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Article: Music Servers: Canned or Custom (Part III)


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i enjoyed reading your music server articles. Looking forward to take a listen to the new audio research dac later this year. i agree with you on a mac mini as the basis for a audiophile music server. the units are small, quiet, has the superdrive, front row capabilities, and the best operating system around. I would recommend that laptops are not used for music servers because they generate a lot of heat and heat will shorten the life of a laptop. the mac mini is 1/2 to 1/4 the cost of a macbook or macbook pro. if you use leopard on the mini, it comes with time machine which you can turn on to backup your system every hour automatically to an assigned disk drive. with disk prices coming down, it is getting cheaper to purchase a NAS (network attached storage) system that allows you to hook the storage system up on the network instead of the mac mini. Also, whether you purchase a NAS system or just a storage system that you plug into the computer, i would recommend purchasing a unit that has 4 drives in it (minimum) and set it up using RAID-5 technology which expands the capacity of the dsk system while enabling data redundancy. with a raid-5 setup using 4 drives, you have the capacity of the 3 drives added together (if you have 500gb drives: 3 x 500gb = 1.5tb of usable data) while the 4th drive (500gb in this example) is for the parity which is stored with the data so you can lose 1 of these 4 drives and the storage system runs without any hiccups. you just need to replace the failed drive and the storage unit will rebuild the storage system in the background.<br />

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i use this kind of music server in my house currently with excellent results. for my den setup that i listen to 8 hrs a day, i stream the audio from itunes to an airport express device which is hooked up to an audio alchemy DTI device to remove jitter, then goes to an external dac using a coax cable. the dac feeds a dk design integrated amp feeding totem speakers. i also have a dedicated cd/sacd player and a FM tuner and i haven't used them for months. <br />

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for whole house, i use airport express devices wired and wireless hooked up to systems in other areas that i listen to music. i use an ipod touch or a macbook to remotely control the itunes on the mac mini which is in a different part of the house. <br />

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it won't be long that i integrate or replace my cd player in my dedicated audio room with streaming music.

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