Topic: Making a music server

[spyder9]

I 2nd the praise of Maxtor Diamondmax drives.  I have a 80 gig internal that I use as my workbench for audio and video work.  Had it for 3 years and has been ridden hard ........... and its still going strong.  The Diamondmax is their top consumer series and is a rock, IMO.

[Nick's Picks]

what about getting a fatty network drive?
I was just looking at some at tigerdirect.com for $199 that were excellent.  300gb.  You could add more, plus you could hang external USB drives off of it...though I realize that is not your game.

Another option is a few links up, here: http://www.olive.us/p_bin/?cid=01_01_symphony

[phanophish]

Dell has some pretty good deals going on Dimension systems....

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=1d51h13&s=bsd

570 with a 19" flat panel and these are very quiret systems.  Just add the 24 bit sound card and a couple of BIG drives.....

[jbraveman]

Dell has some pretty good deals going on Dimension systems....

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=1d51h13&s=bsd

570 with a 19" flat panel and these are very quiret systems.  Just add the 24 bit sound card and a couple of BIG drives.....

This one only has 2 internal drive bays.  I'm looking for a big box that will accomodate many drives.

The build your-own option is seeming more and more appealing.  This link at tigerdirect makes it seem pretty easy.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/static/html/pcbuildingtips.html

My questions have evolved more in this direction:

1) is there an ideal case?  I'm not so much interested in an audio component type form factor as I am a case with plenty of size for drives.
2) is there difference between intel and AMD in terms of heat?
3) which power supply is quiet enought?

[Nick's Picks]

IMO...
the ideal PC based playbox would encorporate the SqueezeBox 3.  then you dont have to worry about such things as noise, heat..etc.

what I do is run a long Toslink cable from a PC in my office directly into my DAC60.  I controll it remotely w/my laptop (VnC) from the living room.  rocks out!  I've got about 500gb in that one music box computer.  it also needs more drives, and I'm lusting after a terrabyte NAS box.

now, what would really make it all good is a Monarchy Audio DIP 2496 box at the PC.  Its got a hot output that will drive a long cable with less issues like Jitter and other crap that is likely in the raw signal coming out of my chaintech sound card in the other room.  30' of Toslink is a long run.  that extra push from the DIP would really tighten things up.  Next time I have a spare 200, i'll pick one up.

[Cooker]

i don't think the brand of case matters much, just get a full tower.

you want to get a power supply that is 450 watt or more if you will be running a lot of drives. but, the bigger it is the louder it is.. unfortunately you can't tell how loud it is online.

you also want to get round IDE cables instead of the flat ribbon style cables. when you have a lot of drives they allow for more airflow.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

When you're building for a lot of drives (more than 2-3), I consider the case one of the most important parts of the system.  It is critical for good (and quiet) airflow and the ability to mount lots of drives in a way that dampens potentially destructive vibration. It should also allow additional drives to be easily added or replaced (unless you plan to fully populate it when you build it). I prefer the 120mm case fans at lower speed over more small fans at higher speed.

The airflow required to keep the drives cool is not substantial.. It just needs to be cool and even. Round cables are not essential like in a gaming pc with a super hot graphics card.  But it will get very cluttered if you put a lot of drives in so that is a good reason to just go SATA.

[pigiron]

since i always gravitate toward overkill... and i'm working with more and more 24 bit tunes... and i've been grabbing way too much music lately to do all that burning...

i built a rack mounted wireless linux jukebox... hotplug sata RAID1... PLED display... remote control... quiet... direct download off the inet... yadda, yadda. This one's not something I'd recommend for the faint of heart nor is it low budget... but it's scrumptious... 400G of gapless flacs (some in their 24 bit glory) available at the push of a button without leaving the cockpit... yummy.

in those rare instances that i want to burn CD/DVDs... well... that's why those super geniuses invented USB.

so... having made a weird one... i totally agree with everything OFOTD and Cooker said... especially about considering RAID (removeable RAID1 only requires two external bays... while my OS sits on a small internal drive) if ya got the budget... and also mentioned... before the 24 bit thing came along, the wireless squeezebox1 coupled with a decent server worked just fine and dandy.

to your other questions:

2) is there difference between intel and AMD in terms of heat?
3) which power supply is quiet enought?

