Best standalone music server?
Personally, I really LOVD the LampizatOr DSD Komputer music server. You can read my review on it at the link below: http://ayllonmedia.com/news/the-lampizator-dsd-komputer-an-audio-expo-in-your-living-room-or-not |
"Thank you to all who have suggested computer based systems but I am not going to go that route for my aforementioned reasons whether it may be superior or not." You don't have a choice. There are no non-computer based options. You're just getting hung up on what the box looks like, and believing sales literature. One of the biggest misconceptions is that "appliance" style solutions are easier. When you have an issue with one of those things, its usually far more difficult to deal with. They remove all the options on them so when something happens, you can't do a simple fix even if you wanted to. Also, most use proprietary apps that pretty much forces you to send the unit back in for any type of issues. Don't take my word for it, look at what happened with Olive. Its considered to be on of the best ones. If owners haven't already, a class action suit will be brought against them because no one can get them to work. Not even Olive. I know this is not what you want to hear, but to be fair, you can't show me one system that's not computer based. |
Check out the auralic Aries. There is no internal disk because you don't want one in the unit. You get a 2TB disk now and what happens when you need more storage? How are you going to back it up? Another hard disk drive? Noise noise nois. Also, why would you ever need a 120GB buffer? You don't. You can load a song in memory in about a second. The Aries has an external power supply and a femto clock. Check the reviews from HI-FI+. The Aries also has the ability to connect external hard disks/ssd's. But you shouldn't have any hard disks in your audio room. i setup a mac OS X server 100ft away from my audio room which has 10TB of usable disk space setup using raid 1. The Aries connects to this server by way of minimserver that runs on the OS X server. I use a GIg switched network so the latency is very low. I use xld to rip my songs and use Bliss to update the metadata. I use the OS X server for many other things besides running the minimserver. I also have the auralic mini in my living that connects to the central minimserver. |
"Foolish maybe but it is what I am looking for right now. That's not what he's saying. You wouldn't (not would) be surprised if all of them made a bad job of it. Why? Because you'll never know. With a standalone music server, you have very little control as to what is going on. If you use a PC, you do. Here's the difference between a PC and music server. Music Server: You use a computer to rip, tag and store your music files on a hard drive. PC: You use a computer to rip, tag and store your music files on a hard drive. As to how much all of this will cost, you'll need to buy a music server that has built in ripping. Depending on what you pick out, you're talking hundreds on the low side and thousands on the high side. If you go with the PC option, its free. You already have the computer, and all you need to do is download this free program. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/overview/features/features-of-eac/ Just to see what were talking about, click on the above link and it will take you to a page listing the features of EAC. No music server has this level of ripping quality. It even calibrates the optical drive that you're using to do the rips. So, just to clarify, the process is identical either way. You put a CD in the drive, hit a button, and then the rip begins. When its done, the drive opens automatically. When you're done ripping your CD's to an external hard drive with EAC, you unplug the HD's USB cable on the computer, and plug it in to your music server. Also, if you don't get a network player with built in ripping, your choices go up exponentially. You'll have a huge selection of players to choose from. |
Part of my "requirements" is that it just fits in with the rest of my equipment sitting in the rack, hence the reasoning behind an all in one box, not a laptop or home pc based solution , even if that might give a much cheaper and possibly better audio experience. Also I do not have the time or patience to troubleshoot any network or connectivity issues as I work very long hard hours and when i flop and want to listen to music, well that is ALL i want to do and not fiddle with anything |
I worked in computer hardware/software interfaces for most of my career and I think a good laptop, Windows or Apple, with JRiver set up correctly, feeding a USB DAC, is neither a bottleneck nor a compromise as a digital source, and should be superior or equal to any CD player. Plus, you have access to anything on the Internet to download or stream. The only complexity is running the interface remotely. I know the strawman arguments about laptop/operating system noise and chatter, but find those arguments spurious and ill-informed. |
