Dennis,
I have the Boulder 1021. All it needs is a NAS drive (about $100), a wireless router, and an IPAD, Iphone, etc running the PlugPlayer app. The NAS, router, and 1021 are connected by ethernet cables which is a much better method than usb. I ripped my cd's to the NAS using my notebook computer running db poweramp. After ripping the notebook is not involved. If you search for reviews on the 1021, you can learn much more about the computing power inside the 1021. It is prodigious! Hope this helps.