2) not sure... i simply use AMD because i like an underdog... and the cheap Semperon 2000 has plenty of juice for my server.

3) get one with the big ass fan... for reference, i used this case until i went to RAID http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15130 and it's spec'ed at 25 dbA... which is even quieter than my refrigerator and totally disappeared, even at low volumes, when run in the music room. I had a hell of a time finding a quiet 1U PS for the rack mount.

(p.s.  i guess i'd better clean that filter soon     oh... and one of those "gaps" is where that brand new DAC1 goes when it comes back from repairs )

[tscales]

For what its worth...

I just started my new job as an mechanical design engineer at a company that makes huge machines that test hard drives for failure under extreme temperture and humidity environments.  Seagates are the most durable, just in terms of surviving harsh enviroments while operating.  As the enviroment is made cold/hot and humid/dry the drives are given read write commands, seek commands and basically put through all the thier paces.  My co-workers say Seagates outlast everything lese.  And we test IBM/Hitachis Maxtors, Samsungs and WDs, just to name a few, so I trust my new co workers opinions.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

I just started my new job as an mechanical design engineer at a company that makes huge machines that test hard drives for failure under extreme temperture and humidity environments.  Seagates are the most durable, just in terms of surviving harsh enviroments while operating.

Congrats on the new gig!

But which Seagates?  Are we talking cheapo ATA/SATA desktop drives?  SCSI server drives?  Laptop drives?

The other gotcha is that reliability tends to vary by model.  There are definitely lots of cases in history when an otherwise 'good' mfgr introduced a drive line that had problems. Or even a bad batch. IBM comes to mind.

Fortunately, the only drive that I have that operates in rough conditions is the laptop drive in my 722. I plan on replacing that drive before it fails, though I haven't decided quite when.  So any info on the reliability of laptop drives while in hot/humid conditions would be interesting.. I don't think that is typically a 'rough' application but it is definitely a hot one.  So in that case I'd be more interested in selecting the drive that does well with heat vs. one that can work on a mountain bike..

Then there is the server application. I don't think those extreme environment test conditions apply to properly installed drives in servers?  It would be interesting to know how the tests go for drives that operate at 30C.

[jbraveman]

I've been looking around this website quite a bit.

http://www.quietpcusa.com/acb/webpage.cfm?WebPage_ID=1&DID=8

They have and sell some nice products.  I'm leaning towards a full or mid tower with generous vents for fans as well as plenty of space for drives.  SATA 3 also seems like a good way to go.  There are some MOBO's with this on-board.

+T's all around for the suggestions.

[OFOTD]

I keep starting a reply and never finish so hopefully here is a good reply.

Currently at home I run a media server that hosts movies, tv shows, mp3's, flac's and pictures.  I do not use this machine for anything else other that as a media server.  Don't even have a monitor, keyboard or mouse hooked up to it. I view/listen to the content on it via my modded Xbox and a laptop.

 Here are the specs on it:

Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129158    The Antec case I use is very quiet and holds a ton of drives.

CPU/Mobo - Intel P4 3.0 / Asus Mobo  - I got these together as a combo at my local Fry's for like $150.  The mobo has onboard video/sound/LAN/SATA.  It also has 5 PCI slots as well as an AGP slot.

Memory - 1GB of Corsair Value Select  - It was on sale and since I don't do anything other than transfer files on this machine it was kinda of overkill but I got it super cheap.

Drives -  As of 5/8 I have 1 main drive that holds the OS (40 gig) that is plugged in via the onboard PATA slot.  For all of my data I have 9 Maxtor 300GB DiamondMax 10 SATA 150 drives as well 4 Maxtor 300GB DiamondMax 10 SATA 300 drives.   SATA 3 is the same as SATA 300 btw.

Controller cards - I ONLY use drive controllers made by Promise Technology. (www.promise.com)  They just work.  I have tried a couple of others like Adaptec and whatnot and now will ONLY use the Promise cards.  Super easy to setup and run great.  They are 4 port SATA controllers.  Two of them support SATA 150 and one supports SATA 300.  The cards are PCI cards btw.

