High quality music server on the cheap...sort of


I bought a cheapo HP computer with Vista Basic. Ripped all my music with Media Monkey as .wav files. I've got 40,000+ tracks that take up about 1.5 TB on a Glyph professional 2 TB drive. I have dedicated power lines running to my gear so the computer and the hard drive are on their own circuit.

itunes is not up to the task of handling a large library of .wav files and will not let you add album artwork to .wav files. Media monkey is very smooth in handling music but will only work on a PC.

Output of the HP is via USB into a Benchmark DAC then into my ARC Ref 1. I have an old NEC 17" LCD computer monitor sitting on the floor that displays the album art full screen and changes with each song. I use the new apple bluetooth keyboard as my "remote" for the system. It works nicely with my PC.

I am a vinyl guy with a VPI TNT setup and have never found a CD player that I've liked but I can't stop listening to my little "server" setup. On well recorded/mastered CD's there is real music coming out of my computer! The Benchmark has gotten great reviews and it certainly is delivering in my system. I am going to get their ADC to convert some LP's.

So for around 3k you can listen to your entire CD library (I have about 3000+ CD's) as .wav files along with a nice visual display. I did have some issues ripping in MM but managed to get all my music onto the Glyph after a month of heavy lifting.

I also have a Sonos system but prefer the "hardwired" approach in my listening room.
ntscdan
The bluetooth keyboard from Apple will work just fine except of course some of the keys won't function. ie. the volume control. You really don't want to use it anyway since the volume control on MM should be set at maximum. BTW microsoft has solved the nasty K-mixer problem in Vista. It is no longer an issue as it lets the bits pass through without truncating them.
"At this point I just can't see investing any serious money into a single disc CD player. "

Smart move going to the server with Benchmark DAC. I would expect the Benchmark synergizes well with the ARC Ref 1 to produce a musical and nicely detailed sound, no?.

HAven't had time to investigate software for managing music on a server. Will need to check out Media Monkey.
tunes is not up to the task of handling a large library of .wav files and will not let you add album artwork to .wav files.
In what way is it not up to the task?

Regarding uncompressed formats and album artwork, you could go with AIFF.
itunes running on windows constantly crashed and stalled once the library got large. I also don't like their convoluted file system and heaven help you if you have to move your library.
AIFF only works on macs and I don't think you can "tag" the artwork to AIFF files either. Because Apple is in business with the record companies there are many aspects of itunes that are designed to placate them. itunes is a great program for a modest, compressed music collection but it just doesn't hold up when you have tens of thousands of files and hundreds of gigabytes of data.