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Moving from CD Player to MAC Book Pro Music Server

Based on my research, I will be selling my Ayre CX-7e CD player (Magnum Dynalab MD-102T FM Tuner already sold) and getting a computer based music server. I ordered the MAC Book Pro computer, 2.66GHz processor, 4GB RAM and a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD). The cost for an additional 4GB of RAM is $800+ so I decided to wait for the cost go down. All my music will be stored on an external hard drive using the AIFF format. It will sound better if it is on a different controller than the DAC so I will use a FireWire hard drive. The Seagate portable 2.5” external drive will be much quieter and will run off the power provided by the bus. The Seagate model info is below. I ordered the Ayre USB DAC and it will run balanced into my Ayre AX-7e integrated amp. I would like to thank the many people (on this site and other sites) including Music Lovers Audio and Steve Silberman (Ayre) that helped me with the computer configuration. Ayre also recommends the Furman AC-215 as a power filter for the MAC to prevent it from interfering with the sound quality. I ordered the MAC on Thursday (9/3/2009) from an independent Apple reseller (delivery in about 7+ days). Music Lovers Audio will install my Ethernet line from my living room to my router in my home office on September 16th. Based on estimated delivery times, it will take 6+ weeks for everything to be completed. The web site for the external drive is:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=ST905003FJA205-RK-fa-gopro-mac-500gb-hd&vgnextoid=13530c1001c11210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US
hgeifman
sfar's avatar
sfar
1,758 posts
 
Congratulations, that should sound great and be easy to use.

A couple of observations, unless you're going to use the MacBook for other RAM-hungry applications at the same time you shouldn't ever need more than 4Gb of RAM.

You should have a second 500 Gb hard drive to serve as a backup for your primary music storage drive. It doesn't need to be as quiet or fast as your primary and an AC-powered 3.5" USB drive of that size would be quite inexpensive.

A great thing to have with a setup like yours is an iTouch to use as a remote control for iTunes.

Good luck
hgeifman OP
2,193 posts
 
Hi Sfar: Thanks for your suggestions above. I forgot to mention in my post that I ordered two Seagate FreeAgent Go™ Pro for Mac (500gb) external drives. Drive #1 is the main drive connected to the computer by Firewire. Drive #2 is the backup drive connected by USB cable. If something happens to drive #1, I have a backup in drive #2. I am checking on your iTouch suggestion.
macdadtexas
1,794 posts
 
It's not the cheapest solution, but I have a Drobo for back up and it let's me sleep at night. After having many a back-up external drive fail, I settled on the Drobo, and it blows away the RAID array it replaced as far as ease of use. Oh yeah, and since it has 4 SATA drives that back all of the info up on itself, you can hot swap up to 3 failed drives and never lose any data. Truly a great invention, and easy to use.

Also, near infinite expandablity. As SATA drives get bigger, you can put bigger ones in, hot swap them, and lose no data.
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