Music server quality.

Sorry - Wayne is the resident genius at Bolder Cable - pretty much the leader in SB mods though there are some others now. Wayne has done a number of units for me. He also makes some wonderful cables.

http://www.boldercables.com/servlet/Search?category=MODIFICATIONS

I have a McIntosh 300 Music Server hooked-up to my Accustic Arts Dac1 MK4 using a Stealth Sextet digital cable and very happy.

I do use this when I don't want to just change one cd, I have not as of yet done any direct comparisons to my single cd drive unit but will down the road. I really like the Mac. very classy piece and easy to use. When I had any questions Mac was there to answer any and all which makes me feel confident in owning such a piece of gear.

I use an MBL 1511E DAC fed by a Mac Powerbook with the new intel chip. The new Macs don't have a fan but do have an optical digital out, so you can use a toslink cable to the DAC. I have a 500 Gb external hard disc. My 800 + CDs only use about half the space in lossless compression.

I just use i-tunes. The computer, hard drive and cable were under $2K. I was using a Sony XA 777 ES as a transport until I could purchase the MBL transport. But the server system sounds clearly superior to using the Sony and really has me wondering about the benefits of spending the money on the MBL transport.
-Sw23

Sw23,

Very interesting information. Have you compared the sound quality of the MBL transport to that of the server?
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The Slim Devices Transporter just got an A rating in the 4/07 issue of Stereophile. If you already have a PC, the Transporter makes more sense(less cables & boxes) than spending alot of money to upgrade a squeezebox, M-Transit or Waveterminal to feed a DAC.
-Kana813

Kana813,

Thank you for the information. Once I learn more about these devices, I may be able to understand what you're talking about. My knowledge base on music server technology is zero right now.
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Sorry - Wayne is the resident genius at Bolder Cable - pretty much the leader in SB mods though there are some others now. Wayne has done a number of units for me. He also makes some wonderful cables.

http://www.boldercables.com/servlet/Search?category=MODIFICATIONS
-Ckorody

Ckorody,
That's useful information and I'll check out the link.
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I have a McIntosh 300 Music Server hooked-up to my Accustic Arts Dac1 MK4 using a Stealth Sextet digital cable and very happy.

I do use this when I don't want to just change one cd, I have not as of yet done any direct comparisons to my single cd drive unit but will down the road. I really like the Mac. very classy piece and easy to use. When I had any questions Mac was there to answer any and all which makes me feel confident in owning such a piece of gear.
-Dev

Dev,
Thanks for the info. Going with a known high end manufacturer like MacIntosh has a certain appeal to me. I would be very interested in the outcome of any comparison you make to your single disc unit in terms of sound quality.
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Thanks to all of the respondents so far. It is VERY clear to me that I know NOTHING about music servers and have a LOT of research to do before even thinking about buying one.
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I've been considering too...and the thing is it appears to me a lot of servers are actually made by non tradtional audiophile companies.....but that may not be a bad thing: for me the most important thing will be storage space, user interface and digital outputs given I will be using my dac. There is the sooloos system for example. Sounds interesting to me as it has terabyte capacity! Oliver is another.

Then there are PC based systems such as Squeezebox, Sonos etc...the question on these are not the quality (again if you use the digital outputs to a good DAC) but to me the fact that PCs tend to crash. I do have the Sonos. The positive is these are generally not a very expensive option (obviously using Airport Express is very cheap though it doess suffer in quality). A very interesting development is msb tech developing a IPOD cradle which charges the IPOD, and they configure your IPOD to actually have a digital out. The IPOD then becomes a remote control, sending uncompressed digital wirelessly to a base station of sorts which in turn can be hooked up to your dac.

I also hear Arcam has come out with one.