Audio card - I use and love the Echo Media brand of cards.

OS - I am using Windows XP.   I had consider Server 2003 but decided it was overkill. 

Display - The wife and I just bought a 50" Plasma a few weeks ago and have a DVI connection between the server and the tv.

Software - Currently I am using SnapStream BeyondTV 4 on a demo until I can find a key or a cheap retail version of it.  BTV4 is similar to a Tivo.  I can watch save videos as well as watch/pause/record live tv.  This may not be what you are looking for but thought i'd mention it.

A few notes on cooling.  For the most part anything over what is provided with the case is overkill usually.  If you think you need extra cooling download a program that will give you temperature readouts of your cpu, drives, etc.  You can find one of these programs for free on download.com or somewhere similar. 

[Nick's Picks]

speaking of music servers...

Im in the middle of transfering all of my archived masters to HDD for playback ease.  Man, this is fun.  point winamp at the directory of masters, and 1200 songs come up to shuffle through at random.  Its like playing a guess this rig game..., and its a blast to hear the shitty ones mixed in with the excellent ones.  Gives me a much better perspective on what "good" is/was out of me efforts over the years.

I made some freakin' crispy AT853>Inbox>MD recordings!


I've got at least another 100gigs of stuff to transfer.  this is going to be fun.

Not to mention a few hundred gigs for current Grateful Dead downloads.  That shit fills up QUICK.  I can't even keep track of what I have any more.  But I guess thats a moot point.  I mean, what good are lists of GD music in your collection any more?  Unless they are your list of masters.

I'm just using an old Dell (1.2ghz / 340mb RAM / XPpro) that runs very quiet.  Chainteck 24bit card > toslink > lite DAC60.  I'd like to put DIP2496 in-line w/this setup eventualy.  I'm also a fan of the promise cards, and have a single one running things.  I"m still under a terrabyte of storage in mine...barely 1/2 in fact.  Still, that is A LOT of music!
you've got what, 2.7tb?  shit.  thats silly!  I want to get to that point as well.

[lds490]

speaking of music servers...

Im in the middle of transfering all of my archived masters to HDD for playback ease.  Man, this is fun.  point winamp at the directory of masters, and 1200 songs come up to shuffle through at random.  Its like playing a guess this rig game..., and its a blast to hear the shitty ones mixed in with the excellent ones.  Gives me a much better perspective on what "good" is/was out of me efforts over the years.

I made some freakin' crispy AT853>Inbox>MD recordings!


I've got at least another 100gigs of stuff to transfer.  this is going to be fun.

Not to mention a few hundred gigs for current Grateful Dead downloads.  That shit fills up QUICK.  I can't even keep track of what I have any more.  But I guess thats a moot point.  I mean, what good are lists of GD music in your collection any more?  Unless they are your list of masters.

I'm just using an old Dell (1.2ghz / 340mb RAM / XPpro) that runs very quiet.  Chainteck 24bit card > toslink > lite DAC60.  I'd like to put DIP2496 in-line w/this setup eventualy.  I'm also a fan of the promise cards, and have a single one running things.  I"m still under a terrabyte of storage in mine...barely 1/2 in fact.  Still, that is A LOT of music!
you've got what, 2.7tb?  shit.  thats silly!  I want to get to that point as well.

I've been working on a similar project recently - I've nearly filled my 2 drives with 450GB of FLAC files. 

My computer playback is nearly identical.  My question:  How much computer (processor, RAM, etc.) do I need for HDTV video?  I want a computer that is dedicated for media recording and playback, including a tuner card that supports HDTV.  Obviously, I'll need a big HD for recording HiDef TV, but what else  should I look for?

[dnsacks]

hdtv video -- I use a pIV 2.8gig with 512mb of ram (I'd recommend at least 1gb of ram) and windows mce (with an ati hdtvwonder card) -- works pretty well for over the air hdtv viewing/recording and playback (I have an occasional drop-out/stutter now and then that I'm currently attributing to needing more ram).  NOTE -- It's my understanding that a computer-based setup will only work for over-the-air hdtv and is not yet compatible with cable-based (or satellite-based) hdtv content.  I believe that the next version of windoze will allow for cable hdtv compatibility.