HY Wong

I bought a 12V 7.2ah Sonnenschein deep cycle battery probably similar to the A123 lead acid battery. Just received it but yet to try it out.

Thanks for your advice Audio Elf. I'll consider the Sotm card if there is enough headroom only casing and I can find a suitable power supply. To be honest, I'm not good at hearing subtle improvements to sound. There are so many views out there on better sound from different computer parts ranging from types, brands, speed of hard discs, CAT cables, USB cables etc. that make computer audio so intimidating. With computer audio a huge gold mine awaits the hifi industry to exploit and they already have.

Yes the Atom board can accommodate the Sotm card. How do I power it and why does a separate power supply improve the sound? On the Firewire, if it is to improve data transfer speed, then that's not necessary because the J River is configured to play from memory. I have observed that the next music track is transferred from the HD between 10-15 secs before the existing track ends. In conceiving the DIY music server, I just apply whatever common principles I know which are used by hifi manufacturers such as reducing resonance.I know of someone who insists that there is an improvement in the sound when the SSD's (for music storage) casing is removed! I'm currently powering the Atom with a switching power supply as recommended by Intel. But it'll be replaced soon with a battery and hence provide cleaner power. Is that what you mean by improving the power supply?

Its 8mm and cut to order by the shop

It's easy to monitor the dust with the open acrylic casing. When needed I'll blow it away with compressed air. Yes the HiFace and external HD are both connected via USB to the Atom board. Suggestions welcomed.

I've built a music server with no moving parts (almost) to minimize microphonics. It is used solely for listening to lossless music files. Based on the Intel Atom DN2800MT, it is powered with a switching psu (to be replaced with a battery soon) and has a mSata SSD in a mini PCIe slot for the OS (Windows 7 32 bit), J River and other software. Flac files are stored separately in an external HD (RAID 1 configuration). To facilitate cooling, the Atom board is housed in a DIY open acrylic casing with stainless steel spikes for isolation. Besides, the open "sandwich" housing for the Atom board minimizes or possibly eliminates resonance induced microphonics which are likely to be experienced with the standard computer casings. Completing the systm, a Dell 23" touch screen monitor is used to control J River. I am considering the addition of a half mini PCIe wireless card and using an Android tablet as the remote control.