[slim] Poll: What is your library size and hardware

[erland]

I need some information about how large libraries I should use when
testing performance on my plugins. So could you all post some
information about the number of albums/tracks in your library and which
hardware/software you are running slimserver on. Please post your
configuration independent if you are using my plugins or not.

I'll start with my own configuration:

Library size:
217 albums with 2779 songs by 96 artists

Hardware:
Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB memory

Software:
Slimserver: 6.2.2
Database: MySQL 4.0.23
OS: Ubuntu 5.04 (Linux)
--
erland

Erland Isaksson
'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page'
(http://erland.homeip.net/download)
(Developer of 'TrackStat'
(http://erland.homeip.net/download/do/viewapplication?name=slimserver-trackstat)
, 'SQLPlayList' (http://tinyurl.com/pptqy) and 'DynamicPlayList'
(http://tinyurl.com/kfrgs) plugins)
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[klausbgva]

My configuration is the following:

794 albums with 9016 songs by 428 artists

File Server
HP Proliant 3Ghz 1GB Ram,GB ethernet, Raid5 3+Hotspate all segate 300GB
SATA Raid 8MB Ram controller(LSI) Suse10(Linux),

Slimserver Production
AMD athlon 3Ghz, 2GB Ram, GB Ethernet, Suse 10 (Linux)
MY SQL 5.x 64-bit

Slimserver Development
Ipaq L 733mhz 256MB Ram, 100 MB Ethernet, Suse 10 (Linux)
My SQL 5.x 32bit

Clients
6 Slimbox 3
1 Slimbox 2
2 Over the internet softsqueez

[twylie]

Your music library contains 4511 albums with 59142 songs by 2412
artists

Server hardware:
2.4Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM running WinXP

Running 6.5b1 (5/2 nightly)

3 - SB3
1 - SB2
1 - SB1G
1 - SliMP3

[jth]

Your music library contains 1998 albums with 13391 songs by 376
artists.

Server is a 800 MHz VIA C3, 512 MB RAM.
Server 6.2.2 w/sqlite db.
OS is Debian Sarge.

[Mark Lanctot]

Your music library contains 218 albums with 2492 songs by 403 artists.

Server hardware:

2.8 GHz Pentium 4
512 MB RAM
Windows XP SP2

SlimServer 6.2.2 official

[Browny]

485 albums with 6324 songs by 1068 artists.

Hardware:
Athlon 1.3Mhz 512Mb RAM

Software:
SlimServer: 6.5b1 - 7038
Database: MySQL 4.1.12
OS: ClarkConnect Home Edition 3.2 (Linux)

[Kalidor]

Your music library contains 322 albums with 5966 songs by 1031 artists.

Server: P4 3.06GHz, 1.5GB Ram (200MB free), Windows 2003 Enterprise

[EnochLight]

Library size: 1002 albums with 4596 songs by 881 artists... but...that's
as of today; I've only ripped about 15% of my total CD collection. ;-)

Hardware:
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (clocked to a 4600+ @ 2.41 Ghz), 2048 Megs of RAM

Software:
Slimserver: 6.5b1
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

[zooropa320]

Post by EnochLight
Library size: 1002 albums with 4596 songs by 881 artists...

Interesting. That's only 4.5 songs per album, I'm guessing you have a
lot of singles?

Anyway, I maintain a Jukebox folder which only contains the songs I
like. I have a separate folder structure which has all of my full
rips. The Jukebox has 6,600 songs from 1,300 artists.
--
zooropa320

2 Channel Setup: SB3 * Benchmark DAC1 * Classé Audio DR-15 mono blocks *
Magnepan MG 3.5Rs * REL Strata III
Music Server: Lian-Li PC-V2000B Case * Turbo-Cool 510 XE Power Supply *
Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Motherboard * 3Ware 9500S-8 SATA RAID Card * 2 AMD
Opteron 240 1.4GHz CPUs * 2 512MB PC3200 Corsair CAS 3 DRAMs * 8 250GB
SATA Hitachi drives in RAID 5
http://www.last.fm/user/zooropa320/
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[bahnsah]

Your music library contains 361 albums with 3293 songs by 215 artists.

Hardware:
Pentium 4 2.6 GHz
1.25 MB RAM

Software:
Slimserver: 6.2.2
OS: Windows XP SP2

[radish]

Your music library contains 883 albums with 11258 songs by 244 artists.
(That's with "Various Artists" switched on, the real number is over
1000).

