Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Poll: Music Servers or Transports

Its very easy to back up your audio files- there are automated programs and external hard drives. My system is very basic. I simply create new dated folders for audio import and when I am done with the latest import I just go ahead and copy to an external hard drive. I can even do this while I am listening to the music!

best regards,
Jerry

Jerry, do you use a sound server?

I use a 1.6ghz single processor G5 mac tower with a bunch of extra sata drives internal bringing the total storage up to 1.1tb. Currently my collection occupies ~500 MB so I clearly over estimated the space, but what makes the mac so good is its included optical output and its enclosure which allows for flexibility and cooling. It will make some noise but its not in my listening room. I control it with a RF wireless keyboard. The receiver plugs into a USB port. The keyboard has a touch pad integrated into it. I have a DLP projector and I just run the computer into my projector and I use itunes (all the music is encoded as AIFF 16 bit/ 44.1khz). Having everything at your fingertips is truly a wonderful treat. The only two downsides to this for me are that itunes will cause a tiny little gap between songs in playback- even AIFF encoded- you can get around this by enabling cross fade playback but even set to 0 seconds it will cause one track into the next to cross over a tiny bit so things like pink floyd can be affected, but its not enough to bother me. The other thing is because I have multiple hard drives and since I use it so randomly I have the drives set to spin down when not in use for a period of time and sometimes when I call up a song there is a pause while the drive spins up. Not anywhere as elegant as a dedicated Meridian product would be, but it works for me.

best regards,
Jerry

Ah OK. My comments about backup were purely targetted at off-the-shelf sound servers (e.g. Imerge).

Guys,

Talking about Squeezeboxes and music servers..

There are some interesting storage solutions here which mean that no PC is required to run lossless solutions wirelessly with full RAID/Mirroring redundancy:-

See https://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/62

These Network Attached Storage (NAS) external drives, run Slimserver V6, meaning that you can run a mirrored hard drive together with the Squeeze box-3 driver software "Slimserver" on the HD removing the need for a PC being powered-up whilst listening to your digitally stored music.

So you have a redundant music server, wirelessly transmitted, fully encrypted, connected via Fibre into your Meridian of choice without a PC running for sub �600, not too painful by general Meridian prices.

Also of note is the fact that many of the exclusive SB3 radio site are 192bps a much higher quality than UK DAB.

Comments on a postcard to..

neat poll - very educational!

i run a Windows XP server with 1 TB of RAID5 storage; a SqueezeBox; and a SoundBridge.

the process of doing lossless rips is VERY lengthy if you have a materially-sized collection. don't do it without at least good RAID for backup!

i voted in the second bucket down, but my use of my transport (for audio) is declining month by month.

doody.

Some of these look nice and are Mac compatible if you prefer see :

www.infrant.com

and one their sub-headings proclaims ( interestingly enough ) ' the death of CD ' here :

http://www.infrant.com/company/news_content.php?id=88

all i need now are a certain 6 numbers

~M~

I run a 1.6TB RAID 5 server on which I`ve ripped to original format 16/44.1 .WAV files (and companion VBR .MP3`s) my entire 1300 CD collection.
The only platters that enter a player are the DVD-A`s or SACD discs. All others are played back via Foobar2000 (on a PC) doing 16/88.2 upsampling into the 568. Sounds absolutely great.
Having playlists is a godsend.

Regarding Imerge soundserver,

On the s2000 you have a software utility to do backup to a pc so that you can have a backup of your music if you ever have a drive failure.

Other then the 20 minutes it take to rip a CD,it is a pretty good unit.

On my wish list would be the info on how to upgrade the hard drive to a larger size.

Pierre

Thanks everyone who took time to vote. I'm quite surprised by the high proportion of M users who have a server of some sort already in their set-ups (or perhaps the real anti-music server brigade avoided the thread completely?).

Also quite surprising is the proportion of server users who have adopted it as their prime source for CD replay. Look out M!

Cliff

I've got 300CDs stored on a machine that also acts as a Small Business Server 2003 on a SOHO basis which has a 300Gb tape drive. While I back up the mainstream files - user documents and email etc. every day, I only back up the music files from time to time.

I rip using EAC combined with MAREO which allows me to store FLAC (losless) files for use with the Squeezebox, and MP3 (10x VBR) for use in an iPod in the car. It takes a bit of setting up, but once done ripping new CDs is totally automatic.

Tim

RAID is not a substiute for taking regular backups. I've seen a RAID 5 array fail to rebuild on more than one occasion. The only safe way to ensure that your library is backed up is to store it to tape or DVD.

Tim