I have a 2002 Gateway 2 gig Pentium 4 running Win XP Home in the basement I intend to convert to a music server. It has only 512 mb of ram and an onboard, ram-stealing integrated audio system, so I typically have 170 to 200 mb ram free when it's up and running. It is hooked to my upstairs system, a one-year old Dell, and the internet with a bread and butter Netgear wireless router.

Here is what I intend to do:

Add a 300 Gb+ internal hd to the Gateway for music only and another external hd the same size for music backup. (The internal hd is only 60 Gb and replacing it, its programs and the OS would be a nightmare, I think.)

Process cds on my much faster upstairs Dell unit and store on the Gateway. I don't think wireless bandwidth will be a bottleneck.

I'll run the system off a Squeezbox Duet combo, and add more receivers when and as I need them.

If I understand, music will stream from the PC in digital format to the Squeezbox receiver and that the music system receiver's DAC will do the interpretation. Is this correct? If not, how should I proceed?

It is my impression that Squeezbox's bundled software will do a good job of organizing music, downloading album and track data and accessing internet radio. Am I correct?

Also, it's my impression from browsing your forums is that I should use something like FLAC for music requiring the highest fidelity and something else for garage rock, etc. What software package would be best for ripping cd's down to hd?

Any and all comments and suggestions will be welcome. I'm a newbie, and I need all the help I can get.

Also, it's my impression from browsing your forums is that I should use something like FLAC for music requiring the highest fidelity and something else for garage rock, etc. What software package would be best for ripping cd's down to hd?I would use FLAC for everything if you have the space. Archiving in lossless format gives you more flexibility to take avantage of newer and better codecs in the future. In other words, you can use a program like dBpoweramp to batch process your FLAC files to a lossy format (for portable use) as better formats come out. I would not waste time ripping to lossy unless you have a small CD collection that you do not mind re-ripping later.

With Squeezebox and other digital musc players, you can use their built in DAC or send digital optical/coax (if equipped) and use an ouboard DAC for possibly better results.

I use a Squeezebox v.3 as my primary source for digital music and Internet radio. The Duet should work very well for your situation and the Squeeze Center software is pretty cool. If you have a wireless network running in your home, take advantage of it. You can use the Duet as a source from anywhere you can get WiFi signal. The Duet will perform nicely using the built-in DAC, but, I agree with uomtiger, that you may want to look at an external DAC down the road. The Duet has a good DAC, not a great DAC.

Ripping to FLAC is a good idea. I use Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It can be a difficult ripper to setup, but the latest version (0.99, I think) has a setup wizard that makes settings for you. EAC is about the best, most accurate ripper I know of in the freeware domain. Another excellent seond choice would be MediaMonkey (MM), also free. I often use this to rip tracks that EAC would not or could not rip. MM is also very useful to batch convert to mp3 or ogg vobris for use on my portable digital player.

Thanks for your help, both of you. I'll definitely be ripping to FLAC.

I have changed my system design, though. I'm still going with SqueezBox Duet, but I've ordered a D-Link 2-bay server and two 500 Gb SATA drives for NAS, which I'll configure RAID1 for safety. I'll hook the device into my wireless router with ethernet (100 mb not gigabit, unfortunately) which should leave me with a direct ethernet connection from my desktop to my NAS for ripping. This should mean I'll have all of my music plus internet radio available whether or not I have a PC awake. Too cool.

This forum has been a godsend for a superannuated analog newbie like me. I knew what I wanted to achieve, but had no idea how to get there.

Here's what I was doing until the drive died in my music server...

I had an IBM laptop that sat by the stereo, with a cable plugged into my main system, that ran out of the soundcard in my laptop.

I was using JetAudio (free) to organize and play the music files. I had the music stored on a USB external drive connected to the laptop...

I was running a program called Radmin that allows you to control the computer from any other computer on the network. It looks like you are sitting at the computer you were controlling...

Worked great. I could sit on the other side of the room where I had my main laptop, and could pick and choose the music I wanted to play on the server laptop.. the sound was great, and I didn't have to buy any other hardware...