Hardware:
Athlon XP 1.3GHz
512MB RAM

Software:
Slimserver 6.2.2
Windows XP Pro

[TimM]

1201 albums with 15292 songs by 367 artists

Hardware
Athlon 2.2ghz
2MB RAM

Software
Slimserver 6.2.2
OS Windows XP SP@

[snarlydwarf]

1105 albums with 11823 songs by 849 artists.

model name : Pentium II (Deschutes)
cpu MHz : 400.918

(yeah, yeah, upgrade that... i have to figure out a clean way to move
one of my personal machines at work back home...)

debian-stable/slimserver6.5/mysql5

[Mark Lanctot]

Post by snarlydwarf
model name : Pentium II (Deschutes)
cpu MHz : 400.918
(yeah, yeah, upgrade that... i have to figure out a clean way to move
one of my personal machines at work back home...)

Interesting - I've got an AMD K6-2 400 MHz. I always wondered how it
would perform running SlimServer.

How much RAM do you have? I have 192 MB for that mobo.

It was running Win98SE but given the unpatched security holes I'll be
switching to Linux on that machine when I power it up again, probably
Ubuntu.

[vacaboca]

6646 albums with 90292 songs by 9096 artists

Hardware
P4 3.0 GHz
1.5GB RAM
lots of misc. drives, incl. 300GB and 250GB externals and several 36GB
and 74GB SCSI drives

Software
Slimserver 6.2.2
OS Windows XP SP2

I have a *lot* more tagging work to do to clean up my artists and
genres (currently 294 genres - I'd prefer to have closer to 50 genres,
and I know my artist data is inconsistent crap)...

In any event, I find slimserver generally performs OK - sometimes I get
some pauses when doing random mixes. I listen to it streaming to Winamp
over the Internet to my office more than I actually listen to it on my
Squeezebox.

[aubuti]

246 albums with 2982 songs by 453 artists.

Main system:
Hardware:
Buffalo Gigabit LinkStation (HD-HG250)
PowerPC 266MHz
128MB RAM

Software:
SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 6860 - Linux - EN - iso-8859-1
OS: mini-linux via OpenLink 0.51b

---------
Secondary system:
Dell 500MHz Pentium III
256MB RAM
reading music library off the LinkStation NAS (above)

Software:
SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 6860 - Linux - EN - iso-8859-1
OS: Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

[snarlydwarf]

Post by Mark Lanctot
Interesting - I've got an AMD K6-2 400 MHz. I always wondered how it
would perform running SlimServer.
How much RAM do you have? I have 192 MB for that mobo.
It was running Win98SE but given the unpatched security holes I'll be
switching to Linux on that machine when I power it up again, probably
Ubuntu.

It works fine from the remote, the web interface can be a bit balky
sometimes. I'm running with 256M on that machine. Rescans take a
while (which would probably be less if I tossed another HD into it to
move the SQL database onto a different drive... one of these days..),
but not so painful that I never do them. I do them almost daily. (I
muck with tags a lot and it tends to add artists and never replace
them.)

I enjoyed the Trackstat stuff until I got to around 9000 tracks in
place and then it started getting slow, but it seems that may be
because of a quirk in the way mysql optimizes (or doesn't...) selects,
since it was reading millions of records on my machine instead of using
the index.

I have an p3/800 or so at work that I need to bring home some year,
but... i get mail on it and have a few websites there.

[Jack Coates]

831 albums with 12481 songs by 880 artists
***@felix:~> grep Athlon /proc/cpuinfo
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+

***@felix:~> free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1011 986 25 0 63 324
-/+ buffers/cache: 598 413
Swap: 1984 509 1474

top - 20:00:13 up 38 days, 8:02, 5 users, load average: 0.49, 0.45, 0.36
Tasks: 135 total, 1 running, 133 sleeping, 1 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.0% us, 8.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 90.7% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 1035936k total, 1011752k used, 24184k free, 63360k buffers
Swap: 2032172k total, 521388k used, 1510784k free, 332544k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
26302 slimserv 15 0 59728 53m 3004 S 0.0 5.3 5:20.87 slimserver.pl
26305 slimserv 16 0 1544 548 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 mDNSResponderPo
5896 mysql 16 0 100m 13m 2656 S 0.0 1.3 23:50.53 mysqld

SuSE 10.0.
--
"I spent all me tin with the ladies drinking gin,
So across the Western ocean I must wander" -- traditional

[notanatheist]

Your music library contains 206 albums with 2422 songs by 673 artists.

Too many "Various Artists" albums that screw things up.

Athlon XP2200, 512, 160GB SoftRAID mirror, 30GB boot drive, Intel
Pro100, Slackware current.

Small music collection compared to many of y'all.

[Peter]

On Sun, 7 May 2006 21:11:26 -0700, "notanatheist"

Post by notanatheist
Your music library contains 206 albums with 2422 songs by 673 artists.
Too many "Various Artists" albums that screw things up.
Athlon XP2200, 512, 160GB SoftRAID mirror, 30GB boot drive, Intel
Pro100, Slackware current.

