I have used EAC to rip my CD collection to a hard drive for background music. While I've also used LAME to compress the material, with the price of 1/2 TB drives now coming into the range of reason, I'm considering going back and redoing the lot uncompressed. Since I've got an ethernet network in my house, I found a neat device by Linksys that has an ethernet jack on one end, a couple USB 2.0 ports on the other, and essentially allows use of USB hard drives as Network Attached Storage. I use that in conjunction with Audiotrons to play back the music at various stereos in the house.
Given the effort of ripping one's CD collection, you should make some provision for backing everything up--you chew up an awful lot of space with .wav files, but you should really be thinking of multiplying req'd storage by 2.
One other problem with .wav files is that there isn't any file tagging like with .mp3s, so one of the big benefits (in my mind) of computer audio goes away (ability to view/retrieve by track/artist/genre/album). There are some other formats like Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, and others that use lossless compression and allow tagging, but I haven't really gone too far in examining how I do playback with those over the network. I don't think, for example, they are supported by my audiotrons.
In terms of hardware, I use audiotrons (turtle beach) for remote stereos. Doesn't look too bad, has a digital out, and doesn't--like the CD30 and Slimp3 and others--require server push (having a computer feed the devices via e/net). The ATs are smart enough to catalog audio files in public directories anywhere on a local net, and pull the files as needed.
For playback off the computer located near the stereo, I use an Edirol UA-1D, which is a USB to coax digital device that retails for about $80. I run that into a Theta DAC, and into the stereo. Sounds remarkably good for mp3 technology, and probably would sound even better with wavs. My impression is that the optimum solution is really going with a pro digital audio card by someone like RME; they usually have AES/EBU XLR outputs you could use to feed a DAC and probably have better clocking hardware in them. The problem with those is that they are usually multichannel, so you are paying a fair premium for a bunch of digital I/O that you probably don't need.
Good luck!
Given the effort of ripping one's CD collection, you should make some provision for backing everything up--you chew up an awful lot of space with .wav files, but you should really be thinking of multiplying req'd storage by 2.
One other problem with .wav files is that there isn't any file tagging like with .mp3s, so one of the big benefits (in my mind) of computer audio goes away (ability to view/retrieve by track/artist/genre/album). There are some other formats like Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, and others that use lossless compression and allow tagging, but I haven't really gone too far in examining how I do playback with those over the network. I don't think, for example, they are supported by my audiotrons.
In terms of hardware, I use audiotrons (turtle beach) for remote stereos. Doesn't look too bad, has a digital out, and doesn't--like the CD30 and Slimp3 and others--require server push (having a computer feed the devices via e/net). The ATs are smart enough to catalog audio files in public directories anywhere on a local net, and pull the files as needed.
For playback off the computer located near the stereo, I use an Edirol UA-1D, which is a USB to coax digital device that retails for about $80. I run that into a Theta DAC, and into the stereo. Sounds remarkably good for mp3 technology, and probably would sound even better with wavs. My impression is that the optimum solution is really going with a pro digital audio card by someone like RME; they usually have AES/EBU XLR outputs you could use to feed a DAC and probably have better clocking hardware in them. The problem with those is that they are usually multichannel, so you are paying a fair premium for a bunch of digital I/O that you probably don't need.
Good luck!