more from the 'Stimpy school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

Tim Hobbs wrote:
Is there a product like a hard drive that connects to my amp that
I can store all my cds on as mp3 then choose the
tracks/albums/party mix/soft music please

there are or were hard drive based "hi-fi" separates from what I
remember, or there was a few years ago....
prob a bit expensive the 'Slim' at 299 looks neat.

ISTR that Sony do one although I believe it uses ATRAC rather than
MP3 encoding


Yes, mine swallowed 230 CD's and then suddenly decided that the first
170 were PCM, not ATRAC format, hence they don't play (20 seconds of
white noise actually). Only three weeks wasted! :-(

It's with Sony at the moment for repair, although unless they can
tell me what they fix I won't be accepting it back. I suspect a
software glitch, and hence it could recurr.

I've gone down the route of server + client PC + decent sound card +
smart looking flat screen/keyboard on the shelf alongside the amp and
CD player.

The worst part has been finding some decent, good looking software to
run on the 'client' PC. Currently I'm using iTunes as it has a good
looking user interface but I'm looking at getting something written to
spec to give me exactly the functionality and user experience I want



How about one of these:

http://www.ahanix.com/dvine5.html

With the front VFD panel, plus a plugin for your media player so that
information is displayed on the little screen. It shouldn't be too tough
finding a programmer to do this.

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org