I've had a Dell running as a music server for awhile through a Roku Soundbridge, it's a P4 1.3 or something like that with ony 256MB of RAM, I also play through my desktop using MS Media Player and my H/K receiver.

Simple and effective. I have some FLAC but most 320 MP3s, my ears can't really tell the difference, I'm sure others can.

One thing I've noticed though, the analog outputs on the Roku don'r yield as good a sound as using the optical into my yamaha, subtle but it's there

Stick with the EAC->FLAC if you want the best quality while still addressing space sensitivity.

Otherwise just keep the WAV files on board :)

Since you're computer savvy enough to change an optical drive I'll tell you one thing that I found out when ripping my collection: getting a drive that will properly handle the ripping with EAC is huge. I initially was using a LiteOn drive that was fine for most discs but had huge slowdowns when reading some scratched CDs. It has to do with how the drive handles error correction or caching of data, in this case we want EAC to handle it not the drive if possible. Here is a website that explains it: http://www.daefeatures.co.uk/search.php When I switched to a Samsung drive that did not do caching the speeds even on scratched disks were magnitudes of 10 better. Extracting at 0.1 real speed on the LiteOn was not cool ;)

Agreed, I only use Plextor equipment. Wouldn't use anybody else after my countless numbers of drives I have installed over the years.

EAC likes the Plex's too.

Sorry to butt in, but I have gone with wma lossless and I am ripping with Winamp. I have used EAC, but I always wondered if I was doing it right. I was also using FLAC. How do you guys feel about WMA Lossless?

I tend to do whatever I can to avoid anything M$ if there is a reasonably alternative. FLAC certainly is that, and EAC is without a doubt the best ripping tool out there for audio tracks.

You *can* do it with the other programs, but results are typically not as good. If you A/B'd them, I'd be willing to bet you'd hear a difference.

Thanks for your help, both of you. I'll definitely be ripping to FLAC.

I have changed my system design, though. I'm still going with SqueezBox Duet, but I've ordered a D-Link 2-bay server and two 500 Gb SATA drives for NAS, which I'll configure RAID1 for safety. I'll hook the device into my wireless router with ethernet (100 mb not gigabit, unfortunately) which should leave me with a direct ethernet connection from my desktop to my NAS for ripping. This should mean I'll have all of my music plus internet radio available whether or not I have a PC awake. Too cool.

This forum has been a godsend for a superannuated analog newbie like me. I knew what I wanted to achieve, but had no idea how to get there. It looks like I am on the same mission as you are Mechemg with nearly identical computer arrangements in my home. Which D-Link 2-bay server and drives did you choose?

I have been following this thread as well and I second your comment in your last sentence! :thmbsp: AK Rocks!

Sorry to butt in, but I have gone with wma lossless and I am ripping with Winamp. I have used EAC, but I always wondered if I was doing it right. I was also using FLAC. How do you guys feel about WMA Lossless?Lossless = Lossless. However, you have a greater chance of getting errors encoded into the file when you do not use EAC.

Personally, I used WMA Lossless for the encoding. I have a DVD burner attached to my Sony computer that allowed me to burn 200 CDs at a time, but it was only compatible with WMA Lossless because it used WMP for burning. It was a small trade off considering the time it would have taken to do my entire 1300+ CD collection manually into FLAC.

I did transcode everything into FLAC for use with my Phatnoise media player and for backup purposes.

Drobo/DroboShare!!!

Please see my comments in this post: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=176308

I know this thread is getting old but I wanted to cast my vote for the FLAC format and for MediaMonkey, which is a great program that is well worth the small cost to upgrade to the gold version. Once the flac frontend is installed (free from soundforge) MediaMonkey will rip your CD's to flac quick and easy. With storage space as cheap as it is now there is no reason to use lossy formats like mp3.
I also vote for Squeezebox as the server. I've just bought a Duet model and it's working out great so far. My wireless is somewhat spotty in my home so that may end up being a problem when I move the squeezebox to the back room wear I actually want it. (fingers crossed)