882 albums with 6958 songs by 581 artists
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
1.2 TByte diskspace
2 GB RAM
Fedore Core 4

Post by notanatheist
notanatheist

I'm sorry to hear that.
Hope you get over it someday.

Regards,
Peter (notachristian, notamuslim, notajew, notabuddhist)

[T]

Your music library contains 1829 albums with 26998 songs by 1854 artists.
(all ripped at mp3 - 320 kbps)

1400MHz Celeron, 256MB, XP-Pro SP2, only used as a music and general server

Tom

[nmizel]

"Your music library contains 1233 albums with 15309 songs by 399
artists."

Mostly flac on a VIA C3 533MHz running Fedora Core 3 and "SlimServer
Version: 6.1.1 - 3774 - Linux - EN - utf8".

Nicolas

[ModelCitizen]

1003 albums with 11503 songs by 402 artists
All flac encoded.
On a dedidated Dell Latitude, PII 500 with 192mb RAM running Windows XP
SP2.
SlimServer Version: 6.2.2 - 7135 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
;-)
MC

[sfraser]

Approx. 62000 songs.

Hardwear consists of dedicated "household file server" AMD64 with 750M
RAM. 1.5TB of HDD space with 900G RAID5 array. This unit is packaged in
a thermaltake Armour case and is running XP.

[MeSue]

1099 albums with 14256 songs by 716 artists
All MP3 files

SlimServer 6.2.2 / SB2 wireless

Athlon X2 3800+ / 2 GB RAM / Win XP Pro
(my main work machine)

Music stored on an extrernal 300 GB Ximeta NetDisk

[Mark Lanctot]

I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.

Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?

- you notice no audible difference?

- you don't have enough storage space?

- compatibility with a portable player?

- ease of conversion?

Just curious.

[MeSue]

Post by Mark Lanctot
I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?

I started ripping my CDs in 1999-2000. As far as I know, most of these
other formats had not come around before then, or if they were around
they weren't well known. Storage space was more of an issue back then,
though it's not anymore. I also can't tell an audible difference (and I
don't consider myself an "audiophile" at all). I ripped my music
collection for the convenience of not having to swap CDs all the time.


These days, I stay with MP3 because I couldn't bear the thought of
re-ripping, and because it's most compatible with our portable players,
TiVo, etc.

[bklaas]

100% exactly the same response as MeSue on the "Why MP3" question. There
is absolutely no way I'm backtracking and re-ripping my CD collection to
FLAC, even though that's what all the squeezebox hep cats are doing
these days. That would be a colossal waste of my time, esp. considering
I don't have the fine-tuned ear to tell the difference between a well
ripped MP3 and a FLAC.

since I'm developing ajax support on the Nokia770 skin right now
specifically in reference to these variables-- here ya go, direct from
my ajax output:
album_count|959 albums
artist_count|939 artists
song_count|11199 songs

Gentoo Linux, Pentium 4 3GHz, 2x250GB SATA HDs (one rsnapshots the
other for backup)
3 squeezeboxen (2xSBG, 1xSB3), 1 Nokia 770 for uber-cool remoteness

cheers,
#!/ben

[cliveb]

1072 albums, 11903 songs, 388 artists, all FLAC.

Server hardware:
Old AT motherboard
AMD K6-2 500MHz CPU
256MB RAM

Server software:
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE
Slimserver 6.0.2 using MySQL

Player:
One SB2 (wired), firmware version 11

(Do I win the award for the person running the oldest Slimserver and
firmware? :-)

[Chip Hart]

Post by Mark Lanctot
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?
- you notice no audible difference?
- you don't have enough storage space?
- compatibility with a portable player?
- ease of conversion?
Just curious.

"Your music library contains 2308 albums with 25738 songs by
1422 artists."

The overwhelming majority of my tracks are in mp3 with no flac
(except experiments).

Why? A couple reasons.

- Disk space, as cheap as it is, isn't always so cheap in the
eyes-of-the-spouse. I have ~250GB of tracks now, so it would
obviously be a significant multiple of that were it in FLAC or
something.

- Disk space...with unlimited diskspace, the management
of many multiple drives is still a pain in the butt, even with
rsync, et al.

- I have kids. My days of even attempting to be an audiophile
are over :-) [Small price to pay, imo, which makes me a
heretic I realize.] I listen to music in the following
places:

- My car, through my ipod. Mp3 is a requirement (without
the firmware hacks) and, frankly, who cares?

- My headphones at work. Sure, fidelity is nice, but I
don't concentrate on my music at work, it's in the
background for me.

- At home, on the stereo...which, most of the time, is
either kids' music, something piped into the kitchen
speakers during dinner, or as background. I can count the
number of times that I have taken to *listen* deeply to
music this year on one hand.

