Music Server now bane of my existence


After years of waiting and rendering the landscape of servers as too complex, confusing and basically useless for my purposes, I've delved into the world of a Mojo Audio music server. The Biggest Dog they sell. Now, I've determined I'm technically in over my head and run out of invectives.

I need a "Music Server for Dummies" lexicon and flow chart. Yes, I will contact them this week also.

To my surprise, there is no drive with the new Mini Mac. So I need that. And how will I burn discs for friends? And do I just use the USB out from the server to my USB DAC for optimal playback? Which USB? Or should it be a USB conversion to coaxial? I researched and purchased a 3TB Western Digital hard drive for dedicated backup. Will that suffice for this?

I purchased the Apple wireless keyboard and outboard trac-pad to navigate.

I'm at a crossroads as to continue with predictable brain damage assembling all of the parts or return this and wait again for this industry to collectively simplify the process. I've gone with the MAC so I can easily interface with my iPod pieces. Thank you to all for insight into this gnarly subject.
celtic66
I've found Audirvana to be the most stable of the lot. I also try not to update itunes until I am sure the developer of (Audirvana or Puremusic or Amarra) has fixed any possible issues/tested the new build of itunes.

Timrhu, my post does require some understanding of the interfaces and acronyms used in DAC technology.

TB - thunderbolt
DSD - codec used for SACD aka Direct Stream Digital which uses single bit sampled at very high frequencies (MHz instead of kHz)
GoFlex is a range of hard disks from Seagate that allow you to change the interface to the computer from USB to Firewire (FW), Thunderbolt or even eSATA

USB-SPDIF boxes are external boxes that provide a way for your computer to talk to a DAC, particularly a legacy one that has no way of talking to your computer otherwise. It provides usually a SPDIF (coax/optical/BNC) to the DAC.

If you need any more help beyond that, perhaps computer audio shouldn't be something in your radar :)
My disappointment was with the low computational power of the mac mini. Using a VNC connection (VNC server capability built in to the Mac Mini - use something on a laptop like GTK VNC Viewer on Linux, or Chicken of the VNC on an apple laptop as the client) the response is b.a.d.

You have to be patient. Give a command and wait.

I have also switched to Clementine as the music server as it allows me to point to media locations rather than a single library. This way I can plug in multiple USB drives and point to them all and they all show up in my music library.

If using a DAC from your MAC Mini - I can't recommend enough the sonic benefit of a USB to SPDIF converter and then plug in to your DAC's SPDIF input instead of the USB. There is too much they've screwed up on the USB interface of DACs to allow that in between.

The benefit of creating a playlist (genre=jazz for instance) and having the player on shuffle is fantastic. Allows you to listen to all your stuff randomly and you will be surprised at stuff you like but didn't know you had. My buddy ripped all his 2000 CDs and gave them all away.

BE SURE TO RIP TO LOSSLESS FORMAT!!! FLAC best, ALAC OK but a pain for the rest of the computer world.

Windows seems to have the best high sample rate players (for free to boot). Wish there were on Linux. If they were - I'd put Linux on my mac server and be done with Apple's BS.
Here I am typing this running screen sharing on a 2011 MacBook Air remote
controlling a 2009 MacBook Pro (quite ancient) over wifi (on the MBA) and
wired (to the MBP) and it still works remarkably well.

It is a bit slow if you are running a full HD and communicating over wifi for
both but that would be due to the slowness of wifi rather than the OS