2. pc-audio
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Someone please 'splain me

I want to set up a hard drive system so that my wife can enjoy uninterupted music as she is working downstairs. I'm somewhat familiar with the steps involved, but have several specific questions. Here is our setup:

One room upstairs:
Cable internet connection with PC connected to wireless router

Other room upstairs:
Audio system - CDP has digital input with USB-digital converter

Downstairs:
Networked PC

Questions:
1) Which 250GB external hard drive should I buy? I'm hearing conflicting opinions about what works/doesn't work with PC
2) Should I simply hook up the external hard drive in the audio room to a laptop, or....
Should we put a wireless Squeezebox on the router in the computer room upstairs, and is it even worth the expense to do so?
3) What cabling will I need?
4) Can my wife control the music from her computer downstairs?
5) Is iTunes the best music organizer for our needs?

And finally, do you think we need to install $1100 PC's on all of the CPU's? Only kidding, cable flamers...

Thank you,
Howard
128x128boa2
budrew
467 posts
 
Any old Mac laptop will do. But as others say, backup your music! I use Glyph drives designed for hard use in the pro music biz. I'm trying to get a wireless AE network going as that's the simplest for me, but it still drops out periodically. Need to get that resolved. Then I'm set. Would prefer a USB DAC, but too much clutter in the living room having a computer and drives set up there.

I just changed from an old iBook to one of the new Mac Minis and prefer it. Faster and more convenient. Already had keyboard, mouse, and small, cheap LCD laying around.
boss302
110 posts
 
Ckorody, I have to say that is one of the better posts on using an HD for your source. Thank you.

Boss302
jayboard
301 posts
 
I agree that Ckorody's post was a good one. I almost hate to interfere... but, Howard, yes, you would be able to control volume from iTunes running on the downstairs computer. And that's regardless of whether you have AXpress (I would assume same holds true for SB) or a laptop feeding your CDP/DAC. (Actually, AX probably isn't an option by itself since its digital out is optical and I assume your digital in is S/PDIF.)

If you go with a hard drive in your audio room upstairs and you intend to use it while you're listening there, be sure it's quiet enough not to annoy you.

There are several ways using iTunes to wirelessly serve up music files under the control of a remote computer. Probably the most obvious is using iTunes' music sharing feature. With music sharing, in my experience dropouts are truly rare. Budrew, are you using music sharing?
boa2's avatar
boa2 OP
1,551 posts
 
Thank you all for the input. Jayboard, yes, we will have an S/PDIF digital input. And I don't know if any of these applications are MAC-only specific, but we have only PC's. So it appears that the best thing for us to do is:

LISTENING ROOM UPSTAIRS:
External hard drive into USB/SPDIF converter into DAC, managed by old Dell laptop connected wirelessly to network.

So then, my wife can control the selections as necessary via iTunes from her networked PC downstairs, right? Can she also control volume from there via iTunes, or will we need the SB for that?

Sorry if I sound confused. Despite being so close to having a grasp of this process, I am often left wondering if I'm even asking the right questions.

Thank you all,
Howard
budrew
467 posts
 
Jayboard, Yes I'm sharing the music and in doing some research I learned that it helps if you set all the AEs to 802.11b instead of 802.11b/g (I still have one older computer with the "b" standard). That helped, but not 100%.
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