[Derrick Fawsitt[_2_]]

For those posters here who are not only involved in Music but also Music
in connection with IT, can you help me with the following query and I
apologise if some here feel this post is somewhat more suitable for the
IT newsgroups, needless to say, I have also posted it in just such a
newsgroup.
I have converted a double garage to an excellent Music Room with a Quad
system using Quad 989 Electrostatic Speakers. I have the usual Library
of Classical CD's residing on shelves and my PC, mostly used for office
business, is in the same room. The room has the type of PVC Skirting
Board that can contain wires and therefore I can if I wish connect my PC
to the Audio system but have not yet done so.

Having the need now to update my PC I was considering building or buying
a PC that could not only manage my Media, but in fact store most of my
CD's so that I can find a piece of music very quickly and even arrange a
concert for my friends. I did in fact previously install Music Label in
order to catalogue my collection of CDs but all it did was tell me if I
had a particular work, I still had to "find it" on my shelves, not
always easy.

I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard
drive and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire
collection but also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my
collection for immediate playback. I would also need to retain some
capacity for ordinary business and office needs. I must add, I don't
envisage editing or composing music, I only want my PC, when needed, to
access my audio system to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.
--
Derrick Fawsitt

[Richard Crowley]

"Derrick Fawsitt" wrote ...
I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard drive
and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire collection but
also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my collection for
immediate playback. I would also need to retain some capacity for ordinary
business and office needs. I must add, I don't envisage editing or
composing music, I only want my PC, when needed, to access my audio system
to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.

It would be difficult to find a new PC for sale today that would NOT
be able to handle the task. Even a low-end laptop computer could
handle it with a network-connected storage system (hard drives)
and maybe a network-connected (or USB) sound output device.

You do NOT need "spectacular specs", nor "mases of RAM".
The only unusual thing you need is larger hard drive capacity
and maybe a decent audio interface. Playing music is a task
that most computers can do without even fully waking up.

However, since you didn't give us a clue whether your "usual Library"
is 50 discs or 50000 discs, it is difficult to suggest any particular
approach to handling the hard drive capacity.

I would certainly leave the standard C: boot/system drive for your
"ordinary business and office needs" and plan on a separate
storage solution for your music.

Note that there are even computer-controllable disc changers
("carousels") that store hundreds of CDs (or even DVDs) and
can retrieve and play them on command. No tedious ripping to
hard drives required.

[Geoff]

Derrick Fawsitt wrote:


I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard
drive and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire
collection but also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my
collection for immediate playback. I would also need to retain some
capacity for ordinary business and office needs. I must add, I don't
envisage editing or composing music, I only want my PC, when needed,
to access my audio system to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.

You do not need a 'high-spec' PC. Practically any PC is more than capable of
doing what you want. The only extra effort should be a quality soundcard
and of course a suitable size hard drive. eSATA. USB2 or Firewire (probably
the latter) would be most suitable, and allow drive portability.

Myself, I by far prefer the 'get the CD and stick it into the CD player'
scenario, and can't think of naything more intrusive, both physically and
psychologically, that a computer hanging aound where I play music for
relaxation. But that's just me.

geoff

[Dave]

"Geoff" wrote in message
...



Myself, I by far prefer the 'get the CD and stick it into the CD player'
scenario, and can't think of naything more intrusive, both physically and
psychologically, that a computer hanging aound where I play music for
relaxation. But that's just me.

geoff

I worked for years in IT, and now as a manager I spend a good bit of my day
in front of a computer. Maybe it's a generational thing, but like you, the
last thing I want around when I'm relaxing listening to music is a computer.
That and the fact that I don't have a couple hundred spare hours nor the
inclination to not just rip my CD's to disk, but then have to catalog them,
organize them, create playlists for them, etc. etc. etc. I've tried various
methods to automate this process using CDDB, but they all seem imperfect,
I'm always having to go in and edit the info. For hundreds of CD's, this
takes A LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME.

I also believe in the "experience" of listening to an artist's work in its'
entirety, whether it be by Beethoven or Brittany spears, a particular
symphony or opera, or just a pop album as opposed to one particular tune off
an album (sorry, outdated word).

Just my 2 cents.

Dave

[Marc Heusser]

In article ,
Derrick Fawsitt wrote:

I should now like to have a very high spec PC with an enormous hard
drive and masses of RAM that could, (in theory), store my entire
collection but also allow me to arrange quick accessibility to my
collection for immediate playback. I would also need to retain some
capacity for ordinary business and office needs. I must add, I don't
envisage editing or composing music, I only want my PC, when needed, to
access my audio system to manage and store music etc.

Can I ask you to help me in building or even buying such a PC with a
spectacular spec that would fulfil the above criteria.

MacPro with four 750 GB internal SATA drives? (Or four 1TB drives if you
can get them).
Nice machine even if you boot it under Windows. Very well built hardware
wise.
http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Of course I'd prefer to run it under Mac OS X. And if necessary use one
disk to boot in Windows, or run http://www.parallels.com if necessary.

Apple's iTunes works well with many tracks. There is even Apple's
lossless compressed storage of CD's (compresses to about half the
original size with no losses whatsoever). It also accesses CDDB for
track names etc automatically.
(You can test that under Windows too: www.apple.com/itunes)

HTH

Marc

--
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http://www.heusser.com
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