There are three big players that I know of in the dedicate digital music server business, and then there are 10,000 versions you can run on any PC. The advantages to an actual manufactured digital music server are pretty straightforward.
1. They do not run on a Windows backbone and tend to be very stable.
2. They have companies that exist entirely to support that product, most of which have been around for a while, so you get decent support.
3. The product is geared around digital music & audio. So, the sound cards are typically good, the drives are good, etc. It acts less like a PC and more like a piece of audio gear.
4. The interface, the interface, the interface. The better units can be run by anyone in the home, and it is run via remote control, not keyboard & mouse.
Who are the biggies?
As far as I know they are still:
Escient - with the Fireball.
This is, in my opinion, the single best bang for the buck digital music server but is not integratable nearly to the level of the competitors. If you just want to be able to plug it in and use it - it is the way to go. If you want more power, it is most definitely NOT the way to go.
iMerge - Their stuff definitely seems to fall between for overall quality. One of the big plusses is they offer units with something like 16 DIFFERENT outputs. So, put a couple thousand CDs onto the hard drives, then you, your wife, and your 14 kids can each listen to something from that collection at the same time. It integrates decent into advanced systems like Crestron, but is not nearly as robust as AudioRequest. The iMerge product is the father of XivaNet which has been licensed by a dozen other companies for their music server. I believe Yamaha is one who has licensed XivaNet - which all ends up looking like an iMerge. This also happens to be the unit I own... like it a lot (2 zones) but still wish I had...
AudioRequest - The guys making this product, in the USA, are into it big time. Their programmers are there and if a problem occurs they will put you on hold, then 2 minutes later you will be speaking to the programmer who actually programmed the specific section you have a question about. These guys were trained on control systems (AMX/Crestron) and they write their interfaces in-house and make the macros available to the world so anyone can make use of them and they are always aiming to improve their product. Firmware updates are free and are just part of what you get. Multiple zones can be handled with zone units, and if you happen to be a person with multiple homes throughout the world, the units can sync up your music collection to everywhere, automatically. The best interface, the most stable system, and excellent sound. Two and a half thumbs up. One half thumbs down for $$$$$.
