Digital Music Servers (CD Substitutes)

N

Non-Audiophile

Audiophyte
Planning to / thinking of buying a device like the Olive Symphony or Yamaha MusicCast, that is -- something to rip my CD [and record] collection to, with which I can then stream music wired or wirelessly to various rooms of the house. Would appreciate feedback on these matters:

1. Generally, I am interested in the actual experience of people more sophisticated in music systems with these kinds of devices. What would you recommend?

2. I am prepared to plunk down on the order of $1000 for one of these, and the Olive systems are well reviewed and start in that zone. However, it's not clear to me they offer reasonable storage at appropriate prices. The Olive Musica is $1100 for 160 GB in storage. I have about 300 CDs and maybe 80 or 100 records I'd like to rip to these, and I am not clear whether I would already exceed or exhaust the capacity on purchase if I want to store at the FLAC compression level (lossless). Olive's next largest size is 250 GB for $1500. I am not going to pay $400 for 90G of extra HD capacity -- is anyone crazy enough to do that? -- so figuring out just what these hold is critical. The MusicCast is likewise 160GB for about $2K I think, probably more than I want to spend but I am curious about whether you just run out of capacity when you get these or are supposed to be happy with MP3 quality.

3. Just how practical is it really to create your own computer-based music system instead of one of these? I've worked with computers for decades, so I'm not terrified of technology but neither am I a technie, and I am especially not knowledgeable re high end music systems either.

Thanks.
 
M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
First, the storage capacity:
1. An uncompressed WAV file (which is what you will have from ripping a CD or recording from an LP) takes up about 10.5 MB per minute of stereo - so figure ~50 MB per song for the average 4-5 minute song.
2. FLAC is lossless so only offers a compression ratio of roughly 2 to 1 - so again figure ~25 MB per song for the average 4-5 minute song.
3. 1 GB is 1024 MB so 1 GB is enough to store roughly 20 uncompressed WAVs or 40 FLAC encoded files.

You can do the math yourself :))) but just for reference I have 5075 uncompressed WAVs and they occupy 210 GB of my 300 GB drive. Double those numbers if you use FLAC.

Second, the music 'server':
Servers like the Olive, Sonos, MusicCast et al generally have nice interfaces and have the advantage of being a component that can sit in your AV rack but the disadvantage is high cost and limited upgradeability in terms of storage - not to mention no chance for backup.

IMO, a better approach is to buy a streaming device like the Squeezebox. It does require a PC to run its server software but then you have unlimited storage possibilities and can backup your music because you are using the hard disk in the PC.
 
P

Pianoman84d

Audioholic
Just FYI, the Sonos system is a streaming device like the Squeezebox. It also relies on you to provide the storage on your computer (or network attached storage).
 
N

Non-Audiophile

Audiophyte
Thanks very much; this has been very helpful. I think at this point I'm inclined toward a Squeezebox or Sonos type system, maybe leaning toward the Sonos because of ease of installation. I've also read a bunch of Stereophile articles on this (substantially but not entirely confusing to non-cognoscenti), which left me with the impression the Squeezebox is maybe more capable of integration with a high end system (which I don't have) but more challenging to set up; and Sonos vice versa?
 
C

chris6878

Audioholic
I have the ROKU soundbridge. It is cheaper and just as good if not better. Roku Is always sending out updates. It did have a problem play flac files from windows media server,but that was solved by using firefly media server (which is free). I luv it.
 
P

Pianoman84d

Audioholic
Compare the reviews of most of these devices at stereophile I believe they have reviewed the sonos, squeezebox, and roku devices.

Should give you some more info.
 
A

ark0884

Audiophyte
What about Soo Loos

Does anyone have any experience with the more expensive solutions like Sooloos?:)
 
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