Quote Originally Posted by Mike Anderson
Please don't take this personally, but IMHO this is terrible advice!


The possibility for hi fidelity sound is also superior. I do all the digital-to-audio conversion outside the computer. You can get killer DACs these days for next to nothing. I use a Squeezebox2 with a fairly decent DAC, and it sounds better than my CD player did. If you want to spend a few bucks, you can get a used Benchmark DAC1 for $800 or so that will give you great hi fidelity sound. As DACs drop in price (along with hard drive space), the computer-based approach will only get better and cheaper.
For those who can't hear the diference between MP3 and a regular CD, or don't care, go for it. I think anyone who spends $800 on a dac to play stripped down MP3s is wasting thier money. If your MP3s are sounding better than your CD player sounded then I would assume your player sucked or maybe another component in your playback system.

I am certainly not in the normal group when it comes to this issue, I use PCs as a productivity tool and not for my music. I didn't build a $10K music system to listen to crappy MP3s. I do have 100GB of MP3s that someone gave me but I rarely play any of it. I will agree that Internet Radio is cool for the veriety and diversity.