Almost ready to build my music server. Suggestions?

[Markus111]

Seeing some of the cool servers at AKFest this year inspired me to finally take the plunge. I've been reading the posts in this forum, and think I'm close to going out and buying stuff. I don't have any of the components yet, and plan to hit the computer show at Gibralter trade Center this weekend. Any advice you guys have would be appreciated! Here goes....

PC - Looks like the Pentium 4, 2.0 gig with 256 megs memory are pretty cheap right now. Is this enough horsepower? Is there any advantage to a faster machine or more memory?

Sound card - I would like to use my existing CAL Alpha DAC, which has both coax and optical inputs. What is the best way to get the digital signal from the computer to the DAC? Is it better to buy a sound card and use the S/PDIF out, or should I get one of the USB to S/PDIF units and do it that way?

Hard Drive - I assume that I'll need a big honkin' hard drive. I heard that a RAID is a better way to go, but I know nothing of these. Should I just buy a decent single hard drive, and then get another later on when I run out of space, or should I take a big plunge on a RAID right from the beginning?

Compression - After all I've read, it looks like FLAC is the way to go. I'll primarily be ripping CDs. I've read that EAC seems to be a favorite.

OS / Player
I'll need to buy an OS. Has anyone used Windows XP Media edition? It looks cool from the screenshots, but I'd like to hear any experiences from fellow AKer's. I like the idea of the remote control. I will primarily be sitting on my ass in my listening spot and navigating all of this stuff on the TV, so I would like a VERY easy to use (and see) interface. Suggestions? (other than getting off my ass and exercising, that is) :D

Thanks,
Mark

[Tonedeaf]

I have no experience with Windows Media, but I would go with at least 512 gig of RAM. Windows is a memory hog anyway.
Yes, go with the biggest honking huge hard drive you can afford. RAID is alright, but you would need at least 2 hard drives. There are many RAID configurations, RAID 1 would most likely be the one you would want to configure since it offers redundency should a drive fail and you would not loose data. Alot of motherboards have RAID onboard. I don't know much about the sound card, but if your running the server into your gear, would you need a high end card? Unless you were to record LPs to your computer. Someone correct me of I am wrong. :scratch2:

[BeerCan]

Are you going to be using the PC as a server or a player? I think the recomendations would be different based on that.

[Markus111]

Are you going to be using the PC as a server or a player? I think the recomendations would be different based on that.

As a player - guess I used the wrong terminology there!

Mark

[JimmyNeutron]

This may help you: http://www.jimmyneutron.org/Rycher.htm

Jimmy

[uofmtiger]

I have WMC on one of my PCs and I really like the setup. It may not have as much flexibility as Meedio, but it does have a fairly active forum for people that are interested in adding apps (http://thegreenbutton.com/). Personally, I just wanted something easy to use in the living room and a WMC fit the bill.

Here is my review of the Sony Vaio (http://uofmtiger.com/Sonyvaio.htm) that I recently purchased. I am sure it is more than you need to know, but you can get an idea of how the WMC program works.

[Markus111]

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions. Jimmy - that was amazing - truly inspired. I love when a project takes shape like that. It's a drag though - Meedio sold out to Yahoo, and the Meedio program is no longer available for download! There was no indication on the site as to what Yahoo will do with it either. Too bad - it looks seriously cool.

Mark

[theodoric]

That is seriously bad news about Meedio. I'm in the middle of my own music server build, and was planning on running Meedio based on Jimmy Neutron's experience and endorsement. Now what?

[JimmyNeutron]

Theo, I have the last build on file. I can transfer it to you if you like. It's fully functional and works like a charm. Also, the Meedio forum section is still up and running and very active shuld you have any questions.

Jimmy

[theodoric]

You've got mail, Mr. Neutron.

[JimmyNeutron]

Theo, I'm gonna set up a download link on my website. It will be ready to download tomorrow. It's a pretty big 45 meg file, so I hope you have broadband.

Jimmy

[KingBubba]

Checkout the word on Seagate drives. Big drives, good reputation, and best of all a five year warranty. I have six Seagate drives and have had no trouble with any of them. Rock solid.

[Negotiableterms]

I moved this thread to Music Servers because it's about... music servers!

Great thread, BTW!

[JimmyNeutron]

ALright guys. I have finished uploading the latest and last build of MEEDIO front end onto my website, and it's now ready for anyone to download. This is a free and completely legal download. There is no trial key or registration needed. Go to my website: http://www.jimmyneutron.org/ and follow the MEDIA SERVER link. Then you can click the download link for MEEDIO. It's 22 megs in size so I hope ya'll have a broadband connection. :boring: . Also, if anyone wants themes and add-ins for their MEEDIO front end for customization I will be adding a whole bunch of them for download as well on my website. If anyone wants to visit the MEEDIO support forum for questions and downloads you can go here: http://www.meedio.com/forum/ .

