Like most everyone else in the audio world, I'm contemplating making the move from CD player to music server for all my digital music (I'll be keeping my turntable, tho). Hell, Stereophile just named the Sooloos music server their Product of the Year for 2008. If I were making the transition today, I'd probably rely on my trusty iMac, iTunes, Airport Express, and my iPhone (using Remote). In fact, I've got that set-up already. Pretty inexpensive, convenient, and keeps the noisy hard drives out of my listening room. Plus, I'm pretty confident that iTunes will continue being improved and supported as long as Apple exists (something I can't say for most other music server companies with their proprietary software).
My current arrangement, however, is not a replacement for CD, since all the music is stored as MP3s. In order to capture full audio quality on the CDs, the music will have to be stored in a lossless format (like Apple Lossless, or FLAC, or AIFF). If I do that, the resulting files will be 5-10x as large as my current 192kbps MP3 versions (I'm guessing ~1.5 terabytes, total). Plummeting hard drive prices (1TB = $100) and clever storage solutions like the Drobo have finally made that amount of data relatively easy to store and keep backed up. (If I'm going to rip all my CDs again, I'm going to want a solid back up.)
Here's the rub: what about my iPod and iPhone? If I went to lossless files, my iPod and iPhone would suddenly store only a tiny sliver of my library. It'd be like being demoted to my first 5gb iPod -- too small, too much hassle picking and choosing what to sync, etc, etc.
In a perfect world, iTunes would be able to maintain two copies of every file, one lossless for the stereo and one lossy for the iPod (some may remember that iTunes had a feature like this for the original Shuffle, in order to make the most of its limited memory). But I have a feeling that pleasing audiophiles is not high on Apple's list of priorities. And I don't relish the thought of having to maintain two parallel iTunes libraries, with all the attendant syncing problems.
