Interaction with music server while listening?

Hi Ral,

I am copying my answer here that I put in the Computer Audio forum, now that I see this is where the discussion is taking place.

I think the first question to ask is how much computer experience you have. Are you comfortable installing PC hardware and configuring software? The Music Vault Diamond looks interesting but it also looks like you could save a couple of thousand dollars by building your own server. It looks like the Music Vault Diamond is a quiet PC with a Lynx Studio sound card (I've built one of these myself, but no longer use it as a music server).

The next question is what do want to control with the remote control? If it is only volume, and choosing next and previous songs then you can do that with something as simple as the iMon remote control packages.

If you want a remote with a screen to pick out music and build play lists without having to look at the computer monitor, then you should decide which software package you will use as a media server then see what remotes they support. Some media servers have iPod Touch and iPhone applications that are useful for such. The netbook laptop solution that Music Vault is using is applicable to any solution as long as you have a wireless network set up in your home. You can install Free VNC Server on the music server and use the netbook to remotely control the server via Free VNC viewer.

You can also rig up a computer to be controlled by the Squeezebox Duet remote controller, but this solution does not allow high resolution playback. I am running something called Music Player Daemon as a music server, which does allow high resolution playback, and I use an iPod touch to choose music and control playback. However, MPD runs under Linux and requires a fair amount of Linux experience to configure properly.

An excellent all-in-one Windows software package that allows secure ripping, a good user interface, and high resolution playback is J River Media Center.

Alan

Good morning Alan

Thanks for your detailed post. I'm wondering if you could point me in the right direction to the Free VNC Server software. Just did a google search but none of the results were called Free VNC Server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi Eddie,

You can get free vnc server at
http://www.realvnc.com/products/free/4.1/winvnc.html
and free vnc viewer at
http://www.realvnc.com/products/free/4.1/winvncviewer.html

Alan

Thanks Alan! Gonna give it a shot....

Ral, you have many choices, and as someone noted, you need to take into account your computer hardware and software literacy in deciding which path to take.

After alot of research and experimentation, I built my own silent PC music server using the fanless Zalman TNN-300 chassis with solid state drives and a Lynx AES16 PCI card running Windows 7 64 bit. I use the XXHE player software and the Berkeley Alpha DAC. I am pretty PC and MAC literate so building my own PC was no big deal. I use a netbook running Remote Desktop Connection to talk to my music server. It works great and you have total control over the machine.

I was after the best possible sound quality. While I use and prefer Apple Mac products, to my ears the fanless PC running Win7 64 and using WASAPI to talk to the Lynx card gives better SQ than the Mac. That being said, I do think that a Linux music server has the potential for even better SQ, but then you really need to have Linux specific computer skills.