Your Computer Based Transport Setup

Think you'll likely find nearly as many opinions out there as there are options. Expect that the bottom line is that you'll be able to make whatever you choose work for you.

Personally, I went the Mac Mini route. I like it and it works for me -- but it is by no means the final word or only option. Running Snow Leopard on a 2009-era Mini, iTunes for archiving, Bit Perfect for playback, out USB 2.0 to an Ayre QB-9. I have been toying with getting a new Mini, maybe even with a power upgrade from the likes of Mojo Audio (which you can find here or on the web). A newer Mini (with Mountain Lion, faster processors, and 16GB of RAM) would likely be an upgrade. But I haven’t bothered, and am in no rush.

If you’re looking for a total glut of info, check out the “Music Server” forum over at Computer Audiophile. Probably more than any one person could want or need in terms of information. The first variable you may want to address is which ecosystem/OS do you want to play in – ie., Apple, which is swell, but can limiting and controlling, or non-Apple, which may be less plug-and-play but probably more flexible in the long run. What seems to be the main non-Apple option that has been picking up steam, and about which you’ll find a lot over at Computer Audiophile, are the various iterations of the Computer Audiophile Pocket Server (“CAPS”). They look real interesting, but I know next to nothing about them.

From there, the decisions tend to become more obvious, once pick the ecosystem. You probably don’t need a whole lot of grunt (RAM/processing power) to make even high-def files run fine, but more is certainly better – particularly if you’re going to end up with a software front end that buffers into RAM for playback, which many do these days. In order to run above 24/96 files, if you’re outputting via USB, you’ll need at least USB 2.0. On any new-ish computer, this will be a non-issue. But on mine, for example, you need some more aggressive configuring to ensure you’re using the high speed v. the lower speed USB output, as the OS has both and assigns randomly.

Finally, think the only hard and fast rule is back things up. The only certainty in computer anything (which certainly includes audio) is that your drive will fail. Don’t let that be your only copy. Enjoy.

I have almost 3TB of digital files housed on a Seagate 3TB USB drive, cost was about $120. I religiously back those up to 2 Seagate 1.5 TB drives. Cost on those was about $65 each.

For backups, I'm using a very nice free program I found on SourceForge, it's called Create Synchronicity. You can schedule the backups to occur unattended any time you like. The interface is dead-nuts simple to use and it works perfectly.

I play the files back using my Oppo BDP-93. This is hard-wired to my router using an Ethernet cable. I can play them back using the Oppo's interface (a little bit clunky, but serviceable) or any DLNA capable software like Foobar 2000 - also a free program.

Including the cost of the Oppo, I have about $750 invested. It sounds terrific and is very easy to use. And one of the nice things about the Oppo is that I can playback movies (NTSC and PAL) in hi-definition (1080P or 720P) as well as music files (multi-channel, up to 24 bit, 192 kHz) , giving me a total home theater solution for a very easy to swallow price...

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One thing I forgot to mention is that I am using a 4 year old Toshiba laptop (Satellite, A505-6980) which has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.2 gHz. I am running Windows 7, the latest version.

It has 8GB of RAM and a 500 GB drive built in. The cost on that was about $700 when I bought it. Newer models from Toshiba are blazingly fast and cost about the same.

Setting up a PC-based playback system is really quite easy to do and the cost for the performance you get is really quite low. If you have not looked into PC-based playback, perhaps you owe it to yourself to look into it. I think you will be quite pleasantly surprised...

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