I agree with your observations...but essentially you are looking for a way to back up what is on the Empeg...in the same format...for if one were to purhase one or more of the mega-cd changers (300+) cd per...then for a cost of <$500 you would have permanent storage and would never have to touch the CD to play....

I have on ny pc hd over 30gb of music that is also on the Rio....i keep it there in the event that the hdd is corrupted on the Rio and i want to reload all of it....but then my pc is even exposed to external gremlins....

so i guess it would be best to sort it on some form of digital tape and store it on remotely...just in case