- Except at work, I almost exclusively listen to audiobooks of
some sort - whether it's This American Life, something from
audible.com, or whatever. Anyone ripping those to FLAC is a
fool :-)

- Finally, I *don't* notice a difference (most of the time) in
fidelity on tracks ripped well enough. Sure, you've got to
be deaf to not hear a difference on 128 or even 192. But I
rarely hear any difference - based on where/when I listen,
see above - if I use lame's standard preset.

Hope that doesn't kick me out of the club. I know that having
it all in FLAC or something makes my future a lot easier, but
life is full of compromises.

[Jack Coates]

On 5/9/06, Mark Lanctot <

Post by Mark Lanctot
I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?
- you notice no audible difference?
- compatibility with a portable player?

I'm all MP3 as well, and there it is. I can hear the difference between 128
kbps and 192 kbps, but at 192 or above, it sounds like a CD to me. Blame
Operation Ivy, The Dickies, Mojo Nixon... I do :)

My player (iRiver iHP-120) can play Ogg and WMA, but I want to keep
cross-platform capability (WMA not good there) and my experience with Ogg
radio streaming didn't impress me.

The idea of re-ripping thousands of albums is not acceptable either.

--
"I spent all me tin with the ladies drinking gin,
So across the Western ocean I must wander" -- traditional

[kolding]

Post by Mark Lanctot
I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?
- you notice no audible difference?

Kinda. I have to listen really hard to hear the differences between a
168 kbps VBR MP3 and a FLAC. Maybe I'm weird, or deaf, but that's just
me.

Post by Mark Lanctot
- you don't have enough storage space?

I have all my CD's ripped to FLAC and MP3, but I only keep the FLAC
offline presently. Personally, I'm waiting for big disks (500GB+) to
drop in price so I can bring a RAID array online for reasonable cost.

Post by Mark Lanctot
- compatibility with a portable player?

Yup. iPod's for walking/gym/the wife really likes hers, and a PhatBox
in the car, where I won't want to be playing FLAC's (cartridges aren't
big enough, and quality really doesn't matter there).

[eq72521]

Main music server:

- 23260 songs, 1468 albums, 985 artists (and growing)
- Mix of FLAC, Ogg, and MP3
- Athlon XP 1400+
- 768M RAM
- Three drives totaling 480G (retail, real available space: 392G)
- *Loud* mofo that sits in my mechanical room downstairs
- FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE
- SlimServer 6.2.2
- 1 SB3 Wired

In the last few weeks I've worked on building a new music server using
an old machine (original build c. 1997). I'm trying to sell a neighbor
on an SB3 that I'll set up for him, and I'll throw in the server for
him. Also, as I said my main server is loud and placed in my
mechanical room. At the time I set that up, it made sense because my
SB1G was upstairs, well out of earshot. I have an SB3 up there now and
moved the SB1G to my den, which is right next to that mechanical room.
Unfortunately, the loudness of that machine is rather distracting when
attempting to listen to music in the den, and I recently acquired some
new music for which I really want to get some good listening sessions
(http://www.dcddiscs.com/). So another part of setting up this other
server (which resides in my office, far enough away from the den that I
can't hear it) is so I can listen to music in relative silence. Anyway,
that server is currently:

- 3161 songs, 273 albums, 121 artists.
- Mostly MP3, 6 albums in FLAC
- Athlon K6/233
- 64M RAM
- 1 20G HD
- FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE
- SlimServer 6.2.2
- 1 SB1G Wired, plus the SB3 upstairs for testing.

I have been pleasantly surprised at the results. Most of what I've
read here indicated that I might have some trouble running SlimServer
on such an underpowered machine, but so far it has performed
flawlessly. Granted, I don't do anything crazy like try to do anything
while scanning is in progress. Still, here are some general maximum CPU
utilizations that I see (using `top`):

- 5% idle
- 20% SB1G playing MP3
- 30% SB1G playing FLAC (SlimServer + flac)
- 20% SB3 playing MP3 or FLAC
- 30% SB3 playing FLAC + SB1G playing MP3
- 42% SB3 playing FLAC + SB1G playing FLAC
- 48% SB3 synched with SB1G playing FLAC
- 20% SB3 synched with SB1G playing MP3

Most of that was not tested at length, but I've seen few problems. I
listened for a few hours to the SB1G playing FLAC with no dropouts or
problems with gapless transitions. "Synched playing FLAC" was the only
test where I encountered any problems, and that was only that the sync
was off by a fraction of a second. I've not played with synching much,
but my guess is that this is because the SB3 will play the FLAC natively
but the SB1 needed transcoding and that there was perhaps some
unaccounted for delay. Synching with MP3 worked great.

