iTunes or Looney Tunes? The great music server debate.
- Thread starter Phelonious Ponk
- Start date
As we wait for a more learned colleague to join in, how about a basic description from start to finish of how to setup and operate a MacIntosh computer-based music server. Include all necessary equipment, storage options, methods of transporting data, DACs and their various connections, and getting the most out of high-resolution files. A big order, I know, but a tutorial that would be appreciated by many. This description would offer many points for debate and discussion.
What do you say, PP?
Lee
What do you say, PP?
Lee
Sorry for the late response Y'll. When you are trying to tend to two business and have 6 acres to mow and weed, sometimes participating in the forum takes the backseat 
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Or are you suggesting to mirror those drives to get redundancy? If so, a better way may be to set up a home server such as WHS (Windows Home Server) which can not only be your music store, but back up all of your computers and provide remote desktop capability. Oops, it doesn't run MacOS.
But sure, if you are a Mac guy already and use iPhone/iPod, you can go with this option and not suffer too much.
Whether these techniques make a difference audibly is hard to say. It all depends on how your PC works, the quality of your DAC, other activity in your PC, etc.
.I will join but let me say that the Mac has grown up a lot in the last few years and I certainly don't see anything wrong with people using it as a media source.
What are you doing with 2 terrabytes of storage? My lossless library I think is 200 gigabytes. You don't have 10X the music I have, do you?
Or are you suggesting to mirror those drives to get redundancy? If so, a better way may be to set up a home server such as WHS (Windows Home Server) which can not only be your music store, but back up all of your computers and provide remote desktop capability. Oops, it doesn't run MacOS
.I suggest keeping a copy at work or at second house as I do. Cloud storage is another option but probably not worth the cost right now given these options.
Well, you haven't listed anything that windows can't do. But you did point out a key problem: Apple's instances of its way or the highway. Throw it WMA Lossless library that I have and it will proceed to convert it to AAC on Windows. Not sure what the heck it will do on the Mac. Here is the thing that is really sad: WMA Lossless playback and encoding is all free on Windows. Indeed, that is how iTunes is able to read them to then convert to AAC. They could just as well store them as is in their database but instead, it goes and chews up CPU and disk storage.
But sure, if you are a Mac guy already and use iPhone/iPod, you can go with this option and not suffer too much
.Actually there may be a reason for that beyond the one you mention regarding sample rate conversion.
Ok, here is a bit of theory. A media player indeed just spits out the audio samples. It is the DAC that coverts them into sound. Problem is, the PC (mac or otherwise) is a noisy beast. What these other players attempt to do is to quiet down the activities of the PC if you will, and make it more of a steady-state operation. And entire clip for example, may be read into memory and played from there rather than going to disk one chunk at a time and at that moment, cause something to leak onto DAC clock.
Whether these techniques make a difference audibly is hard to say. It all depends on how your PC works, the quality of your DAC, other activity in your PC, etc.
All goodness. My Media Center PC in front of me has an SSD for its boot drive. It runs very fast and very cool. BTW, which Apple model ships with SSD as its boot drive?
Yup. I have all of that, plus all of my best pictures as a nice slideshow as the music plays, plus I have network-based digital tuners letting me watch HDTV on the same box. Which Mac lets me do that?
Great point Amir, i am a Mac guy, but am desperate to get a SSD boot drive big enough to house my music/pictures, it could really reduce noise form the music server! i didn't realize some PCs went this route already
Yes, it has. OSX has been a huge leap forward. And Windows has grown as well. If my bit of experience with my wife's Dell is any indication, with W7 it is now only a generation or so behind OSX.
What are you doing with 2 terrabytes of storage? My lossless library I think is 200 gigabytes. You don't have 10X the music I have, do you?
It's overkill. And the fact that the kinds of slow, quiet, low-tech drives that are best for this purpose are so cheap an extra 500MB was almost free.
Or are you suggesting to mirror those drives to get redundancy? If so, a better way may be to set up a home server such as WHS (Windows Home Server) which can not only be your music store, but back up all of your computers and provide remote desktop capability. Oops, it doesn't run MacOS
The drives are for redundancy, but don't mirrored drives mirror errors? I could run Windows Home Server, in Windows, on my Mac while running OSX programs simultaneously if there were any need, but I can back up everything I have through Time Machine in OSX.
