Do i need a CD player, or can I use Mc Book?

kijanki's solution of having two backup drives is very smart and exactly what I did before I retired. I rotated a weekly backup of my complete primary drive to two drives using SuperDuper so that they would be bootable from my laptop if my iMac failed and I kept one of the backups in my office. 

Since I've retired I don't have a good off-site location but I keep the second backup in a fire and waterproof case locked inside a locked metal gun safe in my garage.

All this may sound like overkill but in the years I was responsible for technology at a large newspaper I did so much grief counseling with people who'd lost months of work because they never made a backup that it made a big impression on me. Once you get into the routine of backups and maintenance of your computer it doesn't take much time or effort and it will help you get a good night's sleep.

To your question about whether to focus on high res downloads, the reality is that most recorded music is not available in high res formats and likely never will be. Focus on the music you love, not on its resolution. Great music at 128 kbps is still great music.

Unfortunately RAID does not protect from controller failure, virus, lightning or simply operator's mistake.  That's why I keep 2 backup copies instead.  Second copy is an additional protection from something bad happening during backup.  Also RAID does not protect from fire, theft etc. while my second backup kept at work does.  In addition, unpowered drives tend not to fail.  RAID might be a good solution, but I would still make one extra copy.  Drives are cheap these days.

+1.  A couple of additional things that RAID doesn't protect against:

-- If the RAID array's power supply were to fail in such a manner that it goes into an overvoltage state, all of the drives in the array could be simultaneously destroyed.  A well designed power supply will include protection mechanisms which minimize that possibility, but I wouldn't assume that all power supplies are well designed, especially in low cost consumer-oriented products.

-- Undiscovered bugs in the RAID controller's programming.  User comments that can be seen at Newegg.com about certain RAID devices include significant numbers of instances in which data was lost due to this.

Also, if the array's controller circuitry were to simply fail without harming the hard drives, but the same or a similar controller is no longer available, depending on the RAID mode that was used the data on the drives may be unrecoverable.

Regards,
-- Al
 

Once network (Ethernet, WiFi, Async USB) is used payback program does not make any difference (unless it is making additional processing - like oversampling). It is because data and not the music is sent (no timing) while timing is recreated on the other side of the network bridge. At this point nothing on computer side makes any difference (program, speed, amount of RAM etc) - saves a lot of money. You can also use computer during playback (as I do) - it won't make any difference.

That's not strictly true.
- Audirvana caches the entire track - before it sends to the DAC, hence eliminating all possible network related issues - then it's just the USB cable issues to overcome
- It also bypasses the crappy Apple audio and streaming program code for significantly improved performance over stock iTunes playback

I've tried Audirvana and Amarra and to these ears Audirvana had an audible slight edge - it's also a lot cheaper :-)

BTW - my NAS drive, along with the various routers etc..are all on a very good UPS + seperate Surge protection just because of what Al pointed out

My NAS drive is from DLINK and it works very well - at least for me so far

But if you have a fire you've got a lot more problems than reloading your music - even my paranoia has to draw the line somewhere :-)

Regards...

Audirvana might improve playback in S/Pdif streaming but does nothing to network playback since data is sent in packets of different size - not in the real time. The fact that Audirvana is caching is absolutely irrelevant with the network connection.

Shure I will have more serious problems when my house is on fire, but thats why I don’t want to have more. In addition It took me long long long time to rip about 2000 CDs and I don’t want to loose it.

Kijanki - I think I may have grabbed the wrong end of the stick and we may be talking about two different things

My setup...
- NAS Drive Library in the basement connected via Ethernet cable to router
- iMac in Living room connected via Ethernet cable to the same router
- iMac connected to DAC via USB cable
- iTunes used for Library management
- Aurdirvana used to move content to my DAC

I was referring to streaming content from my NAS drive to my DAC

Then there is streaming content directly from the web - in which case you are absolutely correct - Audirvana does not cache in this instance and basically allows iTunes to control playback (i.e. in my setup)

To me it is all streaming and I may be misusing this term.

I guess I should have been more detailed in my comments - my apologies

So just to let other members understand what I have observed(suffered) - when playing content from my NAS drive using iTunes only.
- originally I had the whole setup configured using a wireless network
- I experience severe breaks in the music - sometime playback just stopped
- I even talked with an Apple support guy - he advised I convert everything to MP3 :-)
- I then decided to implement a gigabit Ethernet between the NAS drive and the iMac
- this reduced the severity of the breaks but did not provide a complete remedy to the problem - especially with 24/192 files
- I still encountered frequent clicks and pops, especially when using the computer for other stuff at the same time
- Audirvana not only fixed the clicks and pops, but also improved the quality of playback significantly when splaying content from the NAS drive only.

As for the "Backups" - I think the ease of backing up these days is affording us a new luxury.
- back in the days of vinyl - some people might have taped each album and stored tapes off-site
- then with the advent of CD's and computer technology - some might have burned duplicates for off-site storage
- now it is so simple to copy the entire library to a hard drive and place it somewhere off-site for the most protection we've ever had to this point.

So I have to wonder - is anyone using "the cloud" to store their library???
- perhaps the ultimate solution

I would like to understand the details of what you have implemented please.

Regards...