I haven't been using the central much but I don't remember the sound being better than stuff ripped on my pc.

The central did work ok for ripping but there is that bug with ripping multiple disks and my unit will not upgrade to the latest software version for some reason.

Rio music manager is about as easy to use for ripping as the central and it also has a multi disk mode.

Even if I did rip everything on the central then copy it to the pc I still have extra steps I think it would just be easier to store it all on a pc and stream to the player.

I think the Sonos player with the display on the remote control sounds like about the best idea.