i just posted with many of the same questions regarding my recently-acquired squeezebox touch and learned the following:
1. my squeezebox does play flac (apple lossless files), which a number of other media players won't; if the device doen't state that it supports a particular format i would not assume that it does;
2. if you're using the media player in the same room as your computer, it is somewhat redundant--i.e. the computer can perform the same functions of managing and playing files, etc. as noted above, the media player may have a better dac than the internal dac of the computer and thus sound better, tho if you're using a separate external dac this advantage is negated. the key advantage of the media player would be the ability to stream files from your computer in one room to another room (or, if you're not using a computer to play files off a iusb drive or sd card assuming that your media player has this ability).
1. my squeezebox does play flac (apple lossless files), which a number of other media players won't; if the device doen't state that it supports a particular format i would not assume that it does;
2. if you're using the media player in the same room as your computer, it is somewhat redundant--i.e. the computer can perform the same functions of managing and playing files, etc. as noted above, the media player may have a better dac than the internal dac of the computer and thus sound better, tho if you're using a separate external dac this advantage is negated. the key advantage of the media player would be the ability to stream files from your computer in one room to another room (or, if you're not using a computer to play files off a iusb drive or sd card assuming that your media player has this ability).