Any high quality music servers out there?

I'm experimenting with an Apple Airport express. I'm trying out my buddy's airport express and connected it directly to my pre-amp, streamed the music via Itunes from my PC upstairs and I was very impressed with how it sounded as compared to some other units I've owned before such as the Turtle Beach Audiotron. My next step is try using a digital out into an external DAC. The deal breaker, at least right now is I would get significant drops in the audio over the wireless network. This type of solution is what will get me to seriously consider a hard drive based music store. I don't want a PC, no matter how you wrap it, sitting in the rack with all of my audio gear. I'm going to upgrade my network from 10Mb/s to 54Mb/s and see if that clears up the audio hiccups. I agree with Pardales that spending multiple thousands on a audio branded music server is not worth it at this point. My biggest concern about any of those type of machines is one of growth. Is there room for additional drives, etc. What happens when you burn through the 300 GB?

I'm building my own music server. There are a couple of devices that will help make it easy. The problem with going to a black box solution is the technology bite you could potentially take and lack of upgradeability. My Denon and Rotel DVD players are about to be worth nothing ... why? HD-DVD and/or Blu-ray will render them virtual 8-tracks within a year or two. Music server boxes are even more likely to be outdated.

I'm building a stand alone PC to do the work:

Configuration:

4 disc SATA array with a 3ware controller - with 320 gig drives that will yield about a Terabyte with one drive for RAID 5. The PC will be nothing fancy but I will get an audio component looking case that will support multiple drives. I'm going to run Linux but Windows XP Media edition is a possibility as well. This will be my storage...

If it's too techie for your taste, look at the Buffalo Technologies 1 Terabyte server. It's about the size of a small shoe box and plugs right into a 10/100/1000 base home network. In a RAID 5 configuration it will yield 750 gigs. You load some app. software on your PC to set it up and will run stand alone once configured. It just looks like a big fat file share sitting out on the network (NAS box).

The next device is a component to tie in my DAC and component video input to the network, again I picked Buffalo Technologies as they seem to have the most advanced media box as far as file formats and the cost is reasonable:

If you have a network already setup looks to be a snap, just plug it in and it works ... right? Don’t bet on it ... looks like it will want to run some kind of front end. Those can be kind of cheesy but that is the price you pay.

If you don’t have a network setup you better plan on going wired Ethernet and I would suggest 10base1000 for speed. Forget wireless ... the reviews say it's too slow. This thing will share audio (in multiple formats) and video at up to 1080i in multiple formats.

Here is the listed file formats it supports:

Video Files:
dat, mpg, mpe, mpeg, m2v, m1v, vob, avi, asf, divx, xvid, rmp4, mp4, vro, m4v, m2p, hnl, wmv, wmv hd, divx hd

Audio Files:
mp3, mp2, ogg, wav, aac, wma, pls, m4a, ac3, mp1, mpa, asf, m3u

Picture Files:
jpg, gif, bmp, tif, png

The media box could run alone and just use you current PC to store files. If you add the Teraserver (Buffalo) you get the safety of using RAID - which can prevent loosing you precious data. If it's just audio I think 300 gigs would be a good start. I would try to run as high a resolution as possible ... wav might be to big. It's too bad these boxes dont suport more lossless formats. Lossless compression like flac or WavPack yields 2:1 compression with little or no audible loss. I thought the Buffalo box did FLAC but I dont see it in the list. Thats not to say they wont update the firmware OR come out with a new box.

The cool thing with the media box solution is that you can mix and match file formats. It will play anything it recognises. It feeds digital out to your DAC or component video to your TV. It even displays your picture files ...

The NAS box runs about $900

The media box runs about $300

Anyone out there found a better media box? Maybe one that supports lossless file formats and works with OS X? Please post !!! I'm not totally familiar with all the formats the Buffalo media box supports but I dont see anything lossless.

My PC solution will cost a fair bit more but I'm looking at running Myth TV and doing some high def recording as well as running a home security system with a WEB accesible front end and of couse surfing the web on my big screen.

I know ... I'm a geek, there is no cure.

LINKS :

Media box:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=96&categoryid=18

NAS Box :

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4350515?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

PC Solution

Drive Contoller :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816116022

Case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Showimage.asp?Mode=&Type=&Image=11-163-004-01.JPG%2C11-163-004-05.JPG%2C11-163-004-04.JPG%2C11-163-004-03.JPG%2C11-163-004-02.JPG&CurImage=11-163-004-01.JPG&Description=SILVERSTONE+SST-LC01+BLK+Black+Aluminum+front+panel%2C+1.5mm+aluminum+body+ATX+Desktop+Computer+Case+-+Retail

Harddrives :

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=150157&Category_Code=SATAHardDrives

Horseface... you are my idol!

I am still loading all my music in AIFF onto internal HD in my Power MAC, but do not currently need to run 1080i tthrougout my house... but will likely soon.

I opted for the Airport
Express route, and FWIW with an 802.11G network, I do not lose the signal, even with two or three other computers on line.

Snipes, DO start using the optical digital out. It is a huge step up from the DAC in that little box! There are some people modding the AE's, but I am not sure what the status of that is so far, for now, I am pretty happy to have anything in my collection available easily. Their is one problem withiTunes and the AE's though and it is that you can only stream to one at a time unless you use two systems...

Kennyt: Thanks for the airport info. How certain are you that the airport is not doing something like digital -> analogue -> back out digitally, which seems like that would defeat the purpose of using a digital out. The reason I ask is it appears to me that the AE only has one output jack and you buy a cable with whatever type of connection you want on the other end ( RCA or optical). Like I said I happen to have my buddy's that I'm trying out so I haven't researched it much. It's a very slick solution though and really want it to meet my needs.

Snipes,

Yes, it does only have one jack, but that jack is a mini tos-link and 1/9" analog out. You can buy the Monster kit they sell, or I am sure someone is making a minitoslink to regular cable. When you use it this way, it is a digital out. I do not beleive that it goes D->A->D in this case, since the music comes from the HD in digital, is fed over a digital network, and then comes out, I beleive it stays in the digital domain.