Enjoy!! Jimmy

[Markus111]

Thanks Jimmy! :banana:

Mark

[Tonedeaf]

Very nice website Jimmy.
I was poking around and was impressed with the ARK. Very nice. I wish I had one ounce of your creativity. Nice job. :yes:

[Inspiribomb]

For whatever reason, Meedio kept locking up on me while I was setting it up, so no go.

[Yamaha B-2]

This may help you: http://www.jimmyneutron.org/Rycher.htm
JimmyWhat he said. :thmbsp:

[Markus111]

Getting very close..... I got a great deal on a Silverstone LC11 case, Asus MB, P4 2.8G with 512Meg, and 160MB hard drive. The silverstone case has two very quiet fans, at 21db noise output. This should be inaudible with music playing.

I looked at my Tivo history, and so far I've spent $500 on subscription cost!!!! Ouch!!! Thus, my music server will be kicked up a notch to take on video duties. I have a Pioneer DVD / CD burner on order. From what I've read, these are pretty quiet running drives. Also, there is a utility that can slow the drive down to single speed so you don't end up with the jet engine sound on startup. I've also ordered a Powercolor 550 tv tuner, which supposedly has an outstanding picture.

We'll see how this all works out. I'll post some pictures next week, after I get it all assembled.

[BBHMcintoshFan]

iTunes on a dedicated external drive, a wireless router, an Apple Airport Express, a digital cable of your choice, either toslink or coax and a Receiver/Preamp and you are ready to go.

You probably already have the router and the receiver so your total cash outlay will be in the neighborhood of $300-$500 (depending on size of dedicated hard drive to contain your music...)

[kbott]

Hard Drive - I assume that I'll need a big honkin' hard drive. I heard that a RAID is a better way to go, but I know nothing of these. Should I just buy a decent single hard drive, and then get another later on when I run out of space, or should I take a big plunge on a RAID right from the beginning?

Compression - After all I've read, it looks like FLAC is the way to go. I'll primarily be ripping CDs. I've read that EAC seems to be a favorite.



currently I use J Rivers Media Jukebox to manage 2650 albums and approximately 30,000 separate files. Media Center is their newest release but as I don't manage video I never saw the need to update. All my files currently are on an external 250 gb harddrive currently externals of that size retail between $130-200 if you go internals figure about half that but unless you want to keep opening up your pc to add new drives externals are a heck of a lot easier. While FLAC is a lossless compression format until the $/GB ratio reduces MP3 is still probably the way to go Flac files are still too big. When I rip my vinyl to PC or a CD the typical album is probably 85MB @320 while a FLAC file would be around 3.5 times bigger so you'll end up eating hard drive fast

personally my 47 year old ears don't notice a difference

[uofmtiger]

While FLAC is a lossless compression format until the $/GB ratio reduces MP3 is still probably the way to go Flac files are still too big. When I rip my vinyl to PC or a CD the typical album is probably 85MB @320 while a FLAC file would be around 3.5 times bigger so you'll end up eating hard drive fast I would warn anyone that if you do not burn to a lossless format, you may regret it later. Given the choice between fitting all of my music in mp3 or 1/3 of my music into a lossless format, I would pick the lossless format.

The reason is that you will not have to get the CDs that have already been copied out again, you can just add music as you add hard drive space. The price of hard drives are dropping all the time.

If you can be happy with 320kbps as the hard drives get cheaper, then maybe you should go that route. However, I have burned all of my CDs to mp3 in the past and had to re-burn all of them again to get a lossless copy for my archives.

[Markus111]

All right, music servers are freakin' kick-ass !!!! :banana: :banana: :banana:

Let me update my progress. I have the PC setup, with Windows MCE installed, 160g hard drive, Pioneer CD / DVD, and Powercolor tuner card. I am still waiting on a tiny card that converts my motherboard on-board sound into an spdif signal. I'm hoping to get that soon. Otherwise, the hardware is good to go.

The software took a bit of time to configure and setup. I downloaded EAC for the ripping and FLAC for the compression. I also downloaded a little utility called REACT. REACT is actually a front-end plug in for EAC, so that all of the tags get properly saved with the flac files. Otherwise, Windows may not recognize the format, and not keep the song / title information connected with the flac file.

How does it work? Excellent! The ripping is very easy - EAC does a great job of ripping cds to flac, and it even does error correction along the way. Windows MCE goes out and finds the ripped album flawlessly, and displays all of the song information. The flac files are definitely bigger than the .wma files. For instance, Dark Side of the Moon was about 40 meg in .wma, and 250 meg in flac. I'll have to evaluate the quality differences between the two, but I can't do that until I get my spdif card.

On the video side, the powercolor 550 card blows my other tv tuner card out of the water. I can't believe the difference in the picture quality. I'm still watching this on the monitor, but it is a substantial difference. I can't wait to get it hooked up to the projector. Oh yeah, I had to download an mpeg decoder to be able to play dvds. You would think that for $140, Microshaft could at least give you the ability to play a dvd. But this is an extra! I ended up downloading the nvidia decoder, and I like it very much. The picture quality from dvds is excellent.

