I do actually rip from my CDs to my hdd. I hate swapping out discs, which i do quite often, as very few of my CDs have songs that I like front to back.
Never heard of the company.. plus, I got out of big bass systems a couple years back. The biggest thing going when I quit was the DDAudio Beasts.. Digital Dynamics made some truly insane speakers. I had a car system with 2 Alpine Type R 12" subs, running from an MRV-T757 amp, and it was insane. You could hardly breathe in the car with the subs up.
I quickly got tired of the extra weight of the subs (yeah, I was a racer..) so I traded them out for a pair of RF HX2 8" subs. The HX2's were super high excursion 8's with big surrounds, and they were nearly as loud as the 12's, 1/4 the weight, but just couldnt play *quite* as deep. Oh well.. only had them for about 2 months, and the car got written off (was T-boned) on the drive home from work.