Work and home....same place. But you're right. An off-site location would be best for the back-up drive.
I keep running into people who seem to almost have their faith in democracy challenged by Apple's "closed" strategy. The thing is, when this old Windows user uses Apples, he doesn't feel closed off from anything at all. In fact, he feels empowered by a system that is so easy, so trouble-free. YMMV.
But sure, if you are a Mac guy already and use iPhone/iPod, you can go with this option and not suffer too much
Yes, and if you're one of the people who uses the Zune and you need company, I'm sure you can find the other one...I've got his phone number here somewhere....
I get the theory, I just don't hear it in practice and believe more traditional ways of isolating electronic noise from analog circuits are both simpler and more effective.
The Mac Air. Fast and cool is good. And the quiet spinning of the HD in my MacBook, before the first song plays, seems to be the only audible noise I'm getting from the system. Maybe I'll get around to putting in a SS boot drive one of these days.
All of them.
Really, either platform is a good path these days, and I'm sure there are many people here who use both Windows PCs, and iPods. Is running iTunes, bit-perfect, in Windows 7 now a seamless path? No need to work around the kmixer, or whatever that thing was? Other than the SS boot drive, have you tried anything exotic? System optimization? Alternative software like Media Monkey?
P
It's not a big order at all, because it is so simple. The hard drives do not need to be exotic. In fact, faster drives typically create more noise. I use cheap, ubiquitous, very quiet Western digital My Book drives, but it really doesn't matter. When I was ripping my CD collection, I just set the MacBook and one of the drives up in a central location in the house, with all of the CDs.
In iTunes>Preferences>Import Settings, choose Apple Lossless recorder and check the box for using error protection.
In iTunes>Preferences>Advanced, set the iTunes media folder location to your external drive, check "keep media folder organized," and "copy files to media folder when adding to library.
in iTunes>Preferences>General, set "when you insert a CD" to "import CD and reject."
Get up. Stick in a disc, go to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Stick in another disc, brush your teeth. Stick in another disc, get dressed, Stick in another disc, make your bed.... Repeat for an entire weekend, or as long as it takes to rip your CD library. You're done. To set the Mac up for listening, just plug the hard drive into one usb port, plug the Mac into a DAC, plug the DAC into your system. What DAC? Really, that's up to you and not what this thread is about. I'm not a fan of NOS DACs, and Macs output optical, usb and fire wire, so the choices are wide open. If your collection, like mine, is 99% 16/44.1, you don't need to plug in a DAC or keep your computer in your listening room. You can stream wirelessly from your Mac to an Airport Express, which then plugs into a DAC, and into a system anywhere in your house. And if you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you can download a free app called "Remote," and control the iTunes on your Mac from anywhere in your house, in front of any system. Try that on Amir's Windows system
. Airport Express doesn't do hi res, though. There are other streaming devices that do, if you have a high-res library to consider. You'll also need a copy of Pure Music to automatically switch sample rates for you, so you don't have to go into the Audio Midi settings and switch manually every time you play a hi-res file.That's it, really. If you don't believe in magic, it's quite simple. Now, if you don't believe lossless is lossless, if you think you can hear the noise of your computer thinking, or its switching power supply, even through the perfect galvanic isolation of a wireless connection (if you're not connecting wirelessly use optical, or a digital transport that isolates), if you believe that you can deepen the soundstage and reveal inner detail through the use of a silver plated usb cable that reduces skin effect (as if the zeros and ones actually know whether or not they're carrying high frequency information), you can make it as complicated as you like and still be tweaking when the rest of us are listening. And if that's where you find your bliss, enjoy.
By the way, now that your computer is your source, a whole new world has opened up. Internet radio -- incoming and broadcasting! Online album art, liner notes, concert tickets, videos, downloads....there's lots to talk about, lots to enjoy. Here's a great place to start:
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/
Great little audio programs. A couple of them will even work on Amir's PC.
P
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This is about using a PC for direct playback.
Might be one running OSX or Win but I don’t see any reason to call it a music server.
The moment you have a PC running a server process and a client connecting to it over the network using a specific protocol (DLNA, Squeeze, DAAP, etc) you use the box as a server.
