All:

Just received 2 Rio Receivers from EMScomputing.com. Ordered them last Friday and spent a few hours over the weekend extending my home network to the locations where I wanted to use the receivers.

I have to say that I was stunned at how easy these things were to setup. I installed the software and scanned my drives for music in under 2 minutes and then plugged in my first receiver. Within 15 minutes of arriving home last night, I was playing MP3s on my home entertainment system - and it sounded MUCH better than I thought it would - in fact, the sound was great!

I also ordered, from EMS computing, a 120Gig hard drive - which I plunked into my PC last night. I'm going to take the plunge and move my entire CD collection into my attick - with a quick stop through my PC's CD RROM drive on the way for a quick rip to MP3. I plan on transferring my entire collection - just under 400 CDs to MP3.

Question - I'd like to go with the highest available bitrate which I beleive is 320kbps. An reason why I shouldn't rip at that bitrate? I'd like to preserve (as closely as possible) the CD quality of my collection.

I'm using MusicMatch 7.1 and it does a very nice job ripping. I'm setting up a play list for every album, so I can still listen to my CD's tracks in their proper order (thanks to this board for making me aware of the receiver's limitation prior to my ripping away 400 CDs).

At 320Kbps, I'm getting about 8 CDs per gig. With the 120GB hard drive (formatted it's actually 111GB) I could store over 800 CDs at 320Kbps - so storage space is not an issue (the hard drive was $180 - storage is getting extremely cheap - Western Digital ATA/100 2MB buffer, 5400RPM).

I considered getting the Rio Central or HP's similar product but then decided that, for $1000 less, I could get a hard drive that was 3 times the size and 2 Rio Receivers. I essentially have 2 Rio Centrals in my house now at 1/3 the price and with 3X the storage (only 40GB in the Central). To boot, I get a much nicer interface - my PC.

Very cool product - I hope Sonic Blue either continues to support it or comes out with new/improved models.

Charlie