[Mithras]

So my dad, a computerphobe, is finally tempted to get a Mac + iPod, as his CD collection has grown so large as to be totally unwieldy. The latest estimate is that he has maybe 8000 CDs.
(He buys a ridiculous number each month, but he also copies CDs from the public library using a non-computer "music CD" burner device... which I think is funny.)

This will also make my mom happy as the shelfloads of CD cases are driving her nuts.

My question is: which Mac will make the best jukebox for him?
Back-of-the-envelope calculation says that at around 60MB per album, we'd need 480GB. Let's say he gets tired of ripping all those CDs at some point, so a 400GB drive is enough for now.

Our options would include:
* iBook + external HD enclosure
I like that this has a small, built-in screen and keyboard. It could just sit neatly in a component shelf. And it might even be the cheapest option.
Kind of annoying that the iBook is side-loading, though.

* mac mini + external HD + external monitor & keyboard
The mini would be adorable, and I like the front-facing slot load. External screen has the advantage of being flexible as to location, but it might be kind of unwieldly to figure out where to fit all this stuff.

* iMac G5 (replacing the HD)
This is the cleanest solution, since it doesn't need an external HD. It is kind of expensive though (not relative to the money sunk into the collection obviously, but this is all at once, and as I said my dad doesn't like computers), and has the all-in-one problem of needing to replace both the CPU and the screen at the same time.

Any other thoughts? I suppose I should really have a second external HD for backup, huh? So the price of the whole package looks like:

Code:
 $300 - 400GB HD (bare)
$1300 - computer + screen + HD enclosure if needed (less for the mac mini, more for the iMac)
 $400 - second HD + enclosure for backup
 $400 - 60Gb iPod
------
$2400 total

Does that sound about right?

[Eug Wanker]

Power Mac G5 single with 500+ GB worth of internal SATA drives.
iPod mini
AirPort Express

Either that or the iMac as you described.

[JohnSmithXTREME]

I'd go with a Mac mini, but frankly, I'm not entirely sure if iTunes is up to the task, and there are very few other alternative programs for OS X. iTunes is a little clunky, IMHO.

[d4nth3m4n]

jeez, but him an old g4 tower and save him valuable cd money.

[Randman]

Mac mini if you have a monitor or newer TV.
eMac, if not.
Lacie Big Disk (500GB is US$479). 1TB and 1.8TB also available.
Harmon-Kardon SoundSticks II
60GB iPod photo.

[sworthy]

Definitely go with an older g4 tower if he has space. You can shove a bunch of drives in those babies. If that doesn't work, go with the iBook plus external hd's -- you don't want to have to get a nice external screen just for music management.

[angelmb]

Since I would guess that more CDs are coming, I would get a PowerMac G4 where you can place three of four internal hard disk, MDD anyone?

[mitchell_pgh]

Please correct my math.

8000 CDs
45MB per CD (after converted to MP3)
-----------
360000 MB or ~360 GB.

Mac mini
Lacie Big Disk
touch screen LCD

NOTE: He would still have room for around 3000 more CDs and it would be simple to upgrade in a few years (but I would worry about backup)

[Y3a]

I'd get a G5 and put 2 250 gig drives internally, THEN get 4-6 of the LaCie giant external drives all connected by Firewire 800. i'd use 2-3 of the externals as backups for the data "Just in case" you crash a drive a couple of years from now. I was lucky that I had a backup of over 3500 tunes that were carefully copied FROM VINYL one at a time, which took most of my weekends for a year to do.

[Millennium]

To be honest, I'd go with the G5 tower. You wouldn't need a G5 just to rip CDs, but that's going to result in a huge iTunes library, and you could very well end up needing that kind of horsepower just to manage it at a reasonable speed.

Given that, you may want to invest in an EyeHome or some similar device. You could then set up the G5 anywhere in the residence, and stream the songs to your TV and play them through what I'm guessing is quite a badass stereo system if your dad's that much of an audiophile. AirPort Express would be cheaper, but it doesn't provide an interface for controlling the sounds; the EyeHome can do that. Again, it's probably not the best interface in the world for that many CDs, but it will get the job done.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Millennium:
To be honest, I'd go with the G5 tower. You wouldn't need a G5 just to rip CDs, but that's going to result in a huge iTunes library, and you could very well end up needing that kind of horsepower just to manage it at a reasonable speed.

Given that, you may want to invest in an EyeHome or some similar device. You could then set up the G5 anywhere in the residence, and stream the songs to your TV and play them through what I'm guessing is quite a badass stereo system if your dad's that much of an audiophile. AirPort Express would be cheaper, but it doesn't provide an interface for controlling the sounds; the EyeHome can do that. Again, it's probably not the best interface in the world for that many CDs, but it will get the job done.