Does this matter?
I think it does. The moment you use the box as a server you bypass almost all of the OS audio.
Win7/WMP12 – OSX/iTunes
I do think the interfaces most of all have more in common that that they differ.
Both keep it simple, an interface allowing you to do the basic things.
Ripping
Both have a secure mode, both are equally badly documented about how this works.
Both don’t support AccurateRip, you need dbPoweramp on Win to do so.
Don’t know if there is a OSX ripper with AccurateRip support.
Both use an online database for tagging. In case of iTunes you have to open an iTunes account and handover your credit card number first to get cover art.
Cover art is where iTunes shines. WMP reduces it to 250x250
Both promote their proprietary lossless format, both don’t support FLAC natively.
Both can be configured to play FLAC using third party plug-ins.
Drivers
Both players won’t allow you to bypass the audio engine of the OS.
In case of Win you can bypass the audio engine using WASAPI in exclusive mode but you need another player like J River ($50) or Foobar (free) to do so.
In case of OSX you can’t but there is a HOG mode, giving you a straight unaltered audio path. You need a third party tool like Pure Music ($ 129) or Amarra ($695) to do so.
In both cases your audio will be played at its native resolution (if your hardware supports it)
Out of the box both will resample everything to the rate set in the control panel.
According to dCS, OSX does a better job than Vista but they don’t consider it being ‘audiophile’ grade.
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Lib/OperatingSystemsHandlingOfSampleRates.pdf
Hardware
This is where Win shines, supporting each and everybody’s hardware.
You have a wider range of sound cards to choose from.
However when using a laptop or an outboard DAC this argument is less relevant.
Server
Microsoft is a DLNA member, Apple isn’t
http://www.dlna.org/about_us/roster/
DLNA is the industry standard for streaming AV.
Win has good DLNA support, OSX not.
If you want to integrate all your AV gear regardless of its brand, Win is the platform of choice.
Might be one running OSX or Win but I don’t see any reason to call it a music server.
The moment you have a PC running a server process and a client connecting to it over the network using a specific protocol (DLNA, Squeeze, DAAP, etc) you use the box as a server.
Does this matter?
I think it does. The moment you use the box as a server you bypass almost all of the OS audio.
Win7/WMP12 – OSX/iTunes
I do think the interfaces most of all have more in common that that they differ.
Both keep it simple, an interface allowing you to do the basic things.
Ripping
Both have a secure mode, both are equally badly documented about how this works.
Both don’t support AccurateRip, you need dbPoweramp on Win to do so.
Don’t know if there is a OSX ripper with AccurateRip support.
Both use an online database for tagging. In case of iTunes you have to open an iTunes account and handover your credit card number first to get cover art.
Cover art is where iTunes shines. WMP reduces it to 250x250
Both promote their proprietary lossless format, both don’t support FLAC natively.
Both can be configured to play FLAC using third party plug-ins.
Drivers
Both players won’t allow you to bypass the audio engine of the OS.
In case of Win you can bypass the audio engine using WASAPI in exclusive mode but you need another player like J River ($50) or Foobar (free) to do so.
In case of OSX you can’t but there is a HOG mode, giving you a straight unaltered audio path. You need a third party tool like Pure Music ($ 129) or Amarra ($695) to do so.
In both cases your audio will be played at its native resolution (if your hardware supports it)
Out of the box both will resample everything to the rate set in the control panel.
According to dCS, OSX does a better job than Vista but they don’t consider it being ‘audiophile’ grade.
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Lib/OperatingSystemsHandlingOfSampleRates.pdf
Hardware
This is where Win shines, supporting each and everybody’s hardware.
You have a wider range of sound cards to choose from.
However when using a laptop or an outboard DAC this argument is less relevant.
Server
Microsoft is a DLNA member, Apple isn’t
http://www.dlna.org/about_us/roster/
DLNA is the industry standard for streaming AV.
Win has good DLNA support, OSX not.
If you want to integrate all your AV gear regardless of its brand, Win is the platform of choice.
Thanks Vincent, I was hoping you'd pop in and add some much-needed detail. Not sure I get the "server" distinction. You can easily set up a Mac or Windows source to serve multiple audio playback systems in multiple rooms. I can't speak for Windows, but iTunes can also share among all computer systems in a network. What are we failing to serve?
