[melomaniac]

yup. a mac mini will do, except when it runs out of HD space, external drives can be noisy. someone up the road did the obsessive-compulsive thing, with dedicated room/power supply/software and so forth... not sure it's much of a difference. in the end, it can be a distraction (like a fussy turntable) or a convenience, depending on your set-up; and some audiophiles always pick the slightly more inconvenient but strangely satisfying ritual.

 

[dan1son]

I've had a Linux box running as a server for many many years. It holds all of my files (music, movies, photos, documents) as well as serve e-mail, website, etc.

There's something like 1.5terrabytes in it at the moment, and everything is backed up to an external drive which is then stored in a fire-proof safe.

Then I can get to my music and movies from any other machine anywhere. I have an AppleTV running XBMC which is only used for movies/music playback. Every other machine in the house mounts the server drive and can play music... but they're not dedicated to it by any stretch.

 

[craiglester]

yes, I used an old Athlon clocked down from 2.2 ghz to 800 mhz, some old drives and slimserver.

It sits out in a cupboard and serves music for the house via the wireless router and squeezebox / softqueeze

I'm thinking of moving to a Fit PC2 when I can get round to it.. I don't see anything else that uses as little power.

 

[torjeh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IceClass /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have an old beat up Power Book G4 12" that is used for nothing more than as a brain for my music server plugged into a 2TB external drive.

I have a Powerbook G4 15" that I use as a dedicated music frontend. Running Debian. I'm very happy with it

 

[Callous]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kees /img/forum/go_quote.gif I use an Asus EEE notebook, with a 1Tb mybook external harddisk as music server in my main setup, along with my CD player and turntable. I use a M-Audio Transit to connect it to de optical input of my DAC. The coax input is reserved for my CD transport. Ripping and downloading I do on my main PC, on another Mybook drive and once in a while I copy the drives and switch them. I also make a backup copy of my main PC (not the music) on the other drive to keep it save (the music server is off-line and in another room). Work perfectly fine for me.

Hey, exact same thing! I also have the Asus EEE netbook, with the 1TB MyBook!

No CDP or turntable though.

 

[melomaniac]

the new apple "mac mini" server has two hard drives, and is very quiet. I like using it (still from a different room than the speakers) as a music server.

 

[krmathis]

Yes, I do.
My long time retired PowerBook G4 have lately converted from dust collector to music server. Not the fastest machine, but it runs iTunes and Spotify just fine..

 

[bungle]

Quote:

I'm thinking of moving to a Fit PC2 when I can get round to it.. I don't see anything else that uses as little power.

For anything that's just a fileserver a NAS device is probably least power hungry.  Some allow you to install things like squeeze server, solving that issue.  I'd hate to have something bigger just to serve files, though if some old hardware is laying around it's better to use it than get something new.
 
In my case I have an HTPC running MythTV in the living room, which holds all my music, videos, and pictures as well as tuners for recording and watching TV, so the extra oomph is very useful.

 

[C4rl]

 
[size=10pt]I contemplated buying a dedicated PC solely for music a couple of years ago. I had reached the point while ripping my CD’s that I had the internal drive of my desktop almost full with FLAC’s as well as two 500gb external drives and I still hadn’t finished ripping my collection.[/size]
 
[size=10pt]I took some time exploring various options and in the end I opted for a dedicated server, namely a HP EX475 MediaSmart server with four 1tb Seagate drives installed. This is now tucked away in a cabinet sending FLAC files from 1.4tb worth of ripped music via Wi-Fi to my three Squeezeboxes.[/size]
 
[size=10pt]File duplication is enabled so in the event of a drive failure I loose nothing with the added benefit that it also backs up my three other PC’s nightly.[/size]

 

[Nebby]

I love my Mediasmart server, it's a very good NAS (and more) server

 

[Uncle Erik]

Not quite yet, but am getting closer to setting something up.  I've got an aging Linux box which I think I'll drop a couple of big drives into, then start ripping everything into FLAC.  I'm going to connect it to a Squeezebox and run that to my DAC.  Then I'm going to use the new Squeezebox app for the iPad, so the iPad will be a big remote control.  I think I can pull this off for a few hundred, too, which will be wonderful.

 

[nullstring]

I plan on purchasing a netbook to be using a portable Music "Server"
 
I broke my ipod 5G, and it seems to make more sense to spend ~$200 on a netbook (which can easily be connected to a DAC) than any of the overpriced DAP's that are out now-a-days.
 
With the screen off, that battery life should be ~24 hours.
Though, I might have to make some adjustments to make sure that the HDD doesn't spin up constantly.

 

[melomaniac]

Quote:

I plan on purchasing a netbook to be using a portable Music "Server"
 
I broke my ipod 5G, and it seems to make more sense to spend ~$200 on a netbook (which can easily be connected to a DAC) than any of the overpriced DAP's that are out now-a-days.
 
With the screen off, that battery life should be ~24 hours.
Though, I might have to make some adjustments to make sure that the HDD doesn't spin up constantly.

just as small and very capable is the Apple Mac mini server (dual HD) - and I've never, ever heard its discs spin or hum or whatever

 

[KingStyles]

I am now using a 21in imac with a 2Tb drive only as a music server. Everything else has been stripped off of it or disabled that wasnt essential software. Its still cheaper than a high end cdp and you dont have to get up and change disk. I also think it has better sound than any cd player in its price range.