I 2nd the EyeHome idea. You could pick up a few boxes and have them all over the house. It's an amazing system.

[sworthy]

well, if you really want to go all out with a badass housewide stereo system, check out sonos. My dad just ordered the 'introductory bundle' and we're going to set it up next week.

[matthys]

About Sonos.....

Music downloaded from online music services such as iTunes, MusicMatch, SonyConnect and MTV are copyright protected using Digital Rights Management (DRM) or use proprietary audio formats which cannot be played back on a Sonos Digital Music System.

The exception is Real's Rhapsody subscription server, which Sonos will support (scheduled for March '05).

[Agasthya]

Originally posted by matthys:
About Sonos.....

Music downloaded from online music services such as iTunes, MusicMatch, SonyConnect and MTV are copyright protected using Digital Rights Management (DRM) or use proprietary audio formats which cannot be played back on a Sonos Digital Music System.

The exception is Real's Rhapsody subscription server, which Sonos will support (scheduled for March '05).

Which wouldn't matter in this case because all the music is being ripped

[MaxPower2k3]

I don't know of any benchmarks, but getting a G5 may be worth it for the time saved on ripping alone. I would assume that the G5 would be nearly twice as fast at ripping CDs as the Mac mini or iBook, considering the faster processor and CD drive. And external enclosures are cheap. A firewire hard drive case can be had for $35.

Is your dad an audiophile? If he's got a high-end stereo system, he might not be satisfied with compressed music. If that's the case, Apple Lossless would be better, but he'd probably need around 2.5 terabytes of storage for that.

[Mac Write]

I was going to say DP MDD 1.25GHZ or 1.42GHZ, but I think going G5 with base HD, loads of RAM. Then get a 8-16 drive external FW800 case, and add drives as needed. I would also rip in AppleLossless since the quality is better, or G5 Fiber channel card and an xRaid would be the best option $$$$$. 2.3TB for 8,000 CD's in ALE BTW. Well worth it. would be an insane jukebox, build a few thousand playlists and WOW commercial free music stations . use sharing (unless people want their own playlists) and WOW WOW WOW what a music setup.

[Mithras]

Thanks for the input everyone!

No Max, MacWrite, my dad's not an audiophile. Half of his stereo components are from Goodwill -- the other half from Costco -- and like I said he gets a lot of his music from the public library. He's a cheapskate with a tin hear who happens to really enjoy music. It's an obsession I can respect (which is good, being his son); he's not wrapped up in the stereo for the stereo's sake; he goes to live shows as much as he can, and just loves finding new interesting music.

sworthy, that sonos system looks really really cool. I'll hope to get one for myself one day!

mitchell_pgh, I REALLY like the idea of the touchscreen. I did some research, and big ones (17") are pretty expensive ($800+), but there are lots of ~10" ones for less than $250. It might be really neat.

Millenium, eyehome is cool, but in his case the stereo is upstairs from the television, so I might as well have the Mac right there. You might be right about needing a G5 just to manage the library; at least, you've probably knocked the mini and the iBook out, because now that you mention it, I bet they would choke.

That leaves the iMac and the G5 tower, pretty much. (also the G4 stuffed with disks, which is a good idea, thanks d4n, angel). I'll have to see whether he envisions this sitting right in the rack, or off to the side somewhere with a wired or wireless connection to the stereo.

I think my birthday present to him should be hiring some high school students to do all the ripping, huh?

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by Mithras:
Thanks for the input everyone!

No Max, MacWrite, my dad's not an audiophile. Half of his stereo components are from Goodwill -- the other half from Costco -- and like I said he gets a lot of his music from the public library. He's a cheapskate with a tin hear who happens to really enjoy music. It's an obsession I can respect (which is good, being his son); he's not wrapped up in the stereo for the stereo's sake; he goes to live shows as much as he can, and just loves finding new interesting music.

sworthy, that sonos system looks really really cool. I'll hope to get one for myself one day!

mitchell_pgh, I REALLY like the idea of the touchscreen. I did some research, and big ones (17") are pretty expensive ($800+), but there are lots of ~10" ones for less than $250. It might be really neat.

Millenium, eyehome is cool, but in his case the stereo is upstairs from the television, so I might as well have the Mac right there. You might be right about needing a G5 just to manage the library; at least, you've probably knocked the mini and the iBook out, because now that you mention it, I bet they would choke.

That leaves the iMac and the G5 tower, pretty much. (also the G4 stuffed with disks, which is a good idea, thanks d4n, angel). I'll have to see whether he envisions this sitting right in the rack, or off to the side somewhere with a wired or wireless connection to the stereo.

