CES 2010

Sonneteer's Morpheus audio server will play anything your home network dishes up through a PC or other device. You can supplement it with Sonneteer's 3TB external hard drive, which adds the convenience of a slot-load CD drive for burning. The basic unit has 50 watts times two and sells for $3995. Double that if you add the extra drive. One angle that came up in our discussion was the fact that the system rips with metadata from free providers; a more deluxe service costs extra. If you're buying a pricey audio server, find out where it's getting its metadata and consider how that will affect the experience of using it.