Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Music servers

Having seen the thread about squeezeboxes I have been thinking about getting into this (due to trying to squeeze a large disc collection into a small space.
Would any of the esteemed membership care to let me know what hardware, software ,rippers, file formats they use.

Regards
Peter

I'm interested in this too! My new room...if it ever gets finished...will have a PC attached so this might be something to think about.

Although I have rippers but still want to get a feel for what other programs are out there.

Cheers,

Ron

I built a PC that I use as sound server, video server, web browser and Photoshop machine. This is my second or third go at it. What I have learned is that building a PC that can do everything is a little bit of a challenge.

My current PC has raided 2 x 400GB drives, 2 x AMD 250`s, NVidia Quadro FX 4000 video card and M-Audio audio card.

The first problem to deal with is fan/disk noise. Unless you plan accordingly you will probably end up with a PC that sounds like a small air conditioner in your room.

I put the hard drives in Copper drive enclosures to reduce the drive noise and still keep them cool. You can go through numerous fans and add resisters to your fans or you can buy a quiet water cooling system like the Koolance exos. I have done both, I find that the water cooler is more of a sure thing. Remember that your will need to deal with the fans on your video card one way or another.

I went with the Quadro FX because I have a Sony 70” on one DVI and an Apple 30” 2560x1600 on the other DVI. I run the Sony at 720p.

I have owned a number of audio cards, $600 RME, SoundBlaster, M-Audio, on the motherboard, ect…

I only use the digital coax so I am not concerned about the D-A converters on the card. The M-Audio revolution does the job, don`t get hung up on the idea that it costs less than $100. The big problem is audio drivers, more on that later.

I run my PC into my G68 then into 5500 center, 8000`s front, and 7000`s rear.

I rip all of my CD`s with Windows Media Player. It`s free so you might be inclined to pay more thinking you`ll get better software. I rip the disk into lossless WMA files. You can get the extra media pack and convert them into other formats including back to .WAV. I like the media tagging, just about every disk is found and the tracks correctly tagged with the correct track name. I have about 8000 tracks, probably 450 CD`s, the performance is fine on this machine.

I use the NVIDIA DVD decoder and watch my DVD`s through the computer. The PC scales the DVD picture to 720p. I get a better picture than my 598DP so I sold the 598DP.

The challenge that most PC users have is getting the same bits to the G68 as a more conventional CD/DVD player. This is where the Audio driver issue comes into play. When you play a CD track, we will not settle for anything less than the same bits that came off the CD at the same 44.1k. When you watch a DVD you want the G68 to see the same Dolby stream that is on the disk and get it at 48k. If your DVD has DTS you want the DTS stream bit for bit at 48k so that the G68 can decode it.

Find a card that can do the basics perfectly, you do not need fifty other features like fancy mixing/blending/DSP modes, you will never use them. Leave that for your G68.

My setup may seem simple. It is simple because I have spent long hours trying to get a $600 professional audio card to what a simple audio card can do and failed. I have spent money and way too much time on other Media Players only to give up and stay with the basics. That said, many people would enjoy the challenge and more power to them.

As a side note, ripping CD`s and storing them as lossless is straight forward. I use Windows Media Player, others use after market Media players with great success. Video can be easily ripped with DVD Shrink or a number of other methods. I find that music video`s are convenient to rip and are nice to have available with a mouse click. I have not found a consistent method of compressing DVD`s that is lossless. Nero can convert them to .mp4, but the process is not lossless. If you extract the data with a number of different tools you can feed them into Windows Media Encoder and get lossless. But you have to use a different tool and sometimes a different version based on LPCM, Dolby or DTS.

You mentioned that you also use this server for video & image storage. How much space do you estimate the 450 CD's consume?

I too am considering some type of networked device and digitally storing my CDs (about 350-400) and need an idea of how much space they'll require as lossless files or FLAC.

...gregg

You can do more for less. Windows Media Player will not get all of the correct samples off the disc 100% of the time. No 1x ripper will.

A lot a people, myself included, use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) which is free and will do about as good a job as is possible and rip to uncompressed WAV. You can do further format conversion from there if you wish.

EAC performs multiple re-reads of the disc, much like Meridian's DVD-ROM-based players, to ensure it gets every sample correctly off the disc. And if it doesn't, it has proper error correction algorithms.