I have the Antipodes DX; it automatically rips CDs to uncompressed FLAC, runs the Roon core natively and the sound is simply amazing. If you can swing it from a budget perspective, you won’t be disappointed. I’ve also had an Aurender N100H, for the money it was also a big upgrade--sin sound quality and ease of use-- over my previous Mac mini + NAS + Audirvana solution. Both the Antipodes and Aurender have Tidal integrations and can be controlled by an iPad. |
@ncarv I feel 2 to 3k SHOULD get me something to work with? I did look at the Naim unit and read a few reviews, one for sale right here for just 1100 atm so a fair price indeed. And lol to the Logitech, when it worked it worked well but when it decided it could not find my network any more, it tried my patience indeed! |
You should offer what price point ,unless you can afford over $10k for under $3k the Aurender 100-H. Is about as good as you will need ith the Custom excellent conductor music app. A 120 Gibyte memory buffer,and a internal 2 Terabyte hard drive can be purchased for around $2300 . Compare ,who else has a 120 gigabyte memory buffer. And a Linear power supply. Check them out. |
Sorry about your experience with the Squeezebox, uberwaltz. Mine is still working fine using JRiver on my Surface Pro with external hard drive, but it can be a real PITA to set up and sometimes requires, um, attention. Haha! Directly to your question, I have heard the Naim and it sounds excellent and is easy to use, a one box solution. I haven't heard the Sony HAP-Z1ES, but it has gotten good reviews. Worth investigating. My Wyred4Sound DAC-2 is quite good, so I'm guessing their server might be, too. "Best" is probably too broad a request. Some cost parameters would help. The Blue Sound seems like it could be a cost effective solution. Of these, I would bet the Naim would be "best." Good luck! |
@grannyring EXACTLY! Sounds just the sort of deal I am trying to work out, likewise I know just enough about computers to be dangerous...to myself that is! I have wasted enough hours previously just to get a darn Squeezeboz to co-operate on my home network, think I was secretely glad when it just died! I was also very keen on the idea of a system I could access through my phone as well. I will be looking deeply into this, thank you! |
Not foolish at all and what I wanted. Call Neal at Sound Science and you will be happy. I wanted to do the same as you, but I am not a computer guy. I hate computers, working with them that is. Did not want a stressful situation with my music playing. Neal set me up perfectly with a Music Vault dedicated music computer, Roon, Tidal, cd ripping and storage and back-up.... Load the cd to be ripped and the computer takes it from there using SOTA ripping software and automatically backs it up and puts it in Roon. In Roon I see all of my ripped cds and all that Tidal has to offer! All in one spot! I use my ipad and/or phone as a remote to search and play my music. What a joy and Neal made it so easy. Not one problem in over a year now, |
Integrated ripping in the same box is a foolish requirement. Rip from any desktop or laptop using XLD(mac) or ExactAudioCopy(windows) to a network attached storage drive(aka NAS). I would argue that if you have a computer at all with a disk drive, then a built-in ripper is a detriment. With a laptop you can rip in other rooms while watching tv etc. Cheers, Spencer |
I was going to recommend this piece from Resolution Audio. http://www.resolutionaudio.com/?page_id=63 The only issue is that you need to rip, tag and setup on a PC. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You'll get the best possible rips and tagging will be faster and easier. When you use an auto tagger, it never gets all the metadata exactly right, so you'll need to edit tags manually, and that's much easier to do on a computer with your choice of tagging app. Once the setup is complete, you control everything with a smart phone or tablet. A couple other things worth mentioning is that this unit comes with a built in high end CD player. You can't rip with it, but its nice to have because you can rip at your own pace and still be able to use it for everything. Also, this is where Steve Huntley from ARC, Wadia and Great Northern is now, so you know you're dealing with one of the top digital designers in the world. There's only a handful of people that are in his league. |
https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/collections/audio-server/products/sonictransporter-ap-8tb-roon-se... Get this guy and Roon. You’ll never look back. |
I am in a very similar situation as you. I have hundreds of CDs that I would like to begin transferring to a server and would like to access online streaming services at some point. My dealer has recommended the Bluesound Vault 2 as a simple one box solution for ripping CDs. I think their streaming hardware is called the Bluesound Node 2. |
