Almost ready to build my music server. Suggestions?

Markus111 said:
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
Kubuntu Linux & Amarok...

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.
 
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
 
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
 
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
CJ_S said:
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.
 
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