i2k

I found a tutorial on how to make mpd display album cover : [Tuto] Installer MPD sur Raspberry Pi (distrib Raspbian) : Musique dématérialisée (in french). Without this, the remote (at least MPdroid) will fetch covers from internet.

Thanks a lot for the comprehensive tutorial. I'm on the same route but I'll use Cubieboard since Beagle is not available in my country and Cubie has a SATA port which is a big plus for me (too lazy to setup a NAS box). Currently collecting references all over the web while waiting my board delivery. With Mopidy + Rygel, a Linux box can serve as a complete UPNP box for music . They add another layer on top of MPD as UPNP front end (Mopidy as server, Rygel as renderer). Controlled via Android Bubble UPNP, that will be a match made in heaven.

Don't waste your money, does the same thing & lot cheaper : Alimentation linaires - Audiophonics KIT Isolateur USB + Alimentation

About 25 seconds from cold boot. intel dn2800mt + kingston SSD 64GB + win 7 64 bit. keys to fast boot : disable as many services as you can and disable unnecessary devices & features from the BIOS. There are many tweaks to optimize Windows boot sequence. For some reason I dont know, sometime I cannot shutdown from the power button, luckily my Android remote (foobarcon) has shutdown feature which 100% works. never bother to measure the shutdown time. I used mpdpup before. It was faster, depends on the usb key used as boot device.

I build almost similar machine to the OP, except that I build it several months before CAPS v3 is released. I have similar opinion that dedicated USB3 card can bring noticeable improvement. Although I'm not sure that powering the USB card with dedicated supply will have any impact on SQ as normally the external power is used to provide more juice to power hungry USB peripherals connected to the USB ports. It is not meant to completely remove the power coming from PCI-e bus. I also found that using USB-3 cable (with adapter to my USB 2 DAC) will improve the SQ further. It's not SOTM, but this package is good enough for poor guy like me :-)

Hi, After being a lurker for some time, this is my first post. I've build a server based on Intel DN2800MT about 3 months ago, it surprises me that the board is now the official CAPS V3 board. I will not exactly follow CAPS specs, as for economical & practical reason I uses components I have at hand and/or I can get locally. Intrigued by the recommendations to use RWA Black Lightning (and I'm a firm believer of power supply's significant impacts on SQ), I started to investigate other battery power alternatives (RWA is expensive for me & nearly impossible to get in my country). While on a business trip, I found this on a gadget store on an airport: Mili Power King (lithium based, 18000 mAH). It costs about 120$ here, it can possibly turn my board into a battery powered machine. According to xbitlabs, a 2800MT machine takes only about 14 watt at 100% load, so 18000 mAH is enough for several hours of playback. Other alternative is Energizer product, but it is about 30$ pricier and lacks any batt capacity status display. Next improvement I can think of is building a USB controlled relay switch to automatically cut off grid power when the server starts and put it back on grid when the server shutdowns. So it will be connected to the grid only when the server is not in use. Have any of you use this kind of product and do you guys think it will bring improvement ? PS: I will buy it anyway, even if it does nothing to my music, I can use it for many other useful things. thanks in advance & greeting from Indonesia.