You can run the slimserver software for the squeezbox on very minimal hardware.
I have it installed on the file server for my home-LAN. This is a 6-year old box with a PentiumPro 200MHz processor and 128Mb memory running Mandrake Linux. The only time the processor is utilized over 5% is when I rebuild the music database.
So if you need a music server and can run it on Linux almost any old pc will do.

My CDs are ripped to .WAV format with "Audiograbber" which is similar to EAC.
For a bit over 450 CDs this comes to about 280 Gb disk space in my case.

If you want to be safe I would suggest setting your disks up in a mirror pair or in a raid-5 array. This will be more expensive to do but will save you a lot of time in case one of the disks fails...

An alternative may be to run slimserver directly on a NAS box. This is basically a hard-disk-box that plugs into your home network as an instant fileserver.
Some of them have the ability to run (for instance) slimserver.
For more information see:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=14976
or
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=16891

Regards,
Mark

Hi all,

I am considering the same question too, but I have moved from PC over to the dark side (MAC) and hesitant to move back. It is annoying there are no easily found alternatives to Media Centre for MAC.

I am currently considering an Escient audio server/DVD interface to DVD changer and Internet radio - DVDM-300. This uses professional audio connectors and no fan noise. I love the interface and I don't care about an option for photos. I just wish they would provide the interface and let you use a networked MAC (or PC) as the HD, allowing you to increase your HD as required. Maybe in the next round of releases.

And before anyone mentions Front Row for MAC, don't bother. What a half assed attempt at Media Centre (the only reason I would consider a PC).

Any other Meridian fans using Esceint? I would welcome your view of the hardware and interface. I am also considering just the audio server - E2-200. I will be using the system with a small Xantech touch screen (also controlling the HT). I would also be interested to hear if anyone else has used Xantech touch screens with Meridian before?

Cheers,

Chris

I typical CD has 600MB - 700MB of music on it. Some only have 400MB-500MB but I would take a guess that they might average to 600MB. It will take 600MB times the number of disks if you store them as .WAV files. The .WAV files have no compression. If you store them as WMA lossless they take up about half the space on disk. From what I have read, most of the other lossless formats average out to about half as well.

I have 2 x 400GB external USB drives for back up. This way if one of my drives fail I do not have to rip hundreds of disks again.

I think that the Escient servers are a nice product for some people. I think they fit the bill for a new custom installed home theater/media room system. One where the installer will install it once and the home owner will never know the details and occasionally listen to music in the home. The interface is simple but with very little flexibility. Perfect for the suburban housewife.

I know that for the longest time you could only store the music tracks as MP3 with Escient systems, I think the newest models have an option to now store as .WAV files. I had a couple of IMerge sound servers; they cost more than $2,000 and worked much the same way. They are making improvements, some issues may be better now, but backing up your machine was difficult if not impossible without getting the machine to your dealer. If you want more drive space you better have lots of cash. You could not take tracks and burn a disk for your car/boat, there newest version may allow this. You could not create .MP3 for your portable music player. I like to have my music available to me so that I can do what I want with it. If you want to have your music on your portable player you will need to rip it on your computer and move it over to you player and them your server.

The problem for them is they were very simple to use but not very flexible, as time goes on they add more features like networking and they get closer to a PC in flexibility, they also get a user interface that is as complex as a PC, for me I just go the PC route.

Chris1971,

For alternative Macintosh solutions, try looking at:

AudioRequest Digital Music Server - http://www.request.com/uk/ - there's even a PowerPoint demonstration for download.

Hifidelio Music Centre - http://www.hermstedt.com/english/hifidelio/hifidelio.html

iStream - http://www.arcticsw.com/istream/

I use a base model Mac Mini with 2x250G drives in a RAID 1 mirror for my slimserver - it also doubles up as a desktop machine. I chose this because it draws very little power even when left on all the time, and it spins the disks down when they are not in use. I then have a Windows MCE machine for DVD playback and a SqueezeBox 2 for music.

David.

BTW, EAC can rip directly to FLAC if setup right.

Two much slicker, much better, much cheaper alternatives to Escient and other devices are the Cambridge Audio Azur640H, at 160 G, or the Olive, Symphony or Musica. Either will provide both easy indexing and a usuable data stream for a M DSP from a multitude of CD's.