High quality music server on the cheap...sort of

Ntscdan,

One other thing is to make sure you create a backup of the files on your computer drive periodically to some kind of archivable media in case the disk drive(s) should die unexpectedly. You don't want to have to transfer everything again from scratch in that case, do you?

Also, don't get rid of the source disks used to feed the server. IF all else fails and you lose files, you will still need these, unless you are willing to accept the risk of data file loss otherwise.

The only thing that stops me from going to a server ASAP is that I have a lot of good material on vinyl. I can record these to digital, but the process requires attention to execute and is also time consuming.

Media Monkey would sometimes freeze when I was importing discs. I suspect it is a conflict with my CD-rom drivers but the problem was intermittent so I can't be sure. Considering I loaded about 3000+ discs it wasn't that bad. On playback the program has been rock solid. It does a quick fade out when you change tracks and is very, very smooth in handling songs.

There is no compression if you rip your CD's as .wav files. With storage so cheap there is no reason to degrade the audio by using any kind of compression scheme.

The issue of backing up the music is important however hard drive failures are something that I have seldom experienced.
I do heavy duty uncompressed video editing on FCP that stresses the drives exponentially compared to using them as a music server. Glyph, Caldigit or G-Ray drives are not in the same league as your big box cheapo hard drives just as audiophile gear is not the same as mass market electronics.
Eventually ALL hard drives will fail. It is just a matter of time. I recommend that you put a date on the drive when it is put into service and that after three years you take it out of service. I have backed up my almost 2 TB's of music on another drive and I certainly don't recommend running a server without a backup but the issue of hard drive failures is in my opinion sometimes made out to be a bigger issue than it is. Don't buy cheap drives and don't expect them to run forever and you will be fine.

I listen to a lot of popular music that wasn't recorded very well to begin with. The vinyl version will sound marginal as will the CD but it's all about the music for me. However I was shocked at how good an album like "Jungle Love" by Dr. Lonnie Smith sounded from the "server". It was recorded digitally using recent technology and the Benchmark/computer seemed to wring lots of music out of it. At this point I just can't see investing any serious money into a single disc CD player.

The bluetooth keyboard from Apple will work just fine except of course some of the keys won't function. ie. the volume control. You really don't want to use it anyway since the volume control on MM should be set at maximum. BTW microsoft has solved the nasty K-mixer problem in Vista. It is no longer an issue as it lets the bits pass through without truncating them.

"At this point I just can't see investing any serious money into a single disc CD player. "

Smart move going to the server with Benchmark DAC. I would expect the Benchmark synergizes well with the ARC Ref 1 to produce a musical and nicely detailed sound, no?.

HAven't had time to investigate software for managing music on a server. Will need to check out Media Monkey.

tunes is not up to the task of handling a large library of .wav files and will not let you add album artwork to .wav files.

In what way is it not up to the task?

Regarding uncompressed formats and album artwork, you could go with AIFF.