Thinking about Which Music Server to Get???

[mattsl3]

Hi,
I am looking to put my entire cd collection (all 325cds) on a Music server. My first priority is the sound quality. Below are the three servers I am thinking about. Does anyone own/heard them play? My alternative is to maybe purchase a laptop and build a server that way. What do you guys think? I need help.

Current system is
Krell with ML SL3 speakers. I only listen to 2-channel.

Thanks,
Matt

Escient MX-111$2000

160GB internal hard drive for storing digital music files
• Built-in CD-RW drive for playing, burning and ripping CDs
• CD Burner – create the perfect mix CD to play in your car, office, or portable
CD player
• Fast CD Ripper – copy a CD to the internal hard drive in MP3 or CD Quality
(FLAC) format in less than 5 minutes
• Multi-Zone Support – Connect one FireBall to another FireBall to share the
music, double the storage capacity, and create a second music zone. Add
FireBall ZP-1 players for music in every room.
• Fully Customizable – create and edit your own Playlists, Genres, and Internet
Radio Stations
• Store, secure, browse and play up to 400 DVDs or CDs stored in a Sony
CD/DVD changer
• Simple and intuitive on-screen user interface for browsing, selecting, and
playing movies, music, Internet radio stations and for all system
configuration and setup functions
• Automatic DVD identification using Escient’s MovieDB™
• Automatic CD identification using Gracenote CDDB™ with cover art
provided by AMG
• PC File Sharing for transferring music files to and from a PC or Mac
(includes support for iPod and other portable players)
• FireBall-PC support for browsing and playing music stored on PC or Mac
• Web interface for remote control and music streaming via any standard web browser
Play any WMA or Shoutcast Internet radio stations
• Create and edit Internet Radio stations
• Record audio to hard drive from external changers or from any legacy
analog or digital audio device (LPs, Cassettes, DAT, MD, etc.)
• Built-in component video matrix switcher for automatic changer selection
and routing to two zones
• User selectable 16x9 or 4:3 on screen TV user interface

Olive Opus No4 $1500
350G Hard Drive
Supports music playback in 24-bit/96khz, 250 times the resolution of CD music!
CD mechanism Panasonic CD-R/RW
·High fidelity CD audio playback.
·Networking Wired Gigabit Ethernet
·Fast bandwidth for seamless multi-room audio streaming
·Wireless 54 Mbit/s (802.11g) Encryption WEP + WPA, 64- and 128-bit
·Audio Outputs Analog 1x RCA
·Wide variety of high-quality audio outputs to connect to your stereo system.
·Digital 1x digital output S/P DIF optical Toslink, 1x digital output S/P DIF coaxial cinch Audio Formats WAV, FLAC, MP3 (128 to 320 bit/s)
·Other Ports 1x USB 1.1/2.0 Backup your music library to an external hard drive.
·Connect and play music from your Apple® iPod™. Access music on your iPod™ anywhere within your home with the MELODY No2 (optionally available).

Yamaha MusicCast MCX 2000
Wireless Capability (Built-in 802.11)
160G Hard Drive

• Built-in 802.11b/g Netwrok Protocol CD Burner (built-in CDRW drive)
• Ripping Speed (CD to HDD) • (20x Normal Speed) Recording Speed (HDD to CD)
• (4x to CD-R/RW Media) HDD Size 160GB HDD (upgradable)
XM Satellite Radio Ready • (100 presets) Built-In FM Tuner • 100 presets) Internet Radio Compatibility
• (40 URL presets) PC Content Playback • Supported Formats Analog Audio, CDs, CD-R /RW, PCM / MP3 Encoding Compression Rates (mp3 rate)
Variable compression rate 160 - 320 Kbps Storage Capacity (Compressed / Uncompressed) 2000 hrs / 200 hrs Number of Clients Controlled Wirelessly
• RS-232C Interface • Ethernet Connection • (Cat 5 link) Analog Audio (Inputs / Outputs) • (1 / 1) Digital Inputs (Inputs / Outputs) • (1 Optical / 1 Optical) Video Output • (1 Composite, 1 S-Video) PS/2 Connection • Headphone jack • Remote • (System remote) Extended IR Input • Extended IR Codes • System Update Via CD-ROM

 

[TomDac]

Slim Devices Transporter?

Have you looked at the Slim Devices Transporter?


http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html

 

[theWB]

Matt,
I have an Escient E2-300 and Love It!
Had it for over 3 years and no problems.

 

[mattsl3]

Matt,
I have an Escient E2-300 and Love It!
Had it for over 3 years and no problems.

How does the Escient sound? I want to get great sound from any server I buy. At what bit rate did you rip your cds. Is there a difference between Flac and PCM in terms of sound quality?

Matt

 

[amey01]

Buy a Squeezebox, rip your music to ALAC or FLAC and run it through any DAC of your choosing.

 

[tonepub]

Seeing you don't have a huge music collection, I'd seriously look at a Squeezebox and the Channel Islands DAC. You can get the pair for under a thousand bucks.

Or for that matter, consider a 160gb iPod. Put your whole collection on it with apple lossless compression, get a Wadia 170i dock and go through the CI DAC.

Then, you can take all of your music with you wherever you go and still have room for about 300 more CD's....

I've been listening to a lot of 1000 dollar and under DAC's and the CI is pretty darn amazing. $600 bucks with wall wart and about $850 with upgraded supply! The Wadia I dock is $379.

 

[amey01]

Seeing you don't have a huge music collection, I'd seriously look at a Squeezebox and the Channel Islands DAC. You can get the pair for under a thousand bucks.

Or for that matter, consider a 160gb iPod. Put your whole collection on it with apple lossless compression, get a Wadia 170i dock and go through the CI DAC.

