Music from hard drive better than CD?

Onhwy61: I have an apple laptop but it is my work computer and I do not want to load all of my discs to it. Also, I figure I would need about a 280 GB hard drive to store all of my discs in a lossless format. So I don't think a regular CPU will work for me.

My recommendation is to get an Apple and use it solely as a music server. I don't see the connection between your disc storage space requirements and the CPU. Playing back stereo tracks is a trivial tasks for even a 100Mhz computer.

You can rip 400 CD's uncompressed into 200 GB. If you chose a lossless
codec like Apple Lossless, I'm told you can get twice that, or 400 CD's into
100 GB. Get an external hard drive and keep all of your CD's on it.

There is another way to go, too.

The Mac Mini:

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Integrate that into your audio system; use your video display as your monitor,
take the audio signal out in digital through one of the USB ports and use a
high quality USB DAC like the Apogee Mini-Dac, and connect an external hard
drive from the FireWire port.

That would make a hell of a dedicated music storage and transport system.

Get a mouse and you could scroll through your songs and albums on your
video screen using i-tunes.

Thanks for these suggestions. A picture is beginning to form.

To those who have recommended an Apple computer for this setup: an Apple computer is not necessary for music playback. They cost more money, and PCs can read digital music exactly the same; not to mention that iTunes has been available for Windows for some time now. So if you're looking to build this type of system on a budget, stick with a PC...and use the money saved towards a better DAC.

P.S. I own an Apple--I'm not downing Macintosh computers in any way, I'm just making a suggestion for those who are on a budget.