Help -- need Idiot's Guide to music server system

You may want to look into the Escient servers. They utilize internet access to load cover art and artist information for each CD. They now have larger harddrives and can load CDs in FLAC which is identical to CD quality. I have over 400 CDs on my unit and find I am listening to more CDs because of the ease in locating and playing. Their website is very informative.

For your purposes, there are really 5 main concerns:

1) What type of compression? You want a lossless system (like FLAC or Windows Media Lossless "WMA lossless") which preserves all the data on your CDs - any of the lossy compression schemes (MP3, etc) drop some data to save disc space. There is probably more music "out there on line" in FLAC than any other lossless format, but WMA lossless seems to be closing the gap, a bit. There is no perfect call here. Some server software will read both FLAC and WMA lossless (like the latest QSonix) and this obviously allows more flexibility.

2) The user interface. i-tunes is the defacto standard. It is a text-based interface which allows you to access music alphabetically by track, artist, or album name. Some systems, including the very expensive stand alone servers from QSonix or Soolooos use a graphic interface. You can choose music by browsing through album covers, for example. Find one you like.

3) Storage capacity. Calculate the maximum # of CDs you expect to put on the system in the future as best you can. Once you know which compression scheme you've chose, you can calculate the hard drive space you will need. Your dealer will help if you need him to. Remember that you need 2 drives, each with this storage capacity - a main drive and a back-up.

4) Price. A computer with server software will offer a lot of capability for a moderate outlay. Dedicated servers can be less expensive (Squeezebox) or more expensive (QSonix) or much more expensive (Sooloos) depending mostly on the user interface. Graphic touch screen systems are great - but pricey.

5) Choice of DAC. IMHO, this will have the biggest impact on playback quality.

Good Luck

Marty

PS - Some systems are noisier than others. Although not a major issue like those above - just bear in mind that a noisy drive system must be isolated or covered during use.

To clarify #5, above - the DAC. All servers that I know of -even PCs or Macs -include an internal DAC. The most expensive servers like QSonix and Sooloos use pretty good internal DACs. However, if your new server is going to replace a cd player as a source component in a high end system, I'd get an appropriate external DAC, even for the QSonix or Sooloos.

Marty

The first thing you need to do is to calculate your storage requirements/capacity. If you compress the CDs' WAVs to FLAC format, you'll need approx. 300-400 MB per CD. If you have 1,000 CDs, this means you need approx. 300-400 GB of hard disc space. As another poster mentioned, you will need 2 drives like this - Primary and Backup. I would recommend you not skimp and simply buy 2 1 TB (TeraByte = 1,000 GigaBytes). This will provide you with a backup as well as room to grow.

I just bought a Maxtor 1 TB drive for $225. It's well-built, fast, has USB and FireWire connections, and has a 5 year warranty. Get 2 of these.

Then, you need a device that will take the music files stored on the hard discs, decode them, and pipe them out to your hi-fi system. Lots of folks use big, fancy music servers. These are very nice, but some are QUITE expensive.

I'm a bit of a skin-flint, here's my setup: $500 Acer laptop running several different pieces of software for playback: Windows Media Player, WinAmp, and FooBar. They all do about the same thing, they play back music files. They can play back WAVs, FLACs, SHNs, MP3s and several other file formats. I use FLAC because it's free, it's "lossless", and it works quite well. It compresses a WAV to about 60% of its original size with NO loss of audio quality.

Attached to this laptop is a LinkSys Wireless MusicBridge, approx. $90. This device takes the music generated by the software on the laptop and sends it to my hi-fi system. I can "stream" the music to the LinkSys wirelessly, or I can use an Ethernet cable to hard-wire the connection. I use the Ethernet cable, it's more reliable and supports higher speeds.

So, I attach the MusicBridge to my laptop using an Ethernet cable and then I attach the MusicBridge to my hi-fi by using a coax digital cable into one of my Digital Inputs on my pre-processor. This allows me to use the DACs in my pre-processor (very good ones) instead of the ones that the MusicBridge has. They're "okay", but not as good as my pre-pro's.

That's about it. I use my laptop running one of the aforementioned software programs to play back the FLAC files stored on the hard discs and the MusicBridge takes care of getting the signal to my hi-fi. BTW, it sounds pretty darn good [smile].

Total "investment" is about $1,000. That buys you a laptop PC, 2 external hard discs, and the LinkSys Wireless MusicBridge.

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions...

-RW-

I just set mine up. Like the posts mention above, your first decision is to go wireless or hardwired. I decided to hardwire because I can (crawl space and open basement below), more stable and I suspect it's better sonically (but I don't know for sure).

Here's my hardware: Apple G3, one buffalo 500 gig nas, one buffalo 500 gig drivestation turbousb external harddrive, wavelength cosecant usb dac, Iphone as a remote control.

I hardwired the apple to a modem/router which is also hardwired into the Buffalo nas. I have a nas (an external hardrive that can be networked for multiple computers) so that I can access the music database from other computers. Go to Audio Asylum and search "nas" in the digital pc audio forum. The drivestation turbousb is strictly used for back up.

I won't go into all the details of the software but basically you point the apple at the nas so that when you rip cd's it is stored on the nas. And of course you will want to set up Itunes correctly so that you rip the cd's in lossless, etc..

This isn't the only way to do it but, personally, for me, I don't think I can do it any better. It's simple, sounds great and a whole lot of fun. Although a Mac mini would be cool.

A couple of good reads is the pc section of audio assylum (this can be a little overwhelming unless your a geak). Also go to the wavelegth usb dac site.