2. pc-audio
  3. 1252090259

Moving from CD Player to MAC Book Pro Music Server

Based on my research, I will be selling my Ayre CX-7e CD player (Magnum Dynalab MD-102T FM Tuner already sold) and getting a computer based music server. I ordered the MAC Book Pro computer, 2.66GHz processor, 4GB RAM and a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD). The cost for an additional 4GB of RAM is $800+ so I decided to wait for the cost go down. All my music will be stored on an external hard drive using the AIFF format. It will sound better if it is on a different controller than the DAC so I will use a FireWire hard drive. The Seagate portable 2.5” external drive will be much quieter and will run off the power provided by the bus. The Seagate model info is below. I ordered the Ayre USB DAC and it will run balanced into my Ayre AX-7e integrated amp. I would like to thank the many people (on this site and other sites) including Music Lovers Audio and Steve Silberman (Ayre) that helped me with the computer configuration. Ayre also recommends the Furman AC-215 as a power filter for the MAC to prevent it from interfering with the sound quality. I ordered the MAC on Thursday (9/3/2009) from an independent Apple reseller (delivery in about 7+ days). Music Lovers Audio will install my Ethernet line from my living room to my router in my home office on September 16th. Based on estimated delivery times, it will take 6+ weeks for everything to be completed. The web site for the external drive is:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=ST905003FJA205-RK-fa-gopro-mac-500gb-hd&vgnextoid=13530c1001c11210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US
hgeifman

Showing 2 responses by rbstehno

rbstehno
1,540 posts
 
you can get 4GB of ram for $30-$100 from fry's. all my macs have at least 4GB and it will make your applications run better if you have many apps executing at once. Drobo is a nice unit but a little pricey. Always backup to a separate drive from where all of your apps/itunes library is located. A drobo or any raid device will not help you if you have a controller issue or human error that corrupts your data.
rbstehno
1,540 posts
 
don't rely on a raid type of system to be fool proof. you still need to have a separate disk outside of your local/nas setup to be fault tolerant. i have been in the computer industry for over 30 years from mainframes down to pc's. even the companies using the largest and the most expensive raid storage systems back up their data to other disk systems or to tape. if you rip your cd's to the nas/raid system, keep your original cd's as your backup if anything happens. disks do fail and the raid setup allows for a disk drive to fail without corrupting your data (if you use raid 1, 5, 6). with a computer systems, you usually have 1 interface (controller) to the storage system and they sometimes fail sending bad data to the disk subsystem. to help alleviate this, you need 2 controllers to the disks or backup your data to another device outside of your computer.
More to discover