Again, I'm really impressed that it all works on such low spec
hardware. Hopefully it still works when I put in a 120G drive and load
it up with FLACs. If it does I'll be happy because I won't have to give
my neighbor one of my better machines. :)

[Rene]

Current Library size:
7168 albums with 92808 songs by 7168 artists
All FLAC, MusicIP Tagged
mirror of MP3
2 Systems each with 4TB Raid5 for FLAC Archive and Mirror
1 System with 1.5TB Raid5 for MP3 mirror

Rene

[zooropa320]

Post by Rene
7168 albums with 92808 songs by 7168 artists
All FLAC, MusicIP Tagged
mirror of MP3
2 Systems each with 4TB Raid5 for FLAC Archive and Mirror
1 System with 1.5TB Raid5 for MP3 mirror
Rene

That's an impressive setup. Even more impressive is it seems you don't
have more than 1 album per artist (7168 albums by 7168 artists).
Actually, your 2 4TB systems are still more impressive than that.
--
zooropa320

2 Channel Setup: SB3 * Benchmark DAC1 * Classé Audio DR-15 mono blocks *
Magnepan MG 3.5Rs * REL Strata III
Music Server: Lian-Li PC-V2000B Case * Turbo-Cool 510 XE Power Supply *
Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Motherboard * 3Ware 9500S-8 SATA RAID Card * 2 AMD
Opteron 240 1.4GHz CPUs * 2 512MB PC3200 Corsair CAS 3 DRAMs * 8 250GB
SATA Hitachi drives in RAID 5
http://www.last.fm/user/zooropa320/
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[Wirrunna]

"Your music library contains 906 albums with 13081 songs by 2421
artists."

WinXP
AMD64 3000, 1 Gb RAM, Asus A8M-VM CSM mobo
3 x DiamondMax 10 250Gb in Windows software RAID 5
Antec P150 case

[egd]

Post by Rene
7168 albums with 92808 songs by 7168 artists

Something tells me your lib stats are corrupted - as many unique
artists as albums? 92,808 songs - hope you have many years ahead of you
and lots of idle time ;-P

[egd]

1678 albums with 24596 songs by 735 artists, though I know there is a
lot of stiuff not yet in my SlimserverDB. Vast majority is FLAC, there
is some mp3 from pre-lossless days which will at some point be
reripped.

Hardware:
- Abit IC7-G 3.2Ghz PE, 1GB Ram, assorted HDDs
- ABit AW8-MAX 2.8 Ghz Dualcore, 1GB Ram, assorted HDDs
- 2 x very expensive placeholders otherwise known as ReadyNAS NVs, one
with 4x400GB Hitachi, the other with 4x500GB Seagate. Throughput
issues from PC's to NVs have thus far prevented their deployment - the
idea is one will act as backup server, the other will sit next to and
be cabled to the SB3.

[Jez]

I will never remember to look this up when I'm at home so this is
approximate figures.

I have about 2500 albums (alhough a fair proportion are singles or
EP's). About 2000 artists (lot's of compilations_ and I think around
20000 tracks. Last time I looked iTunes said I had about 79 days of
music . . scarey . . does this mean I'm addicted?

It runs on an old 800Mhz TiBook in the closet running OS X 10.4 and SS
6.2.2

[Rene]

Something tells me your lib stats are corrupted - as many unique artists
as albums? 92,808 songs - hope you have many years ahead of you and lots
of idle time ;-P

indeed; here are the latest numbers:
Your music library contains 7298 albums with 94702 songs by 10031
artists.

regards
Rene

[ajmitchell]

Slimserver reports "Your music library contains 4649 albums with 9213
songs by 2519 artists"

However, itunes reports 1096 albums, 9206 songs, and 2536 artists
(total listening time is 28.7 days!)

This appears to be causes by the 6.3.0 duplicate entry bug.

All mp3s maximum VBR or 320kbps and 1/3 duplicate on a second server
all Apple lossless

Alex
ps. Thats about 10% of Rene's collection (but I purposely delete
anything ripped from CD I don't like)

[jonheal]

Your music library contains 652 albums with 5299 songs by 1042 artists.

Home brew Athlon XP 2400+ 2GHz
512 MB RAM
Windows XP Pro
(Mostly) FLACs and (some) mp3s on a disk connected to an NSLU2

[T]

Post by Mark Lanctot
- you notice no audible difference?

Yes, I can hear the difference between 320 kbps mp3 and linear when wearing
my AKG 240DFs, and if I couldn't I'd be out of a job, but for normal
listening in an average environment, 320k layer 3 is fine.

Post by Mark Lanctot
- you don't have enough storage space?

I'm at about 250 GB, and have three mirrors (one at work, another two on
portable disks). Disk prices have come down a lot in the past 6 years, and
perhaps I'll start recoding everything in lossless someday.

Post by Mark Lanctot
- compatibility with a portable player?

Certainly something to be considered.

