Media Monkey would sometimes freeze when I was importing discs. I suspect it is a conflict with my CD-rom drivers but the problem was intermittent so I can't be sure. Considering I loaded about 3000+ discs it wasn't that bad. On playback the program has been rock solid. It does a quick fade out when you change tracks and is very, very smooth in handling songs.
There is no compression if you rip your CD's as .wav files. With storage so cheap there is no reason to degrade the audio by using any kind of compression scheme.
The issue of backing up the music is important however hard drive failures are something that I have seldom experienced.
I do heavy duty uncompressed video editing on FCP that stresses the drives exponentially compared to using them as a music server. Glyph, Caldigit or G-Ray drives are not in the same league as your big box cheapo hard drives just as audiophile gear is not the same as mass market electronics.
Eventually ALL hard drives will fail. It is just a matter of time. I recommend that you put a date on the drive when it is put into service and that after three years you take it out of service. I have backed up my almost 2 TB's of music on another drive and I certainly don't recommend running a server without a backup but the issue of hard drive failures is in my opinion sometimes made out to be a bigger issue than it is. Don't buy cheap drives and don't expect them to run forever and you will be fine.
I listen to a lot of popular music that wasn't recorded very well to begin with. The vinyl version will sound marginal as will the CD but it's all about the music for me. However I was shocked at how good an album like "Jungle Love" by Dr. Lonnie Smith sounded from the "server". It was recorded digitally using recent technology and the Benchmark/computer seemed to wring lots of music out of it. At this point I just can't see investing any serious money into a single disc CD player.
There is no compression if you rip your CD's as .wav files. With storage so cheap there is no reason to degrade the audio by using any kind of compression scheme.
The issue of backing up the music is important however hard drive failures are something that I have seldom experienced.
I do heavy duty uncompressed video editing on FCP that stresses the drives exponentially compared to using them as a music server. Glyph, Caldigit or G-Ray drives are not in the same league as your big box cheapo hard drives just as audiophile gear is not the same as mass market electronics.
Eventually ALL hard drives will fail. It is just a matter of time. I recommend that you put a date on the drive when it is put into service and that after three years you take it out of service. I have backed up my almost 2 TB's of music on another drive and I certainly don't recommend running a server without a backup but the issue of hard drive failures is in my opinion sometimes made out to be a bigger issue than it is. Don't buy cheap drives and don't expect them to run forever and you will be fine.
I listen to a lot of popular music that wasn't recorded very well to begin with. The vinyl version will sound marginal as will the CD but it's all about the music for me. However I was shocked at how good an album like "Jungle Love" by Dr. Lonnie Smith sounded from the "server". It was recorded digitally using recent technology and the Benchmark/computer seemed to wring lots of music out of it. At this point I just can't see investing any serious money into a single disc CD player.
