Music from hard drive better than CD?

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

Sorry, I just noticed that EAC has already been mentioned here.
I believe there are 2 main issues that effect the quality of audio from a hard drive, which are 1) creating an accurate copy of the source material onto the hard drive and 2) accurately transporting the data off of the hard disk to a DAC. I think that if these are optimized, it is possible to beat any cd transport.
I have been using a 4 meter run of coax SPIDF from a computer into a Meridian 518 with shorten and flac files created from EAC copies and sound quality is excellent, though I think the length of the cable is a drawback. A 1 meter AES/EBU from a Meridian transport is still better, but I think if all things were equal, the hard drive would win.