Experience with Mach2 Music Server?

Tvad - fair enough, and I agree that getting the whole thing set up was somewhat painful - in addition to all the geek stuff, there's the initial process of ripping one's CD collection, which can easily take a week if one does nothing else.

On the flip side, I also have mixed emotions about how scandalously easy it is now to navigate my entire CD collection, scrolling and clicking on an album in an instant, as opposed to scanning my racks of CD spines, searching for a misplaced title - a relatively "old-school" ritual that was the best I had after giving away all my vinyl years ago... Not that I don't dig my Mini setup at the end of the day, but I do think I'll be in the market for a turntable again soon...

I guess I'm fortunate not to have thousands of CDs. Also, my CDs are arranged according to genre (rock/jazz/classical) and alphabetized. It's easy to find a CD.

I bought a turntable about four years ago (then changed tables four times...) to re-enter the vinyl realm. I had sold almost my entire LP collection fifteen years earlier. I retained maybe 20 LPs from that collection. After buying the turntable, I purchased about 40 more LPs. Sold it all a little over a year ago, but it was fun for a while.

There are dozens of new USB DACs coming out this year, along with quite a few servers and CD/DAC combo players. The future looks bright for the computer audio arena.

Indeed, I think your own striking testimony comparing the Mach2 server to a $10k Esoteric component speaks volumes... I just can't conceive of investing in a CD player at this point - soundwise, it simply doesn't offer the bang for the buck you can get with a computer-based setup, and the thought of investing in some kind of overbuilt CD transport seems not only anachronistic but extravagant. From the perspective of my own budget and priorities, it's a bit of an unaffordable luxury to entertain concerns about plug and play.

My own USB DAC can't quite do some of the things that my old vinyl rig could, which is partly why I think I'm going to dabble with vinyl again. But the DAC coupled with the Mini does a lot of things amazingly well, close to vinyl and far better than any CD player in my budget, and I am also excited to hear what the future brings.

I was very interested in the Mach2 but decided to buy a mac mini 2010 and send it to OWC to increase RAM to 8GB, replace the hard drive with a 120 GB Mercury SSD, and case up the original HD for back-up with time machine.

I also previously purchased 2-1 TB Lacie hard drives on to which I recorded 1300 CDs in Apple lossless format (mirrored on the drives). The Lacie Hard drives are very quite and are Firewired 800 to an Av Nitro repeater hub and this plugs into the Mac mini firewire 800 port. I purchased an impact twin ADC converter/ microphone amp that will plug into the firewire hub along with the back-up drive. The digital output is USB 2.0 to a Wyred 4-Sound Dac2 (still to arrive). Later this week I will down load Pure Vinyl and Pure Music software, since this must be downloaded onto the mac mini directly.

01-15-11: Cardiackid
I was very interested in the Mach2 but decided to buy a mac mini 2010 and send it to OWC to increase RAM to 8GB, replace the hard drive with a 120 GB Mercury SSD, and case up the original HD for back-up with time machine.

That seems like a reasonable option. I spent a good deal of time on the OWC website before I ordered the Mach2. I never found any info about installation services or cost.