What do I need to set up digital music server?

For your budget I would recommend the following:

1) Oct 2009 Mac Mini with Snow Leopard disk, keyboard and mouse - upgrade with SSD and increase DRAM to 8gigs - total outlay $600 - buy it on ebay for details see:

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/recommended-systems

2) Amarra, Pure Music or Audirvana software - ~$74-300

3) upgrade power supply for the Mini from paulhynesdesign.com or equivalent - $800-900

4) good USB cable to go to a USB DAC or USB converter - $450

You do not rip CD's with your CD player. You rip them using XLD on the Mac Mini. IT has a slot drive. XLD is freeware.

This will beat 99% of servers out there, including Linn and Naim. You would have to spend at least $5K on a all-in-one server to beat this.

You never said whether you need digital source or analog source. If you are currently using your CD player left and right analog outs, then you will need a DAC. If you are using your CD as a digital transport, then you will need a USB to Coax digital converter. (USB converter) Big difference in cost.

The thing to understand is that the digital master clock is the most important thing in any digital system. This clock currently resides in your CD player, but must be located elsewhere for a computer audio system. The best place to locate it is in a USB converter, where you can have independent high-quality power supply. The USB converter can drive digital to your DAC, SS processor or Home theater receiver.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

What DAC are you planning to use?

My preference would be to just get a CAPS 3.0 build, and run JRiver and Jremote on iDevice for remote control. (Discaimer: I hate Mac)

You can buy them prebuild at smallgreencomputer, for around $1200.

If you want to spend more down the line you can run Dirac Live on the CAPS, and you can get external battery power.

i recommend
#1 a Dac , (I bought a Musical Fidelity M1 clic) on sale $499
#2 A usb to Spdif ConVerter (I purcahsed a Musical Fidelity V-Link2 ) open box for $79.00). Output to pre-amp or Ht receiver
#3 a pc with 500 gig to 2 Terabytes (you can get used or Refurbished for 100-500 depending on the parameters
#4 software such as Jrivermedia $49.00 to rip and play music. you can buy the jriver remote.
you can use Windows media player and buy a remote for it
-you can output video to your tv if it accepts pc input.
you can get good dacs for 200-5000
Pc for 100 and up
usb "a" to "b" cable and an optical or digital cable and you are set .
you can get all of this for less than $500 if you want ... just to start

DAC =$200
Usb to Spdif converter= $50+
PC =+100+
Window media Player =free
Cables $25+

"4) good USB cable to go to a USB DAC or USB converter - $450"

Steve,

Why so much for the USB cable? You don't have to sell me on the benefits of using good cables, but $450 seems a bit high when looking at the cost of the other components you recommend.

Winggo, yes you are getting closer! Be advised though that you should not have all your digital audio files in only one place. Keeping two copies in two different places is highly recommended by everyone. When I use my laptop's internal CD drive to rip a CD using dBpoweramp, I rip a FLAC copy to my laptop's harddrive as well as a WAV copy to an external USB drive. This gives me a backup of everything if one or the other of these drives should fail.

As for the DAC, you don't want to rely on the DAC built into your laptop's soundcard (quality just not good enough) so you are correct to be thinking in terms of needing some other DAC as part of your solution.

As for the "digital music player" you just need to be sure that you have a workable way (be it USB cable, Ethernet cable, or WiFi) for the device that performs the playback function to access your audio files from wherever you've stored those files. And as you've already gleaned your solution also needs some kind of visual interface (often an iPad) that allows you to browse your audio files wherever you've stored them and select the ones that you want the "digital music player" component to play.