Then, you can take all of your music with you wherever you go and still have room for about 300 more CD's....

I've been listening to a lot of 1000 dollar and under DAC's and the CI is pretty darn amazing. $600 bucks with wall wart and about $850 with upgraded supply! The Wadia I dock is $379.

I haven't heard the Wadia, but that sounds like a great idea! Or the Squeezebox is my vote.

Then you just have to find a DAC to your budget and liking.

 

[Rich]

When I bought a music server in 2002, it had a 160 GB HD on it. It is now 6 years later and HD technology and size have increased and the price has dropped a great deal. Today, I would not buy a music server that had less than a Terabyte of HD storage onboard, unless it was less total storage but offered a RAID type backup system. I can't believe these companies are charging this kind of dough for a music server and still only including a 160 GB hard drive. That is a ripoff, in my opinion.

You may only have 350 CDs now, but unless you intend to stop buying music you are going to need a lot more storage space than 160 GB. Especially if you want to store everything using lossless compression. Remember, your hard drive will function much more efficiently if it is not filled to the max with data.

As far as which brand to buy . . . ???????? There are so many to choose from and I am not sure any of them are really that great as far as audiophile quality goes. Escient has made a name in the high-end home theater market. I don't think I would trust any component from Yamaha. They tend to make things with cheap components and design, in my opinion. Olive seems decent but has its own issues, I believe.

Keep in mind the purposes of a music server and you will know what to look for. You must get your music on it, so an easy method of transferring your CDs to the HD is important. It must store all of your current music and any future music you want to buy, so a large HD is important. You must be able to easily and quickly access your music in a variety of ways, so the User Interface Software is extremely important. Finally, you want your music to sound good, so audiophile quality parts and design is important. Of course, like anything else in this hobby, when you add all this up you end up with a $5,000 or higher product. So you will have to decide where you are willing to cut corners to fit it into your price range.

 

[sleepysurf]

If you buy an "all-in-one" box, you're more or less stuck with that technology and level of performance for the lifetime of the product. Something like a Squeezebox (or Sonos System) just acts as a conduit to get your music from the storage device of your choosing, to your audio setup. As previously mentioned, you can later "upgrade" the sound by adding an outboard DAC, or ugrade to a larger capacity storage (computer, external hard drive, or NAS). A big advantage of the Squeezebox approach (vs. the three products you listed) is that you can simultaneously access your music library from anywhere in your house. All you need is another (relatively inexpensive) Squeezebox connected to your secondary stereo (or even just powered speakers). From my centralized Linkstation NAS, I stream music to my primary listening room, home office, game room, master bedroom, and outdoor pool area. For the highest fidelity, I use a Benchmark DAC in my main setup, but for the rest, the internal Squeezebox DAC is more than adequate. If you want to "try" the Squeezebox, go to www.slimdevices.com and d/l the latest SqueezeCenter software. It includes a free Java based Squeezebox emulator which you can play with. In fact, I use the Java app in my office to listen through my laptop speakers.

 

[rhom]

Or for that matter, consider a 160gb iPod. Put your whole collection on it with apple lossless compression, get a Wadia 170i dock and go through the CI DAC.

Then, you can take all of your music with you wherever you go and still have room for about 300 more CD's....

I've been listening to a lot of 1000 dollar and under DAC's and the CI is pretty darn amazing. $600 bucks with wall wart and about $850 with upgraded supply! The Wadia I dock is $379.

After reading Jeff's article in Tone Issue #15, I purchased and just received my Wadia 170i last week. Paired it up with a used McCormack DAC-1 that I purchased via Audiogon. Sounds terrific! Even 160-320 bit rate MP3s sound a whole lot better than just running an iPod through with its internal DAC.

Jeff's giving us a great steer for the money!

 

[amey01]

Keep in mind the purposes of a music server and you will know what to look for. You must get your music on it, so an easy method of transferring your CDs to the HD is important. It must store all of your current music and any future music you want to buy, so a large HD is important. You must be able to easily and quickly access your music in a variety of ways, so the User Interface Software is extremely important. Finally, you want your music to sound good, so audiophile quality parts and design is important. Of course, like anything else in this hobby, when you add all this up you end up with a $5,000 or higher product. So you will have to decide where you are willing to cut corners to fit it into your price range.

This is all true, and why I would say the Squeezebox (or Sonos) is the best approach.

1: DISK: The hard disk will be as large as you want to throw at it - use a cheap USB disk from a computer shop, or a NAS.
2: USER INTERFACE: What I particularly like about the Squeezebox is that it can be controlled without any montior/TV - that is hugely important to me, and something a lot of media servers forget. The last thing I want in a serious listening session is a flickering glowing screen! Add to that a myriad of other control options and you're way ahead.
3: SOUND QUALITY: As Sleepysurf said, it's just a digital conduit, so sound quality can be as good as the DAC you want to throw at it.

One other serious issue that seems to have been forgotten - you will need to back all this stuff up! What happens if the HD in a music server fails? (or you simply want to upgrade or change). You've lost all your ripping work. No way. When the music is on a computer you have a myriad of backup options available. I use a shell UNIX shell script to keep two USB disks in sync, but there are applications available to do this, or use RAID, or others. I also periodically take my USB disk to work and run a backup of it off to LTO tape. As they say - "one backup is no backup".

 

[timm]

Take a look at the latest edition of The Absolute Sound.... They have several options - and they go into some nice detail on all of them. The Squeezebox was included in those options... but, if I were you - I would get that edition since it deals with many of the options etc... that you might find handy....

 

[STDCMR19]

I have used the Cambridge Audio 640H for about a year. Sound quality was great compared to the Escient. The interface is not the prettiest, but very easy to use. At 1399.99, it's a steal.