Servers: Are we there yet?

oblgny,
If a reader concludes that internet is required to listen to your own library, that might affect their consideration of the product. Eliminating potential customers is certainly a "slam" to a manufacturer. As arafiq further explained, internet is not required unless you want to stream internet content such as Tidal or Qobuz. Sure, no harm intended, but please just let that point go...

Trying to be helpful here, every product in the category will require internet connection to stream from music services. Every product should not require internet to play your own library of music (whether stored in a drive plugged directly into your player/computer/streamer or stored on a NAS(networker attached storage) device which is plugged into your router(often in a basement etc., often wherever internet comes into your home). 

The Sony is supposed to be pretty simple and wholly contained, that might be the ticket for you.

I've been investigating the Aurelic Aries Mini for the last few weeks. There are a couple of detailed threads about it's sound and its use on computeraudiophile. I suggest that you read them closely and proceed with caution if the content is hard to digest. Many on that sight are very technically capable and that crowd still reports many nuanced setup tweaks of home network and computer/tablet settings to get to 100% user-friendly operation of the Mini and the other Aries products. Overall the company is doing a lot of great things to make this a super product line, but there are speedbumps on that road and you need some patience to get it right; reportedly more so than with the Bluesound or Sony stuff. Cheers,
Spencer

Ripping may necessitate internet access for a bit check and artwork and info, but with a laptop, a harddrive, and a dac, you can use a music server without the internet. Convenience from your listening position, however, may lead you to wanting the assistance of the internet.

I started life with a music server with a Mac Powerbook with a SSD, Itunes through Pure Music rips and a back up drive. Then HD Tracks came along only to be followed by double native DSD downloads on a fairly expensive music server with data on SSDrives. I control it from a MS Surface computer using JRiver among other softwards.

If you have a music server, and a large music library, BE SURE to have a reliable backup and restore capability to go along with it.

All devices die eventually including storage devices. Not if but when it happens, you need a backup to be able to restore from. I’ve failures impact me already on 2 occasions in teh lsat 7-8 years or so where a restore of music files was needed.

It goes with the turf and is a unique and critical consideration for any large and valued music file library.

My music server is PLex and Logitech Media servers running on an older Gateway laptop running Windows 10. I rip using dbpoweramp to a conventional Seagate 1.5 TB external USB drive and use another 2.0 Tb attached for backups.

I plan to add an active second backup copy sometime soon. I might consider adding another backup other than directly attached disk drive ( the fastest but not the safest) for this but am not sure yet how. I have about .7 Tb of mostly lossless compressed FLAC files in my library which would take forever to restore from cloud storage over an internet connection if needed.  NAS on my home network is the other option.

I am also still looking at different backup software solutions on Windows 10. Seagate manager worked nicely on Windows 7 but I did not care for newer Seagate Dashboard on Windows 10. I added a native Windows 10 File History backup just last week. It seems to work well but I have not tested a full restore yet and I am not sure if it can be restored easily to non-Windows platform if needed without using the restore function. I’d like to be able to just flat copy all my library files from disk to disk in order to restore if needed, but not sure that is possible.

So still working on the perfect restore solution on Windows 10 if any suggestions but sound quality wise things are the cat’s meow and have been for a few years now.

In the latest issue of Stereophile, Mike L. raved about the Melco server and preferred it to the Antipodes DS. Sounds like very good value, sound- and price-wise.

sbank...

I got the Sony about a week ago and I am happy as a clam in mud.  Nice piece, easy to use,  good sonics.