Music from hard drive better than CD?

The Apogee Mini-Dac has a Big Ben clock in it. I used an M-Audio Audiophile USB Dac before the Apogee and the Apogee Mini-Dac is many jumps in quality better than something like the M-Audio. Completely different ball-park. I also used the M-Audio just to convert the signal to SPiF so I could plug the computer into a Proceed AVP2 and use the Proceed's DAC. Again -- the Apogee USB Mini-Dac sounds way better. The computer plus Apogee just sounds great. Natural, detailed, organic, not digital sounding at all. I am extremely happy with it.

Jax2: You are right that the Airpot Express would work, but, I don't currently have a DAC. So, I do need a DAC of some sort first.

Rsbeck: If I decide I like interfacing with my music in this way, I will probably go with something like the Apogee. I might trying something a bit less expensive first though. If I get to the point of auditioning DAC's I will definitely give the Apogee a try.

It will be a few weeks before I get everything set up and I will report on my experiences throughout the process. Great thread! Thanks everyone.

Question, you rip a CD to whatever file format desired. What happens to songs that flow one into the other, such as the 1st two tracks on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon? Can the CD be ripped as one image (WAV) and played back through iTunes or Foobar2000 and still have access to a track list?

Rsbeck: Do you run the Apogee mini Dac into a pre-amp or straing into a set of powered monitors? Can it be run into a preamp (like any DAC)? Thanks,

It is also important to note that getting music from a cd onto a harddisk is non-trivial due to the vaguaries of the redbook format, so some quality will be dependent on the copy. There is more information about this at EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) which seems to do the best job so far, and here's a good thread about both this and the squeezebox:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1082299211