2. pc-audio
  3. 137443-74445

Best PC to use as a Server

Sure this one has been asked before but I couldn’t dig up anything recent and this stuff changes over time anyway.  I use a Mac Air but it apparently is out of HD.  It is 7 years old and has been stuttering badly lately, especially since I loaded Audirvana Plus and dbpoweramp.  
  I am interested in a Windows based PC, because I want to run a Windows based program called MusiCHI and I also would like to have an HDMI port, which Macs don’t offer afaik.  I won’t use it for much else, maybe for surfing, occasional downloads, etc.  I haven’t owned a Windows Computer for years but use them at work, where the Dell Laptops that we are given seem particularly crappy to me.
  My daughter had a Sony PC that I demoed in my system a few years ago that impressed me, but it seems that Sony has gotten out of that business.  Is there any particular brand that works well for music?
mahler123

Showing 1 response by cheapbob

cheapbob
49 posts
 
I can appreciate you wanting a Windows-based system. I use Ubuntu Linux on a $14 computer I bought at Goodwill (I use a $39 SSD in that).

I have 10 Tb of external drives and use that as my 'server'.

I use Raspberry Pi ($35) computers as endpoints on an SSH-network. (One has Allo-DigiOne SPDIF card, and another has Allo Boss DAC.)

 The music player, Audacious is small, uses between 2-4% of the RasPi processor to play music. And it handles Classical music just fine.
 
Most folks are afraid of Linux, but for my 'bang for the buck', free open-source is the way to go.
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