Tom

[synergicity]

For me, the reason is I did A/B testing (double blind) and I couldn't
hear the difference betweent the CD and Lame alt-preset-standard MP3.
And if you read much at all on hydrogenaudio.com, you'll see that not
many can. There are problem tracks that highlight the difficulties of
MP3 encoding but most folks who say they can hear the difference are
experiencing the placebo effect. And they spend hundreds of dollars on
power cables. Placebo is a fun word, don't you think?

Post by Mark Lanctot
I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?
- you notice no audible difference?
- you don't have enough storage space?
- compatibility with a portable player?
- ease of conversion?
Just curious.

[RiccardoR]

"La tua raccolta musicale contiene 1528 albums con 21985 brani di 465
artisti."

Most are 224Kb MP3's, there are some FLAC (for gapless playing of
classical music and live cd).

My system is:

HP e-PC 40, Pentium III 1GHz, 256M Ram, 300Gb HD (this pc is dedicated
only to Slimserver)

"Versione SlimServer: 6.2.2 - 7135 - Windows XP - IT - cp1252"
O.S.: Windows XP with XPLite (so runs good with my hardware)

[zooropa320]

Post by Mark Lanctot
I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?
- you notice no audible difference?
- you don't have enough storage space?
- compatibility with a portable player?
- ease of conversion?
Just curious.

I would guess the reason for some people is also because mainstream mp3
encoders came along first and therefore people dedicated a significant
amount of time/effort ripping their cd collections and building fairly
sizeable collections. I'm sure if many of us were to do it again we
would go the flac route from the start, especially considering the drop
in hard drive costs. That said, I think most people are like me and
have a difficult time justifying the time/effort to re-rip for a
benefit they probably can't hear. I upgraded my dac, amp & speakers a
little less than 6 months ago and right after I purchased my SB3. I
thought the new setup would reveal differences between flac and mp3 but
it does not. VBR MP3s which are encoded using LAME and the -alt preset
standard flag (APS) reproduce excellent sound quality in my experience.
--
zooropa320

2 Channel Setup: SB3 * Benchmark DAC1 * Classé Audio DR-15 mono blocks *
Magnepan MG 3.5Rs * REL Strata III
Music Server: Lian-Li PC-V2000B Case * Turbo-Cool 510 XE Power Supply *
Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Motherboard * 3Ware 9500S-8 SATA RAID Card * 2 AMD
Opteron 240 1.4GHz CPUs * 2 512MB PC3200 Corsair CAS 3 DRAMs * 8 250GB
SATA Hitachi drives in RAID 5
http://www.last.fm/user/zooropa320/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23701

[MrSinatra]

Originally Posted by Mark Lanctot
I'm curious - I see a lot of people saying that their entire music
library is MP3.
Without unduly hijacking the thread, would anyone care to elaborate on
the reasons why?
- you notice no audible difference?

thats right. and neither do most other people.

i have used lame 3.96.1 or higher at 256kbps-cbr qval=1 j-stereo for
all my stuff, and it sounds great, and gives me around a 7 to 1
compression ratio.

now, if people were honest in their testing methods, they would take a
blind test, that a friend administers. play song X as a wav, a flac, a
mp3 (with my settings) whatever, but don't tell the listener which is
which. have THEM say which is which. (and be sure to on some tests,
not change the format at all) do it multiple times with multiple
songs. you'll laugh out loud at how wrong they are.

most people in fact, if they notice anything, notice slight differences
in sound levels, and more often than not, they associate the louder
sound with being the higher quality one. so if you're really serious
about conducting double blind tests, u need a DB meter to compensate
for any differences in replay gain between formats; in other words, you
want to make sure you have the same sound pressure levels consistent
from format to format for the same song.

- you don't have enough storage space?
- compatibility with a portable player?
- ease of conversion?
Just curious.

i have a 200gig HD just for mp3. i figured its enough for now, (i have
38gigs free with some more to rip still) and at 256 it would give me the
right mix of quality / size and compatibility, so i could use it in
portables or share with friends easily, whatever.

another consideration is, how perfect do you need your music anyway? i
have lots of songs and i like them, but there's probably only 100 or so
albums i'd really care enough about to be lossless on. and then if i
do that, i now have to decide if i'm going to keep the mp3 versions,
for the reasons i mentioned above.

sure, mp3 might be technically "lossy" but that only matters if one can
tell, and i don't think nearly as many people can tell, as some would
lead you to believe. until they pass a double blind test with
statistically significant results, i don't believe it.

