I've seen nothing in any literature to indicate that the Pioneer unit did not rip. It has a local copy of the CDDB to get all track data to populate the ID fields. Capture of analog signal and then being able to "play on demand" plainly indicates Rip and Store. There's no "on demand" if it didn't store the music.

That unit would probably do very well at a price point under $500. At over $2000 it doesn't have a chance to penetrate the consumer space.

Bruno