"Meehan Mydog" not@all wrote in message
...

I must admit, I really thought that the type of machine I'm thinking of
would be far more common in the world of hi-fi, especially in the light of
the iPod phenomenon. Surely it can't be too difficult to design a hi-fi
sized box with a CD reader, at least 1TB of storage space, and some sort
of operating system similar to an iPod... can it? How come the major
players aren't churning them out at a rate of knots?


I simply use Windows Media Player running on a PC; the SPDIF output from
which is connected to a very high quality DAC, bought (new) as an unboxed
PCB from some guy in Hong Kong for about £20 on ebay. As much storage as I
like in the form of external hard drives. Files are either lossless wma
ripped via WMP, or wav files ripped via nero, or recorded from analogue via
CoolEdit.

Maybe a bit more hassle than those boxes that've been mentioned, but every
bit as good as those in "HiFi" terms and, since I already have the PC,
virtually FOC.

David.