P
I know it is common to call a PC running playback software a ‘music server’.
But I object.
A true server doesn’t do the playback.
It sends the AV over the network to a client, there the actual playback is done.
A lot of aspects which might make a difference between OSX and Win loose their meaning.
Sound card: not used on the server
Audio drivers like WASAPI or HOG mode: not used on the server.
Cover art: not used on the server
Impact of system load on sound quality: irrelevant on the server as long as it is able to stream fast enough to avoid buffer under run a the client.
Etc.
The only aspect I can think of where the server can have an impact on sound quality is when the audio format is not supported by the client. Than the server has to do the transcoding. This is the case where arguments about the quality of the SRC applies as well.
Otherwise I’m inclined to say that in case of streaming audio, the server has no impact on sound quality when transcoding is not used . As a consequence, the OS is irrelevant.
iTunes server is known to me.
What I was trying to say is that it is a proprietary protocol, just like Squeezebox is using it’s own proprietary protocol.
As more and more AV gear supports DLNA, you can’t integrate them when using out of the box OSX.
I expect DLNA will be the de-facto standard protocol in the near future for AV like TCP/IP has become the de-facto standard for the networking
But I object.
A true server doesn’t do the playback.
It sends the AV over the network to a client, there the actual playback is done.
A lot of aspects which might make a difference between OSX and Win loose their meaning.
Sound card: not used on the server
Audio drivers like WASAPI or HOG mode: not used on the server.
Cover art: not used on the server
Impact of system load on sound quality: irrelevant on the server as long as it is able to stream fast enough to avoid buffer under run a the client.
Etc.
The only aspect I can think of where the server can have an impact on sound quality is when the audio format is not supported by the client. Than the server has to do the transcoding. This is the case where arguments about the quality of the SRC applies as well.
Otherwise I’m inclined to say that in case of streaming audio, the server has no impact on sound quality when transcoding is not used . As a consequence, the OS is irrelevant.
iTunes server is known to me.
What I was trying to say is that it is a proprietary protocol, just like Squeezebox is using it’s own proprietary protocol.
As more and more AV gear supports DLNA, you can’t integrate them when using out of the box OSX.
I expect DLNA will be the de-facto standard protocol in the near future for AV like TCP/IP has become the de-facto standard for the networking
Objection noted. DLNA is cool, and could be very convenient under some circumstances, but at this point it's not worth an OS change to me. W7 may have solved all the problems of older versions of Windows, but I still have that nasty taste in my mouth and I don't trust them going forward; it seems like every other major release of Windows implodes.
P
Vincent, I took PP's post as a combo server+player. I don't think anyone goes to jail for attempting that . Indeed, pending my true data server build, I am using that model with replicated library in each PC driving a dedicated DAC or AVR's DAC. I think many people are interested in this kind of scenario and not just the pure server+client model that you described. If you have a need for multiple clients, then the data server model works best. And there, other than WHS, I am not sure I will recommend either Mac or Windows. The solutions out there for data server are:
1. Unraid. A shrink-wrapped Linux system that provides full redundancy. And makes it easy to add drives. Just buy another and connect it to the machine and it gets utilized. Drawback is that you lose 50% of your storage to redundancy.
2. Windows Home Server. WHS works differently than Unraid but has all the same characteristics. It is a shrink-wrapped version of Windows Server so it has a really nice and reliable core. Again, per unraid, you can just throw a drive in there and it gets used. When I retire old PCs, I add their drives to WHS.
3. Building your own system using various software and hardware RAID solutions. These require considerable skill and in many cases, adding a drive means reformatting the volume. Servers can be built using Linux or Windows Server.
4. Dedicated NAS boxes from many vendors. You can buy these with or without drives with the latter letting you shop for whatever is cheapest.
For people who want the easy way, WHS or NAS are the only good options.
. Indeed, pending my true data server build, I am using that model with replicated library in each PC driving a dedicated DAC or AVR's DAC. I think many people are interested in this kind of scenario and not just the pure server+client model that you described. If you have a need for multiple clients, then the data server model works best. And there, other than WHS, I am not sure I will recommend either Mac or Windows. The solutions out there for data server are:1. Unraid. A shrink-wrapped Linux system that provides full redundancy. And makes it easy to add drives. Just buy another and connect it to the machine and it gets utilized. Drawback is that you lose 50% of your storage to redundancy.
