Need help building a media server

[rubytuesday]

Greetings,

I have spent many an hour thinking through how to handle my media server needs and have tried tons of technologies. I think the first question that needs to be asked is will this system be a dedicated server for two channel audio or will it also serve up a media room with Video, Pics, Music, etc. If so, I would strongly urge you to consider either a Synology NAS. I have tried DIY, UnRAID, Windows Home Server, Etc. I find the NAS to be the most easy and flexible. I have both Sonos and Squeezebox systems and the NAS has software for both, not to mention an iTunes server. You dont need a computer to have a full blown whole home server. Plus the NAS has some level of data protection, although I always recommend a backup! One more thing...The NAS also has website capabilities, mail server, photo and media server, file server and many many other capabilities.

If you are going to use this for only two channel, then I would do the following:

--If Windows is what you have/like - Hook up a fast external Hard Drive and run JRiver as the others have said. Connect it to a DAC and it should sound great.

--If Mac (Mini, Macbook, etc.) - do the same with a hard drive and run Audirvana Plus with iTunes. Its easy to set up, sounds great and can be controlled by a tablet or smartphone.

Like I said, I have a Squeezebox touch, Sonos Connect, Windows Box and a Macbook. I have tried them all and my personal preference for sound and ease of use is the Macbook with Audirvana. Streaming, even over the LAN, isnt as good as bringing the source files to the computer. I have tried streaming to my Macbook over the LAN and Wireless. When I connect the same music to a USB drive connected to the MacBook, it sounded better.

My 2 cents.

[Parabellum]

looks like JRiver is the consensus, JRiver it will be then. Here is the configuration of the computer I want to use:

Intel Pentium E6700 3.2 GHz
Asus P5Q Pro
2gb Corsair XMS 6400
2 X 2tb Seagate Barracuda 32mb
D-link DWA-556
Asus 5770
Plextor 24X DVD
Case to be determined (if I fit the computer in the audio rack)

I just wonder about the hard drives; is it a viable option to have hard drives with platters for an audiophile setup or should I invest in large capacity SSD? I am worried about the skipping playback issues, and also the noise they make.

[Rayooo]

I always use a small SSD for the players boot drive, fast to boot and more importantly- quiet,

I then use wired Gig E to NAS ( Synology 1511) for storage.
With NAS in another room.... Noise problem solved.
For the time being this works very good. Ultimately a SSD based NAS will be nice... When costs come down a bit more.

500GB +++ on SSD RAID gets expensive if you're library is growing fast. Spinning disks, at least for the near-future are still a great choice in my opinion.

I can run 24/192 flac playback endlessly with NEVER a skip or hiccup. If skips/hiccups/pops or other occur then something is wrong or broken or not set up correctly.

I've run j-river on Intel Atom based MB, but my current pref is i3 @ 3,x Ghz. Mainly because these chips require very little In the way of cooling. I've also switched from using Brick-type power supplies to fanless standard supplies. Seasonic and Kingwin-Stryker are my current favorites. My own players are dead quiet. Good choice going J-River.

[Pider]

Parabellum... First of all, sorry it took me so long to find a keyboard and post a couple comments, but it seems that you've been well instructed by rubytuesday, rayooo and others.

The first thing to do, if you haven't already, is read this thread on AA:


http://www.audioaficionado.org/digit...ayback-pc.html

It will fill you in on some of the past discussions and give you at least two or three opinions about the build.

What I did was to re-purpose an old previous desktop build. The case is huge, and the motherboard old, and the cpu a dual quad core... but it works like a charm. As someone said, make sure you know what you want to do with it. If it's purpose is to serve up 2-channel only, then CPU power is not the issue. What you need to pay attention to is heat and noise. Fanless PSU's and video cards are the ticket. Moving parts, such as cpu fans, case fans and hard drives all create noise, so you either want to get very quiet such items, or get rid of them altogether.

I ended up getting very quiet case fans to replace the stock ones that came with my original Lian Li case. I then got a fanless cpu cooling tower, which works great. Plus I got an 80 gig SSD, big enough for the operating system and required programs. The music is stored inside the case on a 2.5" 1 TB laptop drive. This will eventually be replaced by a separate NAS server, but in the meantime it is so quiet that, with the internal insulation, I cannot hear it at all.

I love this thing. It is running headless, so when I want music I just pick up my iPhone or iPad, bring up JRemote, pick what I want to hear, turn on the integrated amp, and ipso facto presto, sweet music pours forth. I never turn it off, and it never runs hot. One of these days I'll figure out how to "wake on LAN" so I can let it go to sleep, but in some ways, why bother.

One other thing, J-River does take some work to set it up to your liking. But, once it's set up, I find it works great. My biggest issue now is getting more music to enjoy (and a new integrated...).

There is nothing wrong with going the Mac Mini route, as many have done. Simpler in many respects, but I chose to go with a PC only because I had the old one sitting around doing nothing. It was the cheaper and more fun solution, since I like playing with such.

Lots of folks here have done these builds and have great advice. Don't be shy asking questions. Folks are very helpful.

[-E-]

Originally Posted by Parabellum

looks like JRiver is the consensus, JRiver it will be then. Here is the configuration of the computer I want to use:

Intel Pentium E6700 3.2 GHz
Asus P5Q Pro
2gb Corsair XMS 6400
2 X 2tb Seagate Barracuda 32mb
D-link DWA-556
Asus 5770
Plextor 24X DVD
Case to be determined (if I fit the computer in the audio rack)

I just wonder about the hard drives; is it a viable option to have hard drives with platters for an audiophile setup or should I invest in large capacity SSD? I am worried about the skipping playback issues, and also the noise they make.

Pider has chimed in with all the right things to say in his post above this one.

I'll also throw in the + for JRiver.

I am assuming this is all old gear to be retooled?

You'll need to find a case that can house a full size ATX board - Lian-Li still makes two: the PC-C60 and the PC-C33. I'd probably stick with either of those two as they are as close to a 19" rack width as you are going to find. Either that or get a 1u or 2u rack enclosure (probably 2u for adequate cooling via larger, slower spinning fans) - if you are going to mount into an actual rack.

Up the ram, add a SSD for your boot and applications. If you are @ 4gb or less of ram stick with 32-bit Win7 Pro+ (win8 = /facepalm). To answer your question about the HDD issue: it is best to get some sort of NAS setup or offload the spinning drives to another device and serve/stream the data over your network. But, if you are unable to do that, the SSD+HDD combo can work as an interim solution; HDDs are cheap, so I wouldn't necessarily trade for a high capacity SSD as the cost will be near break-neck.

Ditch the video card for something fanless or replace mobo with built-in video.

Your noise will be coming from the spinning HDDs and that GPU. More the GPU than the HDDs, surprisingly.