Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Help me build a music server!

I had this happen and no I hadn't done any true back ups. Luckily I was able to retrieve the data by hooking the drives up to my Ubuntu box and pulled all the info I needed off of them, luckily nothing was corrupted.

I am using a LG drive - GH20LS10. I should try the questionable discs in one of the other machines in the house; the PC I built for my son has a Pioneer drive in it.

Definitely start ripping your collection now. Take a look at DB Poweramp before you do though, seriously. I started out with just EAC, and sure do wish I would have used DB from the beginning. Something as mundane as album art can really turn into a nightmare later. I've tried numerous album art finding programs to only give up and live with no album art for the majority of my collection.

PS Audio makes some pretty killer audio gear, including stand alone DAC's. They also make a music server worth a look. Not as expensive as the Olive products, but not cheap either. They took a different approach than Olive by not incorporating an internal hard drive or CD ripper. You just plug your Ext hard drive into it, or your network and it does the rest. I'm actually quite intrigued by this device.....

http://www.psaudio.com/ps/products/description/perfectwave-dac?cat=audio

After the pain of ripping my collection, I have a back up of my backup of my music folder. (my photos too) Problem I have now is clutter. I need to take the time to organize all the drive folders. I wish I would have put more thought into a filling system when I first started too.

One more music server to look at is QSonix. Again, expenive. I think all these things are. http://www.qsonix.com/Public/v5/ProductQ205Overview.aspx

Sometimes you can get a good deal on them from Evolution Audio/Video. They also carry PS Audio, and other high end brands. http://www.evolutionhometheater.com/index.php

Naim offer also good product in that departement.

http://www.naimaudio.com/hifi-products/type/2

Well, after extensive research I finally found an excellent program to rip cds for Mac (since, unfortunately, EAC is Windows only) called XLD. Like EAC it's very accurate but sloooow.

Now I'm starting the huge undertaking of archiving my cd collection.

I'm ripping to .aiff @16/44 uncompressed. It seems to have all the metadata that one needs for info/artwork. I've even finally loaded some music on my iTouch via iTunes (it's at least good for that!). Gonna be very cool for a road trip!

This archiving endeavor should keep me busy for a long while.

I appreciate all the suggestions Axiomites... keep 'em coming!

I like the high end servers a lot, but I'm wondering if it's better (cheaper too) to concentrate on the software that will play/organize the music and put the money into a nice D/A converter for two channel playback.

Gonna get interesting when I digitize my vinyl at 24/192!

db poweramp is a great program for sure Drew.... I use it fairly often to convert music formats for IPOD use, etc.

Awwwww, Man!

Imagine the creaminess of surface noise and the sharp transients of pops and clicks at THAT sampling rate!

Pretty much. Hate to say it, but vinyl has no where near that resolution. Especially if it's been played more than once. Better use FLAC to try to recover some of the space of those top four octaves of inaudible hiss.