Buffering more than a minute or two of stuff would require the hard drive for buffer space,
which means it would then remain spun up for the duration, or at least until one's
listening catches up to "real time" again.

The drives will thus overheat (the cooling within the empeg is insufficient to handle
drives that spin continuously), so you'll want to combine your software with a fan
to keep things from melting down.

The cs4231a chip can sample from aux-in --> that's how the aux-in visuals are done.
Whether or not it can sample at sufficient quality for playback is another matter.

EDIT: An equally big question is, can it sample Aux-in while we play sound
from software, or is sampling of aux-in only possible when aux-in is being played out?

Cheers