Any high quality music servers out there?

Hoseface - why go though the hassle? I did. Last year, I built a music server based on Windows using FLAC, Exact Audio Copy and WinAMP. I had SATA drives, Silverstone case and fan-less PS, controllable CPU fans, etc.

Read though your post and think you're building on a PC platform. While FLAC is great for its flexibility, it's a huge pain in one simple but important area - tag management. It sucks. WinAMP is no better with the FLAC plugin.

Also, I had to use an old beta plugin that I found on a Russian site because the released plugin didn't display tags correctly. Apparently, this was/is a problem that other users experienced. It's nice to have an open source format but it certainly has its share of problems and sometimes, like this plugin tag issue, it never got solved. Some systems it worked and some didn't. When emailing Josh at FLAC, he simply didn't know how to solve the problem. What I realized was that these problems happened all the time with the Winamp/FLAC combo and when you're hosting a party and your system starts screwing up, it's embarrassing. Josh gets rid of the old versions (the installer versions) and you are left with a version that may or may not work for you and your system.

This is why I changed to iTunes and a Mac Mini with external MacAlly cases - works great, RAID, etc. And the iTunes front end is the best period. My collection is managed and very organized. Anyone of my friends can choose music and have fun with it...

I used to rip to FLAC with EAC and I believe that it creates outstanding rips. I think better then iTunes but I really can't tell. iTunes may have slightly worse audio quality then FLAC statistically but it does take 45 minutes to rip a CD (with EAC on high quality) and I really can't tell the difference with my tube equipment.

The bottom line is a little Mac Mini with iTunes and external Firewire disks works great and is easy to setup and low in cost. I liked the idea of building my own music server and felt proud when George from deHavilland was blown away by how good it sounded with his amps but it was just too much to manage - kinda took the fun out of the music...

My experience and opinion only... maybe it will help people decide - please feel free to email me...

P.S. – USB DACs are the way to go. Second in line is coaxial (the mechanical connection is more organic) and if you have to, optical.

I had an interesting conversation with Mark Levinson today. We chatted about his Burwen Bobcat USB DAC and why it's a Windows only device - pretty obvious. Now, I'm a converted Windows to OSX fan but I'll point out the downside to iTunes.

Apple is fast becoming the more "evil" than the dreaded "evil Bill Gates". The word proprietary or closed comes to mind - at least Windows is open. This presents a pain for us who simply want a good system for playing back music. The Windows side of things gives you ALOT of flexibility.

What to do? Well, after talking with Mark since the Burwen Bobcat is one really nice piece of code, I started looking back to dbPowerAmp. This cool program converted my FLAC to WMA lossless and then iTunes imported so I thought could it go backwards from Apple Lossless to Windows Media Lossless? I don't know yet since I don't have a PC at home anymore so if anyone can confirm, would be great to know...

This is also why I'm down on FLAC. WMA lossless and Apple Lossless are just about par with FLAC but with the main advantage of application support. That's really what drove me nuts about FLAC and Winamp - they both were such a pain in the ass to configure and customize.

The MOST important thing isn't how good the server is or even the software mentioned but ending up with a music file with CORRECT tags! Once you start to amass thousands of high-quality files, you'll be sorry that you didn't pay enough attention to file management. The tag is EVERYTHING! Wait until your system crashes and you have to re-scan your entire collection - if that tag isn't what you want, you'll be editing files for months... I know, I did it!

If you're into Linux, FLAC is for you but if you just want a Windows based server, go with WMA lossless since it can convert to other formats where FLAC won't. iTunes for Windows would be a second choice.

Again, if anybody can confirm converting Apple Lossless to Windows Media Lossless, would be great to know your results and opinion...