Music Server

larry, I recently put together a system based on Michael Lavorgnas reviews that has worked wonderfully. My cds only number a couple of hundred. Since I did not have a NAS I started out with the QNAP TVS471. Roon core is on the NAS on a 120gb SSD, my ripped cds are on one of two 4tb drives in raid1 array with a third 4tb drive as back up. this feeds a microRendu and on to an Auralic Vega usb dac. I use an iPad mini as remote. Being my first go at computer audio I am extremely impressed and love the Roon/Tidal integration. So far it is fast, clear and no drop outs or issues. I also added a section of fiber optic cable for isolation. You can read more on this on Audiostream. Good luck.  

The original post was about the $7500 Antipodes server, which is nothing more than the Fedora 20 version of Linux with it’s own music management software. My little $250 Ubuntu Linux server does all the things you want from a music server and does it just fine.

But rbstehno writes:

" Unless you know how to read a muc file and build a gui front end, then you got nothing."

Banshee *does* have a GUI front end and reads all of the music formats. Furthermore Ubuntu Linux has any number of free applications for manipulating sound files. The ffmpeg utility converts media files from almost any format to any other format for free. wav to flac to ogg to mp3, for whatever your requirement is. Banshee is also available, FREE, for Windows and Mac, as well as Linux.

And as I mentioned before JRiver runs on Linux as well. Costs you all of $50. It’s probably the most widely used music manager I’ve seen outside of iTunes or Windows Media Center.

The one thing my little $250 machine doesn’t do is iTunes and so your little rant about iTunes and its poor performance is just another example that rbstehno doesn’t know much of what he’s talking about. Not that it will stop him.

I chose to put everything on a single disk drive. My own music collection is about 600 GB of flac files in size. Ubuntu itself takes up almost no room. So there’s no need for a separate file server, etc. All the data is right there. I have an Ubuntu desktop for my primary machine and nightly everything gets rsync copied off to a backup drive I have there. I have a 3rd small machine on my network with a 3 TB drive on it that everything from my desktop gets rsync copied to, so in my house, I have three full copies of my music library. I also subscribe to an off-site backup service called CrashPlan, so that’s copy #4 of my music library.

Of course there are other choices. Choices are a Good Thing, but ultimately all you’re doing is transferring digital data from one place to another, and that’s something most all computers do equally well. Yes there’s loss of information when you convert from the original raw format to some others like mp3 or such, but there is no loss at all from full rez formats like wav and flac. ANY software app which can work with them will copy them from one device to another equally well.

Clearly where the real differences happen are the place where digital data is converted to analog. That’s why there’s so much weight given in audio circles to the quality of DAC devices. There’s a recent review in Stereophile of a digitally powered loudspeaker from Dynaudio that takes a digital feed directly from your music server, thus eliminating the need for a DAC or preamp. You’re digital right to the very end of the chain, though somehow even here, the reviewer has not reached Audio Nirvana.

My cheesy old laptop, running Ubuntu Linux, delivers the exact same full rez digital data to a DAC that your higher priced boutique servers do.  As for your Toyota vs. Porche comparison, the Porche may well perform better, but it doesn't do any better job of taking you to/from the grocery store, and all these things do is gather and present digital data.  Not much different.

And it’s not that you have to be a Linux guru to do something like this. JRiver on a Windows PC gives you much of the same capabilities. Personally I hate anything from Apple, so you get to keep your iTunes rant to yourself.

Kudos @parabolic You've got the best low cost solution going. The Raspberry PI, HiFiBerry using Moode or Volumio is amazing at what it can do for under $100. The Pi is non-profit project originally developed for the education market (Cool to read about unrelated to audio). 

Kudos @65voodoo I bet your solution outperforms many of the higher priced recommendations mentioned in this thread from posters who haven't made enough listening comparisons to rightfully make recommendations. 

If any of you recommending Mac or Windows solutions can tell us about your LISTENING EXPERIENCES & COMPARISONS vs. single purpose Linux based appliances with NAS storage solutions or even single box single purpose Linux boxes like @russbutton describes, then please do tell. Because I am sick of reading recommendations of what somebody bought when they haven't compared it to alternatives. 
IMHE, this thread is full of both terrific and terrible advice; more than most. Sorry, too much coffee ;-) Cheers,
Spencer

Agree with everything @russbutton has said.  However, the one point missing here, is the fact that a vast majority of the population is either not able to, or has zero interest in setting up and maintaining their own music server. 

The reason people pay $7k for something which can be thrown together for considerably less, is because they are paying for that expertise. You and I, and many others have the know-how. But we're not the majority. Others without the expertise, or the time, or the inclination prefer a simple, reliable, supported, and working solution. And they are willing to pay.

So yes @russbutton ... you may well be in the wrong business! :)

Last comment.  Though I'm a total Linux-head, if you're willing to live with a Windows machine, both JRiver ($50) and Banshee (free) run on that platform as well.  And truth be told, Windows Media Player isn't bad either.  If you know enough of how to use a web browser, read this forum and post here, you should be competent enough to set up a laptop with any of these applications.  

Just sayin'...