Basically, a poor-man's HSX. If you've gotta have the PC running anyway, why bother with the Empeg in the equation at all?

Exactly. The RioReciever is $100-$200, so I can justify that for one. I already own a few empeg at $1700, so why can't I save $1500 and have almost the same thing? All my music is on my empeg. It's then backed up to MP3 cds, as I don't have enough hard drive space in one place for all my music. I have a PC to rip, so that feature of the HSX dosen't stand out at me. And I also have a burner if I ever need to make a music CD (Haven't since I've had the empeg installed).

If I can't have a complete solution on the empeg, Samba on the empeg would work well for me. The one system in my house that is always on is my Linux server, so it could just connect to the empeg via SMB or NFS to get music. And Samba does exist for the empeg, Kil got it working here