted, and tagged all your music, you really, really don't want to lose it to drive failure. Two options would be: (1) external hard drive that you regularly mirror to or (2) use an external RAID 5 NAS (starts at ~$600) for all the music storage in the first place. Final wrinkle -- you really should also have some off-site solution, in case the house burns down.
That's what I'd do. In fact, it's what I do do, with the exception that I don't have a Sonos, but instead use an Airport Express to move music to the stereo room. No interface, tho, unless I fire up my laptop and remotely control my iMac. Works for me, but kinda fussy for civilians.
Other options to consider include:
Slim Devices Transporter (best fidelity, but primitive interface)
Olive Opus (excellent for classical, attention to fidelity, and they rip 500 CDs for you for free, but expensive, plus poor interface unless you spring for the "Rondo" remote (like Sonos).