I would guess the reason for some people is also because mainstream mp3
encoders came along first and therefore people dedicated a significant
amount of time/effort ripping their cd collections and building fairly
sizeable collections. I'm sure if many of us were to do it again we
would go the flac route from the start, especially considering the drop
in hard drive costs. That said, I think most people are like me and
have a difficult time justifying the time/effort to re-rip for a
benefit they probably can't hear. I upgraded my dac, amp & speakers a
little less than 6 months ago and right after I purchased my SB3. I
thought the new setup would reveal differences between flac and mp3 but
it does not. VBR MP3s which are encoded using LAME and the -alt preset
standard flag (APS) reproduce excellent sound quality in my experience.

right on. and i would say flac at 2-1 is not yet attractive, when i
can get 7-1 with mp3, and have an easier time with portables and
sharing.

jmho. -mdw

[relen]

Whether you can tell or not depends on a lot of factors - a proper
double-blind test on studio-quality equipment is required - but that's
only part of the story.

The thing about a lossless storage medium is that you have a
bit-accurate copy of the original. So if, in the future, you have
better gear where you CAN tell the difference, or you want to try a
replay technique, say, for generating surround from stereo and requires
accurate phase relationships, etc, then if you have a lossless version
of the content you will be fine, but with a lossy technique you won't.


In addition, with a lossy technology you can rip things like DTS CDs
and decode them on playback: this requires end-to-end bit-accuracy.

The purpose of a perceptual (lossy) coding technique is to save
space/bandwidth by removing things you can't hear. But "things you
can't hear" depends on a lot of factors.

By all means make lossy copies for the portable stereo, etc, where
space is really important and you are after portability and convenience
rather than quality, but, I would suggest, make sure you have a lossless
original somewhere - the CD or a lossless rip - because one day you
might just need it.

--Richard E

[shabbs]

I'll jump in and play too.

Library: 782 albums with 8,609 songs by 539 artists.
File Server: Linksys NSLU2 with a WD 250GB USB drive
SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 8255 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
SlimServer Hardware: Intel PD Dual Core - 940 3.2GHz with 2GB RAM (my
primary desktop)

All of my music files are VBR MP3s. They have been ripped using EAC in
Secure mode from original source and then compressed to MP3s using
LAME. The version of LAME has changed over the years. Most of my files
were done with LAME v3.90.3 using the --alt-preset extreme setting. Now
I'm using LAME v3.97b2 with the -V 0 setting.

I should have started out ripping to FLAC and MP3 simultaneously for
long term storage and future-proofing, but I was not thinking that far
ahead back then.

Cheers.
--
shabbs

[shabbs]

*iPod:* 4G [40GB] | *OS:* Windows XP Pro SP2 | *iPod audio:* Sony '
MDR-EX71SL'
(http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=16xGo7sNu5VGifp5w5lMqPQCC6R64p2DISc=?ProductSKU=MDREX71SL&Dept=acc_Headphones&CategoryName=acc_Headphones_Fontopia%2e%2fEarbud)
and 'MDR-V600'
(http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=_kMTDIIA2joTVcNyXogZB80QbAefQPuz-8U=?ProductSKU=MDRV600)
headphones
*MP3s:* 59.3 GB / 8,609 songs and growing! | *MP3 ripper:* 'EAC'
(http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) 0.95b4 [secure] w/ 'Lame'
(http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html) v3.97b2 [-V 0]
*Manager:* 'Anapod Explorer' (http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/)
v8.9.7a | *Extras:* 'Squeezebox v1'
(http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_overview.html), 'Linksys NSLU2'
(http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1118334819312&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper),
WD Dual-option 250GB External Drive
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23701

[wr420]

5616 albums with 62121 songs by 7745 artists

Linux Mandriva 2006, dell gx260 Pent 4 2.4, 512megs, 700gigs raid5 on a
NAS(gig between nas and server)
95% mp3
5% ogg, flac, wav, mpc
scan takes just under 2 hours with 6.3.1/mysql

[SadGamerGeek]

517 albums with 6452 songs by 1880 artists

(All MP3)

Hardware - Epia Via M10000 mboard with integrated 1Ghz C3 CPU & 512MB
RAM. Internal 3.5" 80Gb IDE 133 drive.

OS - Linux Fedora FC5 (with downgraded Perl for performance!)

[Johnny Stork]

AMD Athlon 2500, 2gb Ram, 3Ware 9500s-8, 4x500gb Seagate 7200 drives, RAID-5 (1.3TB), Gigabit ethernet, CentOS 4.3, currently re-ripping all CD's, around 1200 or so as FLAC. Dedicated media server.

Johnny Stork

[kolding]

I don't have the exact stats, but, I think:
1069 albums
600+ artists
15501 tracks
44+ days of music
Currently all MP3 (waiting for large disk prices to drop to bring my
FLAC collection on line).

Server:
P4 2.4 GHz, 512MB memory
Fedora Core 4
Slimserver 6.2.2 w/ SQLLite DB

[MrC]

Post by kolding
1069 albums
600+ artists
15501 tracks
44+ days of music
Currently all MP3 (waiting for large disk prices to drop to bring my
FLAC collection on line).

