Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Opinions on future of standalone music hard drives

Peter-- Let me know when you start putting these together. I'll be more than happy to help out with assembly (and in home testing). Hell, I'll shave and try my hat at selling them too!
I think austin has some great ideas as well. The only thing I'd add is make the ethernet port 10/100/1000 since gigabit hubs are getting cheaper and cheaper...

Gee I miss having 5 pcs networked at home....

Looks like the future is getting closer. Check out this sign of the times -- a 120GB, somewhat-DVD-Audio-capable DVD hard-disk recorder available at Best Buy for $699.

• Panasonic 120 GB DVD / HD player

This thing does the expected with 5.1, pro-scan, etc., without TiVo expenses neccessary for hard disk recording, but it only plays "2-channel DVD-Audio." (What is the point of that?) And it's unclear how optimized it is for audio, or even high-quality video. But the price point suggests that within a year, we may see some truly affordable hard drive component players. Can audiophile hard disk storage playing true hi-rez audio and storing hundreds of CDs of true CD-quality audio be far away?

Birdman

These systems are getting cheaper and better but there are two main issues to overcome before they completely eradicate DVD and CD storage.

First, in order to get the same level of sound or video quality you have to copy the original bit by bit or use a lossless compression algorithm. I'm not sure what the compression ratio of FLAC is, but it is probably not as high as MP3 (about 10:1). Please correct me if I am wrong on that. This means mega storage space for your music and video. I have 60+ DVDs and DVD-A's - if you assume that each takes only 50% of the 9GB of storage available, this equates to 300GB just for my DVD's. For my CD's, another 300 * 0.6GB = 180GB of space. So you are pushing 500GB of storage space which needs to be backed up somewhere incidentally.

Secondly, sound quality. If the massive amounts of storage required are not overcome in some simple and robust fashion (anyone who has used any Unix variant should know what rm -r * at the root can do) then the audio and video signals need to be compressed. Typically, the compression algorithm with sacrifice parts of the audio spectrum or even the data itself in order to achieve a smaller package. I have the ability to play MP3 through my stereo and it does sound good, I must admit. But comparing a Fleetwood Mac MP3 to the DVD-A version is noticeably different. If the lossless compaction algorithms can achieve the same sort of compression ratios as MP3 and others, this will become a non-issue.

Here's what I did .....

My wife and I have collected in excess of 300 CD's over the years and are still buying more. In order to improve our access to the music, I started to Rip our CD's to MP3 and store them on our server (yes I have a home network). To date, I have in excess of 4,000 files. Once we started to get exposure to more of the music that we liked, I got the itch to start piping it through the stereo again. I bought a used IBM laptop PC, installed Linux and a wireless Network card in it and set it up to access our file server and the MP3 files. I bought a Creative SoundBlaster Extigy (external) hooked it to the USB port on the laptop and linked it to one of the digital inputs on my reciever. I can now access any of the MP3's, set up play lists that can play through the stereo for hours, and so on from any PC in the house. It works for me but the quality of the audio still does not compete with a DVD or DVD-A.

Sean

EDIT: I forgot to mention, just for the he** of it, I will be converting an X-Box into a media system complete with 120GB HD to replace the PC (probably with Linux). That will give me a system capable of playing MP3's, DVD's and CD's that I can control via remote and view on my TV. Why? I just gotta ...

That's excellent Sean.
I've been looking at some mp3 playing options myself but the home LAN is quite far away from my basement system.
I will probably wait until we move sometime in the next year most likely, before working anything together to do something like what you did. Mind you, i may not rip all our discs to mp3 (or other format). That would take me quite some time....

Took me a week or so to rip all of our CDs to AAC. Worth the effort, though. You could use 802.11 to get the network to the basement, too...

A friend of mine is putting together a system exactly like yours and I managed to convince him to spend the extra dough to build a home-brewed tivo into it. It was in my best interest as he is most likely my future roomate That seems to be the only way (ie: DIY) to get the level of functionality that people want in such a unit these days. Now the real trouble is trying to pack all that into a quiet micro-atx case...

I'm not too keen on the wireless yet.
I'm also not sure whether the signal would make it through the house. I have trouble getting a decent cordless phone to work here.

Thanks all - it's a passion. Well more like an addiction really.

Chess, the wireless I am using is 802.11b D-Link Airplus hub and wireless card. It is supposed to be good for up to 300 ft indoors. I manage to keep the music seamless by setting up the host server on the laptop to buffer 100% of the data before it starts playing.

When will the factory tour report be ready - I'm dying to read it. EDIT: Wow - that was fast. I just scanned the General Questions and there it was.

Sean

In reply to:

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When will the factory tour report be ready - I'm dying to read it. EDIT: Wow - that was fast. I just scanned the General Questions and there it was.

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Yep.
You ask and i finally delivered.
Coincidence or no?

You are just too gosh darned efficient. Excellent report by the way - I really enjoyed it. Hats off to Axiom for taking time to show you around.

Sean