Mark

[uofmtiger]

For instance, Dark Side of the Moon was about 40 meg in .wma, and 250 meg in flac. I'll have to evaluate the quality differences between the two, but I can't do that until I get my spdif card. Is this with WMA lossless?

You have to specifically select "lossless" in most programs and the size differential seems to indicate that you are using some sort of compression on the WMA file.

[drombit]

Hi.

Just got my music server up and running and I love it. I had two requirements in planning out the particulars. I wanted both the OS and the software to be Open Source and I wanted to be able to play FLAC files. I chose an ePox media PC enclosure with an AMD XP 2000 processor running the Kubuntu Linux distribution which comes with an awesome jukebox/music server app called Amarok. The OS and software were free, the system plays FLACs, reads my iPods music library as a separate removable database and most importantly, it sounds GREAT!

I take the spdif output from the onboard soundcard and run it to an external DAC via a 40' Toslink cable. The DAC feeds two Mcintosh MC-30's.

:tresbon: Amarok has a beautiful user interface as well with CDDB and Wikipedia info automatically downloaded for the current track playing.

I'm having fun now. Lots of ripping to do.

[JimmyNeutron]

What he said. :thmbsp:


Meedio needs Microsofts .NET 2.0, SP2, and DirectX 9.0 to operate.

Jimmy

[CJ_S]

Been working on a server of my own with some pc parts laying around. It's just a plain pc tower atm but one day maybe something as beautiful as JimmyNeutron's. I've got it up and operational but i can't get it to play FLAC files. Is doesn't even include them in my music library when i scan. Which sucks for me as i have 160 Gig of FLAC files and 3 mp3 albums. Could it be because i installed Meedio first and then just today installed my drive with all the files. I also just installed all the codecs today. Should i have installed all the codecs first, should i re-install Meedio? I'm sure i'll start a new thread soon enough as i'm sure i'll have lots of questions on how to set up the software as i go but would appreciate any advice on my current problem.
TIA
Chris

[Yamaha B-2]

How fast does the actual processor need to be? Would an old 400MHz Pentium do well enough?

[CJ_S]

Well that's what i'm running so we'll find out soon enough. Don't even think about trying any kind of video stuff with that though. I think we'll be ok as long as you shut off all services not needed (on OS if Win based).

Edit: It's a bit on the weak side. Hopefully when a friend drops off some extra RAM it'll help out a bit. Has no problem playing but when navigating through menu's it's a bit slow

[JimmyNeutron]

For most music servers a 400 mHz processor should be ok, but it will be slow in accessing files. Meedio, as well as most front ends, have many "pages", and since it's basically a mini operating system you should have a decent processer and RAM. But if all you're going to be doing is ripping and playing music then you should be OK.

As for FLAC files. Meedio's internal player supports ripping and playback of FLAC files. If you rip from within Meedio the files will automatically be imported, tagged, and stored on your selected folder. If you are transferring files from another PC/drive and just dropping them into the music folder that Meedio reads music from, Meedio will not "see" these files until they are first imported. There are a few ways to do this. The automatic way is to go into the Meedio configuration and enable the "auto import" box in the media music library section. On start up Meedio will scan your drive for new music and import it. This has a disadvantage that it will take a few seconds longer for Meedio to start up since it scans the folder every time. Another option is to manually import the new songs by, you guessed it, manually importing them. Do this in the same music import area but instead of selecting "auto import" select "import now". Voila! Done. There is a better way: go to Meedios.com (that's www.meedios.com) and search for an auto-tagger program. This plug-in will download all cover art, artist, album info, etc and tag it accordingly. I also have many plugins on my website ( www.jimmyneutron.org ) so you may also want to check there as well. But check for the newest versions of plug-ins first on the Meedio.com or Meedios.com sites first.

Good luck and enjoy.

Jimmy

[CJ_S]

I did figure out how to add the flac files and such late last night. Somewhere n the configuration files i added the .flac, .ape filters in the "what files to look for".
Now if i can just get rid of an annoying static problem i'm having all be set. It's not a constant static more like listening to a very dirty LP.

Also not sure if i'll have enough HP to run meedio (it's verrry slow for me) but will work with a Foobar or WinAmp.

[JimmyNeutron]

Hmmmm, don't know what the static could be. If it's on playback of music files only it is probably a codec related issue. Meedio uses whatever player you choose to plpay back the files, so the chances that Meedio is causing it is very unlikely. Do they play back fine from outside of Meedio using another player? Also, try switching Themes in the settings/theme changer from inside Meedio.

[TheLordofPain]

Now if i can just get rid of an annoying static problem i'm having all be set. It's not a constant static more like listening to a very dirty LP.

Try muting CD In on the Windows volume panel. If you've attached that stupid little cable from the drive to your sound card you can get static. I have yet to see a modern computer that is not capable of DAE. I would get rid of that cable.