Digital Audio Server

I forgot to talk about hardrives. Sorry.

Bigger is better in this case. Music is just under 10 megs a minute in its native format. Just as stated above 600 CDs will require a lot of storage, probably multiple harddrives. I would recommend tried and true IDE ADA/66/100 Harddrives. Ther is no need for cutting edge technology, music data transfer wont require high data transfer rates. The best deals on HDs are in the 60-120 GB size right now. Although, they do make bigger ones, they come at a cost.

I'm running a g5 with iTunes, using the digital optical out via an audioquest OptiLink 1 (12m) to an external cal-audio sigma DAC...

LOVE it... and i've got almost 2000 songs (all AIFF / uncomressed, ripped from my CDs) on a 160gb drive. g5 is AMAZINGLY quiet (don't even know it's on except the little white light) and apple's iTunes works w/ a cheap $25 remote-IR unit (pre-configured and all) so I can control it all from my Rotel (preamp) remote which is nice (aka don't have to touch the computer). To top it off, a sub-$20 adaptor let me run video out of the mac to my TV so i can even scroll thru songs etc - it's like having an AudioRequest at a 10th of the price (for that capacity). Plus, i can easily convert to m4a for my iPod :D

AIFF and WAV are virtually identical. Both are PCM, bit rate encodable, and sampling rate flexible.

Uncompressed each minute of music (AIFF or WAV) takes approximately 10 megs.