2. digital
  3. 1297380317

MUSIC SERVER - HOW DO YOU............

I have a all McIntosh system with Tannoy speakers and have decided to go digital. Recently purchased a MDA 1000 to replace my C46. Easily over a 1000 cd collection.

I need a way to store and play. What I want to do is store to a NAS or similar device, sit on the couch with a touch screen of some sort to scan and select my listening pleasure. Can be hard wired or streamed. I use FLAC. Don't care about internet look up of playlist and cover art.

I'm not a computer wiz nor do I want to be. Is there a system that does what I want, seems like from what I read most self built servers require that you spend more time configuring and dealing with online support then listening to music.

What do you suggest? Thanks in advance for your help.
fishcricket
jimmdavis
63 posts
 
For what you've described, I say skip the computer (too broad a device for such a specific application).

You need ReadyNAS + Squeezebox.
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezeCenter_on_ReadyNAS
nieuwen
60 posts
 
That's the thing, there are many different approaches you can take. Each with pros and cons. That is part of the challenge and yet part of the fun. You get to experiment.
It is not as overwhelming as it may seem!
It is really fun to sit on couch with your ENTIRE collection in your hands. You will rediscover your music, that is the fun part!
nieuwen
60 posts
 
Fishcricket: you might like to check out this website. It is a great resource to get you started: www.computeraudiophile.com/faq
fishcricket OP
3 posts
 
Again, thanks for all the food for thought. I knew it would happen, the engineer part of me took over, 1 am this morning and i'm still doing research. Seems reguardless of which way i go(squeezebox,Emperical Audio) the most important thing is to get the digital signal to my DAC with the lease amount of jitter possible. It appears their are software upgrades available for the SB Touch as well as hardware and both the SB and EA would work best by being hardwired rather than streamed. Also, cable type plays an important role.

So right now I'm leaning toward a NAS, after looking around at the external hardrives i have laying around stuffed with music plus all the CD's i'm guesstimating I have about 1.5TB of music at flac compression, so need at least 2TB plus another 2TB for backup.

Also think I will use an I Pad. The SB or EA decision remains a tough one. I just realized my DAC upsamples all data streams to 24bit before sampling at 768khz.

Hope I'm on the right track, I truly enjoy the way my system sounds and certainly don't want to take a step back. By the way what I have are McIntosh MC300 amp, M46 pre-amp(that i will be takening out of the system), MR85 tuner(I will also be selling the tuner), MDA1000 DAC, MCD205 cd player and all plugged in to a Powervar 12. Speakers are Tannoy D700's and also a McIntosh SL-1 subwoofer that is used at times. When the little lady won't put up with anymore I use a pair of Sennheiser HDR 180 headphones.
mmike84
309 posts
 
Good for you.

Yes jitter is a real problem and most just hope their Dac deals with it. I'll let you in on a little secret. Virtually none of them do much to correct it. The Empirical Off Ramp converts USB and virtually eliminates jitter. I have tried it on a number of Dacs with a number of very very experienced audiophiles and we all agree it is an amazing device.

I use an Anti Cable Spdif cable which was about $150. It is on par with the Stereolab but less $. That's an easy way to go and it sounds really really good. They're not on the website so you'll have to contact them directly to get one.

At any rate good luck w/ the rest of your journey.
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