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Best standalone music server?

So I am considering dipping my toes into the full digital world and was wondering what people here may consider as the best standalone music server, and here I am going to be specific.
I do not want to consider a home pc or mac based type of system at all!
Looking at adding one of the standalone models like for example the Wyred4sound ms1 or cocktail audio.
High on my list is ability to rip my cds directly at the unit itself, access to internet radio and other music apps (Pandora etc). High quality built in dac would be nice but if not then high quality digital out to run to an external dac. I will not be needing to access music files stored on another pc as my home pc is pretty old but fully functional for my simple needs. The only music looking to access from it right now are ripped cds and internet available music in whatever form.
So if it worked out well, yes it may be a replacement even for a cd player completely

Thank you
128x128uberwaltz
rbstehno
1,412 posts
 
Check out the auralic Aries. There is no internal disk because you don't want one in the unit. You get a 2TB disk now and what happens when you need more storage? How are you going to back it up? Another hard disk drive? Noise noise nois. Also, why would you ever need a 120GB buffer? You don't. You can load a song in memory in about a second. The Aries has an external power supply and a femto clock. Check the reviews from HI-FI+. The Aries also has the ability to connect external hard disks/ssd's. But you shouldn't have any hard disks in your audio room.
i setup a mac OS X server 100ft away from my audio room which has 10TB of usable disk space setup using raid 1. The Aries connects to this server by way of minimserver that runs on the OS X server. I use a GIg switched network so the latency is very low. I use xld to rip my songs and use Bliss to update the metadata. I use the OS X server for many other things besides running the minimserver. 
I also have the auralic mini in my living that connects to the central minimserver.

uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz OP
13,381 posts
 
Thank you to all who have suggested computer based systems but I am not going to go that route for my aforementioned reasons whether it may be superior or not.
I have zero desire to fight ANY setup issues beyond plugging things in!
Luddite?
Probably.....lol
mgreen27
147 posts
 

"Thank you to all who have suggested computer based systems but I am not going to go that route for my aforementioned reasons whether it may be superior or not."

You don't have a choice. There are no non-computer based options. You're just getting hung up on what the box looks like, and believing sales literature. One of the biggest misconceptions is that "appliance" style solutions are easier. When you have an issue with one of those things, its usually far more difficult to deal with. They remove all the options on them so when something happens, you can't do a simple fix even if you wanted to. Also, most use proprietary apps that pretty much forces you to send the unit back in for any type of issues. Don't take my word for it, look at what happened with Olive. Its considered to be on of the best ones. If owners haven't already, a class action suit will be brought against them because no one can get them to work. Not even Olive.

I know this is not what you want to hear, but to be fair, you can't show me one system that's not computer based.  

uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz OP
13,381 posts
 
@mgreen27

in that case I will probably stick to what I know which will NOT include any pc based systems, its not like I actually NEED to do this, was just a thought.
my present system is superb to my ears and it was just a fancy to possibly move forward
thank you all
escritorjuan's avatar
escritorjuan
120 posts
 
Personally, I really LOVD the LampizatOr DSD Komputer music server.  You can read my review on it at the link below:

http://ayllonmedia.com/news/the-lampizator-dsd-komputer-an-audio-expo-in-your-living-room-or-not
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