I think my birthday present to him should be hiring some high school students to do all the ripping, huh?

What a nice project!

I have a Powerbook G4 (12' at 1GHz) and an external drive of 160 Gb. I have about 2000 CDs that I am ripping on AAC, 320 kbs. I guess I have done a quarter of my collection so far, and I started doing this on my free time since October.

I think the big drawback is that your father may get tired of ripping very early. Myself I get fed up often.

Funny thing: I have a Quad 77 set up (CD and amplifier) with Totem Model one signature speakers on Targets R2 stands and the sound coming from the powerbook is better than from the CD player ($2000 can).

The sound is absolutely great, but the ripping is a killer.

[andreas_g4]

One thing you should take into consideration is that multiple drives possibly won't work. I guess your father won't like the idea of having to use multiple iTunes libaries, since the iTunes music folder has to be on one (logical) drive - correct me if I'm wrong on this one.

An good idea could be a RAID solution due to backup and capacity issues. This can be achieved with a Power Mac G4 and multiple drives, I guess. But that might be a bit out of the budget, I dunno.

[dlefebvre]

Depending on where you want to put it, an old G4 is a noisy solution.
Is it necessary to rip the 8000 CDs? That over a year of 24//7 music, at 40 hours a week, it would take more tha 3 years to listen to every single CD. Also, ripping 8000 CDs would take about 2000 hours to rip. That would take 50 weeks at 40 hours/week.

By keeping half the CDs and selling the rest, there's enough money to buy a top of the line G5 set-up.

[Busemann]

Originally posted by SimpleLife:
I am ripping on AAC, 320 kbs.

What a waste.

If exact CD quality is important, Lossless is the way to go. With AAC, 320kbps doesn't really offer any advantage over 192kbps (except bloated files)

[cpt kangarooski]

I agree. Lossless rips are the way to go. You won't lose quality, and therefore will never have a reason to rip again. And this is a lot of CDs to rip. You don't want to do it again.

If you're just ripping and playing music, get a cheap machine and spend more on storage.

And multiple volumes work fine, so long as you don't bother with iTunes stupid automatic library system.

Of course the really frustrating thing will be the poor metadata support in iTunes and the Finder, but Apple's gone downhill so there's not a whole lot to be done about it right now.

[Busemann]

Originally posted by cpt kangarooski:
Of course the really frustrating thing will be the poor metadata support in iTunes and the Finder, but Apple's gone downhill so there's not a whole lot to be done about it right now.

One more month..

[Eriamjh]

You need a 400GB iPod!

[Mithras]

My dad has said he wouldn't need all of the CDs ripped, so suppose we go with a pair of 300GB drives, which are more reasonably priced. I'd also get him a 40GB iPod, which are pretty cheap now. That leaves just the computer to sort out.

So I spent way too much time pricing out all the different options (using Crucial RAM, external cases and drives from Newegg), and then compiling them onto an Excel spreadsheet. I made the visual summary below:


Personally, I'm most drawn to:
* $1,730: Mac mini + 17" LCD
* $2,050: iMac G5 17"
* $2,373: PowerMac G5 1.8 + 17" LCD

Which would you go for from this list?

[JohnSmithXTREME]

Mac mini would fit in better with an entertainment system, IMO. It would go for that.

[mitchell_pgh]

I would consider this the ultimate jukebox.

$389.95 - 500GB LaCie Big Disk
$499.00 - Mac mini
$183.99 - 1GB RAM upgrade (crucial)
$400.00 - 60Gb iPod
$269.90 - 7" LCD touch screen
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
$1742.84 - total

http://www.case-mod.com/store/produc...roducts_id=922

[Mithras]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
$389.95 - 500GB LaCie Big Disk

The BigDisk is two 250GB disks wired together as a JBOD, so the chance of drive failure doubles, yet without the speed benefits of RAID-0. Anyway I'd still need to buy a second disk for backup. That said, the $/GB of the BigDisk is $0.77, which compares favorably to the $0.81 for a 300GB ATA drive + case. So I'll consider getting the BigDisk instead, thanks!

$269.90 - 7" LCD touch screen
http://www.case-mod.com/store/produc...roducts_id=922

That does look very cool, as I noted above. Earlier I played with iTunes in a 800x480 window, just to try it out. It was pretty small; I'm not sure it would be ideal for so many CDs.

I looked at the 10.4" touchscreen, but it's a lot pricier and also has a serial instead of USB interface... man that seems cool though. I wish I could somehow have both!