2. Windows Home Server. WHS works differently than Unraid but has all the same characteristics. It is a shrink-wrapped version of Windows Server so it has a really nice and reliable core. Again, per unraid, you can just throw a drive in there and it gets used. When I retire old PCs, I add their drives to WHS.
3. Building your own system using various software and hardware RAID solutions. These require considerable skill and in many cases, adding a drive means reformatting the volume. Servers can be built using Linux or Windows Server.
4. Dedicated NAS boxes from many vendors. You can buy these with or without drives with the latter letting you shop for whatever is cheapest.
For people who want the easy way, WHS or NAS are the only good options.
Indeed, 1 Tbyte drives are in the sweet spot right now. Just bought one for my son for $64 at Fry's!
No. Writes are written to both drives. Reads ping pong between them, giving you better performance. Should one fail, then the other keeps the system going.
Where you lose data with any type of hard disk redundancy is user error. If you go and erase the entire directory where your music is, then the system faithfully deletes if from both mirrored disks. Solution is to have true back-up. In my case, I have my music server on a PC and it is backed up on WHS. Should I below away the music server data, I can go to WHS server and get it all back. All of my images are stored there too.
This is important point worth repeating: back up and redundancy are both needed. The latter doesn't eliminate the need for the former.
It really is not the mode you want to use. WHS comes pre-built on nice little servers designed for this use. I don't see the need to host it elsewhere and reduce its overall reliability by adding millions of other lines of code next to it. Here is a popular example from HP: http://www.amazon.com/EX495-1-5TB-M...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1280591332&sr=8-1
I assume not everyone works from home
. For them, work is a viable solution. If the company allows it, just put the copy on your hard disk. If not, get a portable hard disk and store it in the drawer there.Those people have different needs. For those of us who have built our dataset on Windows, the switching costs is high. There is no two ways around it. You may not know this but I lived for a decade on a Mac. I finally got tired of the limited choice of hardware and at the time, the huge premium and switched back. The last memory I have of my Mac was it crashing every time I tried to shut it down! Yes, shutting it down.
I also love building my own PCs because I get to hand pick every component. I am sitting in front of my media center PC that I built that way with SSD as the boot drive, core i5 processor that runs cool to the touch, and motherboard that has all the connectivity I wanted. The box is rock solid.
On the latter point, you want a reliable windows machine? Install windows and just the one or two apps you need. It will stay extremely reliable that way. What brings down reliability is installing app after app and driver after driver some of which has barely been tested.
Well, the two go hand in had together. Unless your DAC is the master clock and driving your PC, err Mac, then the clock source is generated from the Mac and it is subject to clock variations (jitter). Characterizing that without equipment is shooting in the dark. While there is no assurance that these programs do anything positive, they are worthwhile trying if free.
Mac Air is a laptop. How do you use that as your "server?" You leave it connected to your stereo all the time or keep reconnecting cables to it every time you listen to something? My question was regarding a desktop system.
Try it. You will be shocked at the improved performance with a good, recent generation SSD (older ones were not always faster than hard disks).
BTW, get an SSD with TRIM support. This sharply reduces the slowdown that occurs as you write to your SSD (flash media hates being written to). Here is more on TRIM if you are not familiar with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM
Oh wait! I just remembered Windows 7 supports Trim but Mac OS does not! "That right there" would be reason enough to avoid the Mac
. Seriously, Apple is really, really behind times in not supporting Trim.All of them support ATSC and cable tuners as Windows does out of the box? If so, I am behind times. Where do I go read about that?
From Vista on, there is no Kmixer. There is instead a new kernel mixer and resampler with much higher performance. This is needed as any app can produce sound so you need to merge the different streams with varying sample rates potentially. The Vista/Win 7 mixer keeps internal samples in floating point so it maintains very high accuracy and its noise floor is quite low. So for most people, using the existing path is just fine.
Most of the time a NAS is a box running Linux.
People might struggle before they realize that they need to make (Linux) users, shares and add users to shares. Integrating a WHS might be easier.
