In a world where computers are pretty easy to understand, I have a hard time seeing the role of dedicated music servers. Frankly, the lack of expandability in most would be enough to drive me away. I also tend to think the price/performance ratio is pretty lousy. So, I think it makes sense to build your own.
I'd say my computer rig is on par cost-wise with high end music centers--a Serener ITX fanless PC ($700?), a Viewsonic touchscreen Airpanel ($1K), a Waveterminal U24 ($250) USB audio device, and a 1TB terastation ($1K)--but it performs a *lot* better. Haven't seen any MC devices with RAID5 or USB based audio. My computer rig only outputs digital, however, so if you throw in my dCS stack, I'm out of any server price range by far. That said...
First, getting from the computer to the stereo. I, and I think many other PC audio buffs around here, prefer outboard USB-based audio devices to sound cards. This kind of thing allows you to reserve the computer for purely digital things, things it does well. Most USB devices, like the M-Audio Transit, will have a toslink or coax connection to allow you to hook the computer up to a DAC.
Since you don't even have a DAC, one option you may want to consider is a DAC that has a USB input--I think if you search the threads, you will find several recommendations.
Another alternative is going the Apple Airport route. Some folks have had good luck using an Airport Express, which is normally a Wi-Fi access point, to serve as a wireless connection to your DAC--the AE has an output that can be plugged in directly. This set up would then require an Apple laptop to talk to the AE and feed it music.
How much disk space is going to be influenced by whether you compress your music or not, and if you do, whether you use algorithms that compress it a lot and lose something (lossy compression), or compress just a little and retain everything (lossless compression). The other important factor to consider in selecting a scheme for storing music is whether you want tags (I assume the answer is yes)--allows you to see album/artist/genre/etc even if you copy the file somewhere else. A format like WAV does not support tagging.
-- Examples of uncompressed formats include WAV and AIFF.
-- Examples of lossless compression formations include FLAC and Apple Lossless.
-- Examples of lossy compression include AAC, MP3.
For comparison, I find ripping a CD averages 450 MB of WAV files. Those files compress to about 250 MB of Apple Lossless files. Those files also compress to about 25 MH of AAC 128 files. So, if I want to store 1000 CDs in WAV format, I'm looking at needed 450GB of disk space, 250GB for the same as ALAC, and 25GB for AAC.
You may also want to consider some back up plan. Ripping all your CDs is timeconsuming. You don't want to do it again. I tried just doubling the number of external USB drives I used, but still had major problems. Now I run RAID 5 systems, which spread data across multiple disks in a manner that allows data recovery if one drive blows up. I'm still screwed if two drives go up in smoke. Then again, my RAID 5 gives me storage of about 700 MB with 1000MB of raw drive space.
Now you have to get your music from the CD to the hard drive. Yes, if you use iTunes, it will perform the ripping function (and actually does it pretty well, from what I've heard). I use EAC, which is the only program I know will verify data--I've been told the J River Media Center ripper also works like EAC. But EAC is free. I actually use EAC configured to call iTunes as an encoder, so the output I get from EAC is a bunch of Apple Lossless files. EAC, iTunes, and JRMC will all look up the CD and supply track/title/artist information as well from Gracenote's CDDB database.
I also use iTunes for playback. I'm less a fan of iTunes than most, but more of a fan of iTunes than, say, foobar 2000. iTunes is like the pretty, but kind of stupid girl. Foobar is like the slightly odd girl who happens to be able to do almost everything. Foobar also has a built in upsampler (SRC) that is supposed to be good if your DAC can handle more than 16/44.1 kHz data.
I'd say my computer rig is on par cost-wise with high end music centers--a Serener ITX fanless PC ($700?), a Viewsonic touchscreen Airpanel ($1K), a Waveterminal U24 ($250) USB audio device, and a 1TB terastation ($1K)--but it performs a *lot* better. Haven't seen any MC devices with RAID5 or USB based audio. My computer rig only outputs digital, however, so if you throw in my dCS stack, I'm out of any server price range by far. That said...
First, getting from the computer to the stereo. I, and I think many other PC audio buffs around here, prefer outboard USB-based audio devices to sound cards. This kind of thing allows you to reserve the computer for purely digital things, things it does well. Most USB devices, like the M-Audio Transit, will have a toslink or coax connection to allow you to hook the computer up to a DAC.
Since you don't even have a DAC, one option you may want to consider is a DAC that has a USB input--I think if you search the threads, you will find several recommendations.
Another alternative is going the Apple Airport route. Some folks have had good luck using an Airport Express, which is normally a Wi-Fi access point, to serve as a wireless connection to your DAC--the AE has an output that can be plugged in directly. This set up would then require an Apple laptop to talk to the AE and feed it music.
How much disk space is going to be influenced by whether you compress your music or not, and if you do, whether you use algorithms that compress it a lot and lose something (lossy compression), or compress just a little and retain everything (lossless compression). The other important factor to consider in selecting a scheme for storing music is whether you want tags (I assume the answer is yes)--allows you to see album/artist/genre/etc even if you copy the file somewhere else. A format like WAV does not support tagging.
-- Examples of uncompressed formats include WAV and AIFF.
-- Examples of lossless compression formations include FLAC and Apple Lossless.
-- Examples of lossy compression include AAC, MP3.
For comparison, I find ripping a CD averages 450 MB of WAV files. Those files compress to about 250 MB of Apple Lossless files. Those files also compress to about 25 MH of AAC 128 files. So, if I want to store 1000 CDs in WAV format, I'm looking at needed 450GB of disk space, 250GB for the same as ALAC, and 25GB for AAC.
You may also want to consider some back up plan. Ripping all your CDs is timeconsuming. You don't want to do it again. I tried just doubling the number of external USB drives I used, but still had major problems. Now I run RAID 5 systems, which spread data across multiple disks in a manner that allows data recovery if one drive blows up. I'm still screwed if two drives go up in smoke. Then again, my RAID 5 gives me storage of about 700 MB with 1000MB of raw drive space.
Now you have to get your music from the CD to the hard drive. Yes, if you use iTunes, it will perform the ripping function (and actually does it pretty well, from what I've heard). I use EAC, which is the only program I know will verify data--I've been told the J River Media Center ripper also works like EAC. But EAC is free. I actually use EAC configured to call iTunes as an encoder, so the output I get from EAC is a bunch of Apple Lossless files. EAC, iTunes, and JRMC will all look up the CD and supply track/title/artist information as well from Gracenote's CDDB database.
I also use iTunes for playback. I'm less a fan of iTunes than most, but more of a fan of iTunes than, say, foobar 2000. iTunes is like the pretty, but kind of stupid girl. Foobar is like the slightly odd girl who happens to be able to do almost everything. Foobar also has a built in upsampler (SRC) that is supposed to be good if your DAC can handle more than 16/44.1 kHz data.