Tips?: hardware... media playback device

[Matthew Hannigan]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 10:14:04PM +1000, David wrote:
> [ ... ]
> Does anyone know of a device designed for audio playback of stored music
> files without a TV being necessary such as I've described, or is a
> laptop computer the only way to do it?? If the latter, can you get a
> better quality output than the headphone socket?

I, and many others use a Squeezebox (http://www.mysqueezebox.com/)
I have a duet and a boom.  It supports FLAC.

You can download the gpl squeezeboxserver software and have a look at
it without buying any hardware. http://www.mysqueezebox.com/download
You can even download it standard Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora package managers.

The squeezebox hardware value add over a simple computer is their
choice of quality* components.  


* I sort of avoid the term audiophile.  To me the term is 
exemplified by people who buy monster audio cables or buy a cd
player for 20 times the amount without a audible difference.