PC specifications for a Music Room

[Derrick Fawsitt[_2_]]

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

[Eeyore]

Bret Ludwig wrote:

> for best performance a SCSI interface and hard drive. These if the latest spec
> are still superior to mainstream ATA interfaces.

What purpose would this serve ?

An audio server is quite a low spec requirement. Noisy high speed disks are the
very opposite of what's needed here.


> You will be able to spend a few thousand dollars if you want and will
> get a good performing machine.

You could do it for a few hundred !

Graham

[Eeyore]

Bret Ludwig wrote:

> Eeyore wrote:
> > Bret Ludwig wrote:
> > > for best performance a SCSI interface and hard drive. These if the latest spec
> > > are still superior to mainstream ATA interfaces.
> >
> > What purpose would this serve ?
> >
> > An audio server is quite a low spec requirement. Noisy high speed disks are the
> > very opposite of what's needed here.
> >
> > > You will be able to spend a few thousand dollars if you want and will
> > > get a good performing machine.
> >
> > You could do it for a few hundred !
>
> Yes, but he made it clear he wanted to spend a lot of money.

That's silly.


> Sears Roebuck used to offer stuff in "Good-Better-Best" lines. In
> many cases all three shared the same mechanicals and the only
> difference was fru-fru. But they learned that more sales were lost and
> more customers agitated from "downselling" when they had a high figure
> in mind than "upselling" from the low one.
>
> There are quiet SCSI drives available

Data please ? SCSI drives are typically high rpm types and that makes for noisy
operation.


> and SCSI has better performance and a longer economic half-life.

Uh ? That sounds like gobbledegook to me.


> The PC industry doesn't like SCSI
> because it cuts into margin, but the performance advantage is definite
> and it's inherently less troublesome.

The performance difference is irrelevant to this application. It's barely even
relevant to video these days.

Graham