Hi Gianni

Like yourself, I started completely from scratch, and had to research ripping, wireless networking and storage. I'll make some suggestions here under broad headings.

General:

Although the SB3 is around �190, my total was around �550 as I also had to buy a wireless router, a new 500Gb HDD for the PC and a 500Gb external drive to back everything up. Hardware costs have dropped in the past 18 months though.

The Hardware:

Although there are many options to choose from, the basic rig to get you going is a Squeezebox, a large hard drive for your PC/Mac and a wireless router. Installing a new HDD in your PC is very straightforward and most routers these days have good step by step set up instructions (which are also easy). The SB is also straightforward to set up, and it will normally communicate with Slimserver (the SB software) on your PC within a few tries. Encryption of the wirelss network can cause some frustration if you haven't done it before, but I'd be happy to talk you though that if you want. That's it. You can have it all installed and running within a couple of hours (theoretically ~30 mins, but this is the real world!)

Ripping:

Use a lossless codec. FLAC gets the popular vote, but there are alternatives. With my purist's hat on, my original intention was to rip everything as WAVs (the files on a CD), so no compression at all. The problem was that I couldn't get anything more than the most basic track info this way, and it would have taken more effort than I wanted to invest to get everything tagged properly. So, onto a lossless codec. I used EAC to rip to FLAC as everyone here suggested. However, it didn't sound as good as CD via the 500/518 or 598, and again, it was difficult to get track info. Having just bought an iPod for the car, I tried Apple Lossless (ALAC), and frankly, couldn't hear a jot of difference between the ALAC and FLAC files when played back via the 8000s (both still inferior to a real CD). However, the use of iTunes made life SO much easier. Discs rip quickly, they are organised intelligently, they are fully tagged with all the info you'll ever need, you can automatically import album artwork (setting up an iTunes Store account is free and you don't need to buy anything, ever, to get the artwork), Slimserver can work from your iTunes playlists, and you have complete integration with your iPod. On the rare occsions when iTunes doesn't have the album art, I copy it from illustrations on Amazon .

Storage:

I can't comment on NAS servers other than an impression (possibly wrong) that things have progressed a lot in the past 18 months, so I think it may be a lot easier now to have such a device, at reasonable cost, which allows you to access your library when the PC is switched off. I installed a second HDD (500Gb) in the PC and bought a Western Digital 'My Book' 500Gb external drive to back up. The latter is pretty low tech, slow to use, but does the job (and it's now dirt cheap). A CD will be 550-700Mb in size, and Apple Lossless or FLAC will reduce that by 40%. I have around 600 CDs and they occupy 187Gb on the Hard Disk. I originally chose 500Gb disks on the basis that I'd be ripping as uncompressed WAVs (so my 600CDs would use ~360Gb), but it just means I have even more room left for adding to my collection!

I think that covers the basics, not sure if it constitutes sugar on top, but if there's anything else, drop me an email!

Cheers

George