If you want to use a Linux box for DNLA, be careful. There are some pretty bad DLNA implementations available. Look for Twonky Vision or any other certified DLNA server.
An affordable solution:Vortexbox
Personally, I’m not in need of RAID. I do have my music collection replicated to another box so in case one brakes down, I could use the other.
I do recommend remote replication.
I have a NAS at home and one at my sisters. Once a week both our data (music, photo’s) are synchronized over the internet using Rsync.
Nope. No way around it. If I had hung through the great Vista debacle, I probably wouldn't be switching now. But I didn't.
Sounds much like my last experiences with Windows.
And personally, I think guys who enjoy doing that sort of thing should be Windows users. Personally, I'd rather take a beating than install another driver, much less build a system.
Yeah, but you talk about limiting. Just sitting here talking to you I have iTunes, Mail, Safari and Word running. I don't really need Word right now, but I don't need to turn it off either. And, have I ever installed a driver?
I've tried them. I didn't hear any benefit running 16/44.1. And my digital transport re-clocks. I've gone through it, and I've gone around it. No audible increase in jitter. I know it is a controversial subject, but I still think jitter is a largely theoretical problem these days.
Me mis-using the term "server" again. In my personal case, yes it stays connected a lot, but I don't hesitate to unhook the MacBook and carry it off. I'm sitting up in bed right now. It's just two usb cables and I'm on the move. If my stereo systems were in another room, I'd just send a wireless signal to an Airport Express connected to them.
I will probably try it when the prices get in line. In the meantime, I'm moving along quickly enough.
BTW, get an SSD with TRIM support. This sharply reduces the slowdown that occurs as you write to your SSD (flash media hates being written to). Here is more on TRIM if you are not familiar with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM
Oh wait! I just remembered Windows 7 supports Trim but Mac OS does not! "That right there" would be reason enough to avoid the Mac
That is a limitation. Though it pales next to limiting a system to just one or two programs to keep it reliable.
Out of the box, no.
P
Mostyt the difference is the choices offered
Do you have actual experience with "the great Vista debacle"?
I did my homework and stuck with Win XP. I haven't seen a system crash in years. I don't do anything heroic but I avoid doing stupid stuff. I use Win 7 on a laptop for travel and remote control. It works without problems too. The security stuff is quite bearable.
> Personally, I'd rather take a beating than install another driver, much less build a system.
I'd rather decide what I want and get it at a real-world price. The only Mac that allows me to add cards and 3.5" drives as needed is outrageously expensive. I'd hate taking such a financial beating.
> And, have I ever installed a driver?
My wife and I use off-the shelf HP desktop PCs for our personal systems. I've never installed a driver on either PC.
When I built a dedicated MusicPC from parts, I did install all the motherboard related drivers. It took 60-90 minutes. When I added 2 PCI bus soundcards, I installed their drivers in about 10 minutes.
> Just sitting here talking to you I have iTunes, Mail, Safari and Word running.
On my personal Win XP PC, Thunderbird, Google Chrome, J. River Media Center, Open office and Adobe Reader are running without problems right now.
> That is a limitation. Though it pales next to limiting a system to just one or two programs to keep it reliable.
You don't have to limit your self to one or two programs with Win XP or Win 7.
In the pro audio world, requirements are more demanding: more audio in/out streams and more CPU use for plug-ins for audio software. In that world, PC and Mac users alike face the same problems of controlling latency with heavy CPU use.
Of course, if you want to do conservative tuning on a PC, there are good tools available. One side benefit of such tuning is fast startup and shutdown without an SSD. The other is a highly predictable environment for playback. I have not heard a playback glitch in years.
There are practical reasons to dedicate a PC to audio playback. One is to have a simple, uncluttered, highly controlled environment for a large music library. I put effort into ripping and tagging my music collection. I don't want to do it again. I treat my music PC as I would a server running business software. I control the environment and limit the changes that occur. I would manage a Mac dedicated to music playback in the same way.
A dedicated MusicPC can be headless (no keyoard, mouse or screen) and control it from another PC using a VNC connection. I use mine for playback in 3 separate rooms with remote control providing an interface in that room. There are all kinds of remote control options now for J. River Media Center and similar playback programs so this is not as necessary.
