Music server’s advice please from you experts, should I get one?

[Gravenhurst]

Apologies in advance for my general ignorance on this subject, I have a few questions for you experts.

1. First of all ‘music server’ am I even using the right terminology? For something like the Olive 03HD

2. Sound quality, it’s the most important thing to me so will there be any loss in quality after you have ripped your music to the hard drive or will it sound just as good as playing the CD?

3. I have heard about better than CD quality music, is this readily available? Where from? And how would you get it onto the player if you were not ripping a CD?

4. What ones would you recommend I look at? It needs to have the ability to rip CDs direct and have a large hard drive for all my music like the olive.

I have more questions but this will probably do for starters

Thanks In advance

 

[DocG]

I will answer with some more questions:

1. What is your budget?

2. Do you want to keep the multiroom option open?

3. Do you already have computer storage (NAS, laptop, ...) connected to a network?

 

[BigH]

You may want to read this review: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/audio-visual/hi-fi-and-audio/audio-systems/olive-03hd-915911/review

It really depends what you have already in terms of a computer. There are high res downloads available but not widely and tend to be expensive and many USA based ones are not available to UK residents. As for 24 v 16 bit many can't hear the difference anyway.

 

[matt49]

What ones would you recommend I look at? It needs to have the ability to rip CDs direct and have a large hard drive for all my music like the olive.

I'm afraid I don't have any recommendations, as I rip CDs the laborious way on a PC. (I can't abide what CD rippers do to metadata, so I edit all the metadata myself. Yes, I know I'm a loser!) But one constructive (I hope) piece of advice. Before you settle on a server/streamer with direct ripping capacity, do make sure that you understand exactly how you're going to back up your music to an external HDD.

Matt

 

[BigH]

As said you can do it on your pc, HD are cheap now, you may want to look at SSD (Solid State Drives) which have some advantages but are more expensive. This is a quite a complex area with many new products being launched, the Olive looks alright but is expensive for what it does.

 

[Gravenhurst]

I will answer with some more questions:

1. What is your budget?

2. Do you want to keep the multiroom option open?

3. Do you already have computer storage (NAS, laptop, ...) connected to a network?

1. Hmm not really sure how much they cost anyway, but i wouldnt want to spend more than i needed to just for the sake of it. I just want something that works and can hold all my cds without loss of quality or maybe even superior quality.

2. Not bothered about multiroom.

3. I do have a laptop but it doesnt have a huge amount of memory so the music on it is in mp3 format, its mostly used for spotify, sorry i dont know what NAS is?

 

[Andrew Everard]

sorry i dont know what NAS is?

Network Attached Storage: see here

 

[BigH]

I think the Olive is about £900 so not cheap. If you don't have a pc it maybe the way to go although can you not just add HD to your laptop? I don't think ripping your cds will improve the sound quality.

As you hav eMarantz have you consider the Marantz N7004? heres a review: http://www.whathifi.com/Review/Marantz-NA7004/

 

[Gravenhurst]

Thanks that review is helpful.

So WAV files are lossless and should be CD quality?

I have read something before about better than CD quality downloads being pointless as the human ear cant tell the difference, would you agree with this?

What would you suggest as an alternative to the olive as it does seem quite expensive?

 

[Gravenhurst]

sorry i dont know what NAS is?

Network Attached Storage: see here

Thanks

 

[Gravenhurst]

How about the Xbox one? Microsoft seem to be marketing that as some kind of all in one super box, I imagine that would have the ability to rip music in WAV via it Blue ray drive, it has a large memory and would have a decent interface via your televison

Does that sound realistic?

I've also been talked into going for a vinyl demo to see if i like it, so i may go completely the other way (expect a similar ignorant thread on all things turntables and cartridges soon!) :?

 

[Overdose]

Your cheapest option to get you up and running,would probably be a hard drive upgrade on your laptop and an identical sized external drive for backup. Plug into a good USB DAC and off you jolly well go.

Probably most important of all is the user interface, if this is poor, it'll drag down the whole experience.

As an idea, media players such as iTunes and XBMC have apps that allow remote control of the software on the computer, so your phone or tablet can become the remote control.

 

[Gravenhurst]

Thanks for all your help people!

 

[michael hoy]

I have read something before about better than CD quality downloads being pointless as the human ear cant tell the difference, would you agree with this?

No.

 

[MakkaPakka]

I have read something before about better than CD quality downloads being pointless as the human ear cant tell the difference, would you agree with this?

No.

With the quality of most recordings and people's less than perfect listening environments then people are unlikely to hear any difference.

I tested this myself with a 32-bit WAV file (albeit using a 24-bit DAC) and a FLAC I made from the CD through the foobar ABX comparator. I used a track I've listened to a ton of times which has a lot going on.

I was able to correctly pick which was which several times in a row but I can't stress how difficult it was. I had to listen really, really intently for quite a long time to decide which was 'better' (A or B then do it all again with X and Y). It was very draining having to listen that hard and when I tried to do it quickly (only listening to 20 second excerpts) then my answers were no better than random guesses.

Yes there are differences but my view is that they're almost inconsequential compared to mastering, room acoustics, etc.

 

[amcluesent]

It's very hard to see the advantage of an combined CD ripper/hard disk/streamer.

As OP already has a laptop which could be used for ripping, a Sonos CONNECT and Western Digital MyBook Live is a very easy to set-up and use system. Can't play hi-rez mind.