Any high quality music servers out there?

Hoseface - why go though the hassle? I did. Last year, I built a music server based on Windows using FLAC, Exact Audio Copy and WinAMP. I had SATA drives, Silverstone case and fan-less PS, controllable CPU fans, etc.

Read though your post and think you're building on a PC platform. While FLAC is great for its flexibility, it's a huge pain in one simple but important area - tag management. It sucks. WinAMP is no better with the FLAC plugin.

Also, I had to use an old beta plugin that I found on a Russian site because the released plugin didn't display tags correctly. Apparently, this was/is a problem that other users experienced. It's nice to have an open source format but it certainly has its share of problems and sometimes, like this plugin tag issue, it never got solved. Some systems it worked and some didn't. When emailing Josh at FLAC, he simply didn't know how to solve the problem. What I realized was that these problems happened all the time with the Winamp/FLAC combo and when you're hosting a party and your system starts screwing up, it's embarrassing. Josh gets rid of the old versions (the installer versions) and you are left with a version that may or may not work for you and your system.

This is why I changed to iTunes and a Mac Mini with external MacAlly cases - works great, RAID, etc. And the iTunes front end is the best period. My collection is managed and very organized. Anyone of my friends can choose music and have fun with it...

I used to rip to FLAC with EAC and I believe that it creates outstanding rips. I think better then iTunes but I really can't tell. iTunes may have slightly worse audio quality then FLAC statistically but it does take 45 minutes to rip a CD (with EAC on high quality) and I really can't tell the difference with my tube equipment.

The bottom line is a little Mac Mini with iTunes and external Firewire disks works great and is easy to setup and low in cost. I liked the idea of building my own music server and felt proud when George from deHavilland was blown away by how good it sounded with his amps but it was just too much to manage - kinda took the fun out of the music...

My experience and opinion only... maybe it will help people decide - please feel free to email me...

P.S. – USB DACs are the way to go. Second in line is coaxial (the mechanical connection is more organic) and if you have to, optical.

I'll second or third (or whatever) the roll-it-yerself recs. I've got a mac mini (very quiet) in my main rig hooked up to a dCS stack via a Waveterminal U24--seriously can't tell the difference between that and my DV50s as a transport. I've got a terastation full of Apple Lossless files on my network playable through that, or the Win XP box in my study. Pretty remarkable. I'm waiting on delivery of a couple squeezebox 3s to replace some audiotrons in my house (the SQB3s will do Apple Lossless, the A'trons won't). Convenience/space savings is fantastic. If you want to stay in the Windows family, you can also pick up a super small form factor PC for about $600 that is fanless and use that the same way as a mini.

Mthomas makes a good point about the importance of the software interface. How the music is organized and its accessibility greatly effects your ultimate enjoyment of this storage format.

I have a Squeezbox 2 and just bought a 3. Just add a linear power supply and a good dac.

Sammie there is also another one called Zero One...server plus upsampling for what its worth...personally I think this just the beginning and its better to wait as more mfrs start producing music servers and as result of competition quality and pricing improves