[MilkmanDan]

I would say get an old G4 Tower and put all his money into big hard drives. He'd need an ATA 133 Card, but that would only be $80. I do the same thing but with a B&W G3. My buddies and I run it as a file server with iTunes open, so we can all stream music from it. That or play music on our stereo system. A G4 would be up to the task and be cheaper in the long run. No need for external drives, plus expansion bays and PCI slots.

[sworthy]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I would consider this the ultimate jukebox.

Not this?

Just got it today - four zone players and two remotes -- one more of each to come in the future.

Pics:

The remote - very iPod like remote - works great, better reception (to the zone players) than my powerbook with wifi.



Here are the zone players in the closet (all house audio comes in to here)



And the audio goes into four different rooms (5 soon) via built in ceiling speakers.







Let me know if anyone has any questions about it. It works great, much better than similarly priced "old school" infrared receivers in each room. Works directly with iTunes and gets internet radio as well. No iTMS support unfortunately...

[G4ME]

I would go with an older power mac. Playing MP3s doesn't take a gig of ram and 2 ghz G5, something like a single 700 G4 or dual 500 would be fine, then load the bitch up with all the HD you want and save the cash.

[cpt kangarooski]

Originally posted by Busemann:
One more month..

Oh? I hadn't heard that Tiger would be able to display metadata for music files in Finder windows in place of filenames. Hopefully it's well-arranged. Tabular listings aren't amazingly readable without some attention paid to formatting.

I don't suppose you've seen a screenshot?

[Krusty]

How 'bout Apple Certified eMac 1.25 Combo at $649 + $297 for bare 400gb internal drive from NewEgg + pay and Apple authorized service provider to install it. (~$50 - $60 ???)

Total price weighs in around 1 grand, has a monitor big enough to run iTunes dedicated, expansion ports, ram slots, Airport slot, etc for whatever connectivity options you may want, built-in stereo speakers to monitor the sound, comfortable full-size kb and mouse included, and the perfect AIO form factor to be used as a single-purpose appliance (e.g. easy to move the whole shebang as if it were a TV or something).

Look at the other options listed .. they're talking $1700 - $2400 for just a d@mn jukebox. The eMac will serve just fine as a jukebox without all sorts of tacked on peripherals as with a mini or laptop. Using something as expensive as an iMac or Powermac for this duty is just plain overkill, IMHO. You really wanna pay ~2k for a jukebox ??

[kikkoman]

Originally posted by sworthy:
Not this?

Just got it today - four zone players and two remotes -- one more of each to come in the future.

Can the sonos be used stand alone w/o a computer for file storage?

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by sworthy:
Not this?

Just got it today - four zone players and two remotes -- one more of each to come in the future.

Pics:

The remote - very iPod like remote - works great, better reception (to the zone players) than my powerbook with wifi.



...

I'll admit that it's cool, but I wouldn't buy it.

My elgato EyeHome cost me $200 per box and does video/audio/internet/streams

Sure it doesn't have some of the nicer features (color remote, full wireless) but your system doesn't look all that wireless. I guess different strokes for different folks. I really like being able to tie my EyeHome in to every TV in the house to make a nice entertainment center.

I have over 150 movies on my video server...

[milhous]

one word regardless of what you pick:

Retrospect

[Mithras]

Originally posted by Krusty:
How 'bout Apple Certified eMac 1.25 Combo at $649 + $297 for bare 400gb internal drive from NewEgg + pay and Apple authorized service provider to install it. (~$50 - $60 ???)

eMac's not a bad idea, though I think my dad envisioned the screen sitting in the cabinet with the stereo stuff. A refurb eMac setup runs $1,507 using the same criteria as the others -- 512MB RAM, Airport card, an internal 300GB drive, an external drive of the same size for backup, and an iPod 40GB. It is definitely a lot cheaper than some of the options...

A Powermac G4 setup, assuming I spend around $800 on the computer, ends up at $1,900, more expensive than the Mac minis, mainly because the price of a PCI ATA card wipes out the savings on external cases.

My dad gets back from a vacation next week, so I'll present this range of options to him. Thanks again for the input!

[G4ME]

Originally posted by Mithras:


A Powermac G4 setup, assuming I spend around $800 on the computer, ends up at $1,900, more expensive than the Mac minis, mainly because the price of a PCI ATA card wipes out the savings on external cases.

My dad gets back from a vacation next week, so I'll present this range of options to him. Thanks again for the input!

Older G4's with the Zip drives below them can fit 3 hard drives with out an ATA card, thats 1.2 TB of data.

[buffalolee]

Go with:
PowerMac G4: Lots of internal space to add hard drives
iMac G5 + External Firewire: The power to convert your CDs into MP3.

[benb]

I would definitely use RAID 1 for mirroring if he plans to import all those CDs.