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Windows PCs and OSX Macs are performing the same functions in similar ways. The big difference is choice:
In the Mac world, you don't have to learn much or make many choices. On the other hand, if you know what you want, the lack of choices in the Mac world can be a disqualifying factor.
The Windows world offers all sorts of choices. If learning enough to make those choices and then making them that makes your head hurt, stick to Macs.
When I was researching choices for a MusicPC 4+ years ago, I spent several months trying to get iTunes to do what I wanted. (Mostly to use the tags I wanted for classical music.) iTunes was just inadequate for my purposes. In the Mac world, there weren't any other viable music playback programs at that time. In the Windows world, I had dozens of full-featured playback programs to choose from. The J. River Media Center software fit my needs. A Mac simply wasn't an reasonable option for me.
Bill
Do you have actual experience with "the great Vista debacle"?
I did my homework and stuck with Win XP. I haven't seen a system crash in years. I don't do anything heroic but I avoid doing stupid stuff. I use Win 7 on a laptop for travel and remote control. It works without problems too. The security stuff is quite bearable.
> Personally, I'd rather take a beating than install another driver, much less build a system.
I'd rather decide what I want and get it at a real-world price. The only Mac that allows me to add cards and 3.5" drives as needed is outrageously expensive. I'd hate taking such a financial beating.
> And, have I ever installed a driver?
My wife and I use off-the shelf HP desktop PCs for our personal systems. I've never installed a driver on either PC.
When I built a dedicated MusicPC from parts, I did install all the motherboard related drivers. It took 60-90 minutes. When I added 2 PCI bus soundcards, I installed their drivers in about 10 minutes.
> Just sitting here talking to you I have iTunes, Mail, Safari and Word running.
On my personal Win XP PC, Thunderbird, Google Chrome, J. River Media Center, Open office and Adobe Reader are running without problems right now.
> That is a limitation. Though it pales next to limiting a system to just one or two programs to keep it reliable.
You don't have to limit your self to one or two programs with Win XP or Win 7.
In the pro audio world, requirements are more demanding: more audio in/out streams and more CPU use for plug-ins for audio software. In that world, PC and Mac users alike face the same problems of controlling latency with heavy CPU use.
Of course, if you want to do conservative tuning on a PC, there are good tools available. One side benefit of such tuning is fast startup and shutdown without an SSD. The other is a highly predictable environment for playback. I have not heard a playback glitch in years.
There are practical reasons to dedicate a PC to audio playback. One is to have a simple, uncluttered, highly controlled environment for a large music library. I put effort into ripping and tagging my music collection. I don't want to do it again. I treat my music PC as I would a server running business software. I control the environment and limit the changes that occur. I would manage a Mac dedicated to music playback in the same way.
A dedicated MusicPC can be headless (no keyoard, mouse or screen) and control it from another PC using a VNC connection. I use mine for playback in 3 separate rooms with remote control providing an interface in that room. There are all kinds of remote control options now for J. River Media Center and similar playback programs so this is not as necessary.
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Windows PCs and OSX Macs are performing the same functions in similar ways. The big difference is choice:
In the Mac world, you don't have to learn much or make many choices. On the other hand, if you know what you want, the lack of choices in the Mac world can be a disqualifying factor.
The Windows world offers all sorts of choices. If learning enough to make those choices and then making them that makes your head hurt, stick to Macs.
When I was researching choices for a MusicPC 4+ years ago, I spent several months trying to get iTunes to do what I wanted. (Mostly to use the tags I wanted for classical music.) iTunes was just inadequate for my purposes. In the Mac world, there weren't any other viable music playback programs at that time. In the Windows world, I had dozens of full-featured playback programs to choose from. The J. River Media Center software fit my needs. A Mac simply wasn't an reasonable option for me.
Bill
Yep. Don't agree about the cost, though. If you get a PC with similar quality screen, trackpad, keyboard, physical build quality etc, it's going to be among the more expensive of it's kind. It will still be cheaper though. But if you buy/build a dedicated music computer, there goes the savings. Different strokes. Want to do a brief rundown on how to build/configure/run a PC for music playback?
P
PS - No, I never owned a Vista machine. I got out personally after W98. Still had an XP system in the house -- my wife's -- but jumped from there to W7.
