Mac with USB Dac

I actually use the good old heavily modded G4 Cube as a music server for Front Row and iTune. It is connected to my Pioneer plasma as well as to a 7' LCD screen. I have everything set up to switch back and forth between the two using my Harmony remote control and the Logitech DiNovo keyboard for the occasional internet navigation. The reason I am setting it up this way is that I don't want to turn on my plasma all the time. I also set up the screen saver such that the 7" LCD doubles as a digital photo frame when I am not accessing the Cube for music.

I would love to use the iTouch as a remote for my system but it doesn't do infrared, so that's a no-go.

I use the Apple LCD display to view Front Row. It's big enough to easily view album art, as well as title, artist, album, etc. from our listening area. It is actually quite beautiful! Along with the display, my Mac Mini, mouse, and small Apple keyboard occupy the top shelf of our audio rack.

For remote control I use the small white remote that at one time came packaged with Apple computers. I think it is a cost option now.

The little remote will wake the computer. I only use the keyboard if I am ripping, installing, updating, etc.

The ease of access on computer is a revelation.

I'm finding that I hit a wall though with Squeezebox and also Front Row, in that they go from category directly to tracks, bypassing albums. I select the classical category and instead of seeing a list of albums, I see a long list of all the cuts of all the albums, and they don't even show the album name.

Yikes.

Any solution other than backing off to using iTunes as the front end?

Artmaltman - In ITunes create smart playlist called for instance Jazz the set in the playlist settings that Genre is equal Jazz. After it is created i change name to add "-" in front. It will make your lists appear before other lists. Now you should be able to see all the CD covers on one screen. I created smart playlists for all categories.