hdcase

Slightly off topic, but I have to ask. Which do you think would sound better, a NUC or a $300 Desktop from Dell? I'm guessing the NUC would because of the outboard power supply but the $300 Desktops from Dell are very tempting.

"No Other" by Gene Clark. Probably the most interesting thing about this album is that it helps to isolate Gene Clark's (often unappreciated) contribution to the Byrds. There are a couple of real gems here.

I haven't got "the answer" but I'm putting together a two speaker system and I've been mulling over what to do for a digital source and I thought I would throw in my two cents. BTW, I've got an Oppo 93 hooked up to my home theater and I hung an old USB disk drive off the Oppo and listen to that sometimes. The FLAC files I created myself from vinyl sound pretty decent. The Oppo 93 UI is pretty crude but it works. Anyway, right now, I'm leaning towards buying an NAD 50 and hanging a USB drive off that. I'd load the drive from my desktop and use the sneaker net to move the drive to the NAD 50. The main reason I'm leaning towards the NAD 50 is that the UI would be so slick. I've already got a Bluetooth adapter hooked up to my two channel system and the sound isn't great but being able to play playlists off my phone is really nice.

Thank you so much for that write up. I'm thinking about building a nice music server but right now I'm leaning towards buying the M50 instead. The tipping point for me may be the control software. Right now, I've got a Bluetooth adapter hooked up to my amp and I listen to my playlists and albums that I have on my iPhone. I've actually been surprised how good an iPhone sounds over Bluetooth but I still want to go HiFi with some sort of digital music server. The problem for me is the remote control software. I want the sort of control I get with my iPhone over a (probably) Windows 7 box but I haven't been able to find anything. I would be willing to give up having playlists too. Any suggestions for remote controlling a pc based music servers, anyone? Also, there's the whole issue of keeping any sort of computer up to date. I already have a big desktop that I use for video and photo editing and a laptop I use for travel, they're both Windows 7 machines but I also run Linux VMs on them. The desktop isn't so bad but because the laptop isn't used for days at a time so every time I power it on, I spend way too much time updating the anti-virus software, Firefox, etc. I really don't want another machine in my life I have to update constantly.

I listen to flac files I've ripped on an old Oppo BDP-93. The user interface for selecting songs is mildly crude but the sound quality is excellent.