HI
I find myself in both world. I admire Mac for the Interface and the reliability. It just does work, no crashes and strange behavior after a few months o use .. For music however, I prefer Windows.despite using both.
For starters, iTunes is good not excellent and too much of a walled garden. It does some things very well but nothing better than Media Monkey or my favorite Foobar. With these two, pesky art covers don't necessitate your information into anyone database .. Plus you can tag anything and everything just the way you want to ... foobar for example likely supports every codec ever made and allows you to transcode anything to anything else, wav to ape to flac to AAC to Apple Lossless to mp3 to ogg vorbis and even to arcane (for music lovers)coecs like speex and plays them of course ... Native support for cue sheet in flac and ape Foobar bypasses the dreaded XP Kernel mixer with a simple command (not always reliably, I must add), and of course support WASAPI.. ALl this for free too ... Foobar in itself is a compelling reason to use WIndows for the purpose, provided you install very few programs and make sure the machine is dedicated for the task of music.
. I hated the failed experiment called Vista , I still use XP which has proven itself quite reliable... It still suffers from the tendency to become less performing and reliable as time passes but is nowhere the resources hog that Vista is. nor does it crash at the smallest sneeze .
SO yes, the Mac is wonderful but this time because of software and hardware, Windoze seems to present an advantage for music services ...
I find myself in both world. I admire Mac for the Interface and the reliability. It just does work, no crashes and strange behavior after a few months o use .. For music however, I prefer Windows.despite using both.
For starters, iTunes is good not excellent and too much of a walled garden. It does some things very well but nothing better than Media Monkey or my favorite Foobar. With these two, pesky art covers don't necessitate your information into anyone database .. Plus you can tag anything and everything just the way you want to ... foobar for example likely supports every codec ever made and allows you to transcode anything to anything else, wav to ape to flac to AAC to Apple Lossless to mp3 to ogg vorbis and even to arcane (for music lovers)coecs like speex and plays them of course ... Native support for cue sheet in flac and ape Foobar bypasses the dreaded XP Kernel mixer with a simple command (not always reliably, I must add), and of course support WASAPI.. ALl this for free too ... Foobar in itself is a compelling reason to use WIndows for the purpose, provided you install very few programs and make sure the machine is dedicated for the task of music.
. I hated the failed experiment called Vista , I still use XP which has proven itself quite reliable... It still suffers from the tendency to become less performing and reliable as time passes but is nowhere the resources hog that Vista is. nor does it crash at the smallest sneeze .
SO yes, the Mac is wonderful but this time because of software and hardware, Windoze seems to present an advantage for music services ...
All that is valid enough, Frantz, though I've never found iTunes limitations personally limiting, and I've found the integration with my iPod Touch and the iTunes store, and a handful of plug-ins personally empowering. The use of my iPod Touch as a graphic, fully-interactive remote control alone is worth the price of admission! Besides, the only time I've ever needed capability outside of iTunes was to convert FLAC to Apple Lossless. A quick, free download of MAX solved the issue, and seemed a much more practical solution for me than separate computer for music. And I'm just not interested in Windows as my primary/only system. I want to be able to grab another small program or plug-in off of the net whenever one appeals to me, download it, and be all but certain it will immediately install and run properly with no noticeable effect on my system's performance and no additional effort on my part. That has always been my experience with OSX, rarely with Windows. On Windows, I always approached installing software and adding hardware with great dread. I'm really no more computer savvy now than I was then, but I don't think twice about it in OSX. It always just works. I'm sure that Windows has gotten better. I'm sure "plug and play" is no longer the oxymoron it once was in Windows. And I believe W7, like XP is relatively stable. I applaud the progress but will remain where the experience has remained positive through multiple releases of the OS. And even though I'm on a fixed income, I'll gladly pay the premium. This is the very heart of how consumer loyalty works, I'm afraid. If you screw up badly enough, you lose customers for life. It seldom matters how much you subsequently make up for it.
P
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
PP
If you think the ipod touch is great to use as a remote try the ipad for both a remote and controller. Easier on the eyes with a much better keyboard.
If you think the ipod touch is great to use as a remote try the ipad for both a remote and controller. Easier on the eyes with a much better keyboard.
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