Audio Library On A Tight Budget

[stratman]

hey stratman, did you ever post pics of your RAID setup? actually, the only reason I ask is the sansdigital link you gave is down atm

Hey Mikey,

I haven't posted pics yet. Sansdigital is down, I don't know why, but here's the NEWEGG link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111006

I went with this:

http://www.startech.com/Product/ItemDetail.aspx?productid=SAT3520U2R&c=US

It was a better solution at a lower price, I bought it at Amazon, it runs quieter than the Sansdigital, so far no issues whatsoever.

 

[rgb1111]

Another solution

How is your system running now? are you happy about results ?

How about IOMEGA's "SCREENPLY it has 360GB + library mgmt software, added to this will be a PC usually avlb. at home+ a sound card may be Montego .
Any comments ?

MY system can only deliver analogue signals to my "Zone @" , so I need to give our analogue signals to my AV receiver. Is it possible with Montego ?

Well guys I did a complete 180! Instead of opting for Cortex, I did something totally different. Frustrated by the thought of making a bad decision, I expanded my search (whew! This has chewed up 80+ hours of my life on Google! ), went to Dell, they had some nifty deals going (I know, I've said it before I'm not a fan of Dell, BUT this is not my primary computer and the deal was too good to pass up!)I bought an Inspiron 530, custom configured including a 17 inch flat display, Intel Core Duo processor 4MB L2 cache- 2.33 GHz, 1333 FSB Processor, 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 RAM @ 667 MHz-2DIMMs, 250 Gig SATA HDD, 48X CDRW/DVD combo, Windows Vista Home Basic all for $539.00 before tax and shipping (approx. 75.00), I also ordered Turtle Beach's Montego DDL sound card to replace what comes with the Dell, The Montego has some nice features like S/PDIF in and out, supports Dolby Digital and DTS all for the price of 67.74 including shipping. Next came Snap Stream Media's Firefly PC Remote bundled with Beyond Media which allows complete control of PC from remote (it also supports MediaMonkey, my software of choice for music)you can even do play lists on the fly! All of this for $77.39 including shipping and taxes! So for a total of $759.13 I have a dedicated MUSIC LIBRARY that allows for expansion in the future and video.

By comparison the Cortex and peripherals came in at about $510.00, the drawbacks no display, no remote, no MediaMonkey support, NO digital in nor out!, forced to buy two external HDDs.

The Sonos out of the gate was too expensive, to configure it to what I need $2000.00+, Sonos plus Infrant Ready NAS (1050.00)

The Duet came in at $400.00, not available till end of month, if added computer about $1000.00 and change, still more than the PC based system, plus the PC display is 17" while the Duet has a 2.4" display.

Overall I think the PC based system is the way to go for a budget MUSIC LIBRARY, only as long as you can pick up a PC at an excellent price, that's the only way I thought it was worth it. PM if you want details and particulars.

 

[haraldo]

I'm glad you got things all worked out. To be honest, I had to drop out of this thread when things got technical, like when I started to know what the acronyms and initials of things meant

I don't know what an NAS storage device is, only a vague idea of what a RAID configurations is and I've never opened a computer case in my life. I'm not sure that I'd know how to rip a CD into the computer and I've never created a WAV or FLAC file. I guess this is why the Fireball is the perfect plug and play solution for me.

On the other hand, it's an area of the hobby I know I'm weak on and I'd like to learn more...someday...all in good time.

NAS Storage: A cabinet with one or more disks connected to your computer network, either by wire or wireless network, in order to provide disk storage for several computers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

RAID: a system of multiple hard drives for sharing or replicating data, may be configured in many ways, but generally the idea is that data is stored redundantly so that you are not losing anything even when a hard disk fails.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

 

[stratman]

How is your system running now? are you happy about results ?

How about IOMEGA's "SCREENPLY it has 360GB + library mgmt software, added to this will be a PC usually avlb. at home+ a sound card may be Montego .
Any comments ?

MY system can only deliver analogue signals to my "Zone @" , so I need to give our analogue signals to my AV receiver. Is it possible with Montego ?

The system is running better than what I expected, I'm very happy with the results and for the price it's unbeateable. In my opinion, PC prices are so low now a days that it makes sense to make you own media server. I believe it is possible with the Montego.