No need to wait - its going to take you quite a while to re-rip to FLAC
anyway. You start now, and that new 750 gig drive will be a great
bargain soon enough ! :-)

[mrfantasy]

1029 albums
11476 songs
618 artists

All FLAC, about 300GB of disk space (I only have about 35GB left on the
partition on my 400GB hard drive--I can only buy about 50 more CDs until
then.)

[kdf]

1193 albums with 12032 songs by 553 artists.

broken down by format (roughly):
13 WMA
3060 Flac
7437 mp3
49 ogg
1272 aac
17 ape
18 wav
16 shorten
70 musepack

(yes, I know it doesn't exactly add up :)

Athlon XP 2000+
Knoppmyth R5b7
1G RAM
200G HD, 71% used
Slimserver 6.2.2, 6.3.0, 6.5 and split-scanner branch.
Sqlite and Mysql 4.0.22 (and the one built into split-scanner)

[Michael Herger]

"Die Musikbibliothek enthält 525 Alben mit 6848 Titel von 444 Interpreten."

(You'll get the numbers :-))

Main server: C3/1000, 512MB, SME 6 Linux (contribs.org), 120GB IDE, MySQL
3.x, Slimserver 6.2.2
Dev: Pentium M/1.4GHz, 1GB, Windows XP pro, SQLite, Slimserver 6.5/6.3

[Sam Lowry]

Your music library contains 1797 albums with 21076 songs by 1547
artists.

Pentium 4 2.8Ghz. 768MB RAM

[michalon]

La collection contient 239 albums avec 3586 morceaux par 203 artistes

Athlon 900 mhz - 512 Mega ram - xp pro

[Harani]

14,421 songs in 1397 Albums by 89 artists

Slimserver 6.22 running under Windows XP on a "Shuttle" Sempron 2600
with 4 x 250Gb drives in a RAID 5 array (700Gb of usable space. 512Mb
Memory


1 Squeezebox3

[madpatrick]

202 albums, 3873 songs, 68 artists.... and growing by the day

Server
Hardware :PIII-1000 mhz, 512 Mb, 160Gb in RAID1, Intel 815EEA (2x)
Intel pro/100 LAN
OS :Clarkconnect 3.2R2 office edition, CentOS 2.6.9-28.cc
Software :Slimserver 6.2.2 - 7135 - Linux - NL - utf8


1x SB3 wireless WPA2
2x Softsqueeze

[GrepZen]

Your music library contains 2992 albums with 29227 songs by 2141
artists

v6.2.2 on dual Opteron 2.2Ghz, 4GRam, 1.6T filespace, Win2k3

[Maditude]

Your music library contains 539 albums with 5320 songs by 303 artists.

SlimServer Version: 6.2.1 - 5194 - freebsd - EN - iso-8859-1
Hardware: Athlon 1.5 GHz cpu, 512 MB RAM, lotsa disk.
OS: FreeBSD 5.4-stable, running apache, mail/courier-imap, samba,
slimserver, and lots of other goofy code I write myself.

2 wired SB2's, 1 wireless. Likely buying a (wired) SB3 this summer.

[dborn]

17381 tracks, 1202 albums, 861 artists (all mp3)
slimserver 6.2.2 Linux
Hardware: Linkstation HDHG300, PPC 266MHz, 128MB
Squeezebox: SB2 wired.
Network: 100Mbps

Daniel

[nelamvr6]

My hardware:

AMD Athon64 X2 4800+
ASUS A8N-SLI-Premium motherboard
2 GB PC3200 Corsair XMS C2 RAM (soon to be 4 GB)
2X eVga 7800GTX KO Video Cards in SLI Mode
Disc 0=74GB WD SATA Raptor
Disc 1=250GB WD SATA
Disc 2=500GB Seagate ATA
PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI PSU
Windows XP Pro. 64 Bit

All of my flac files are on Disc 2 above. It is currently filled with
278 GB of flac files.

Slimserver reports:

869 Albums
9811 Songs
449 Artists

[smhx4]

Your music library contains 3570 albums with 39646 songs by 2073 artists

[MrSinatra]

i'm still ripping in my stuff, but i'm closer to done than not.

"Your music library contains 1350 albums with 16597 songs by 1630
artists"

this is also changing as i better check my tags.

hardware in my sig.

[Michaelwagner]

564 albums with 8711 songs by 2263 artists.

Runs on a not-at-all dedicated 1.8GHz PIV with 512MB running W2K SP4.
Machine is my work at home desktop, so Corel Draw, M$ Orifice suite,
AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop, 200GB disk storage on 2 spindles (original
as shipped 80GB and 120GB added later).

Runs 2 Squeezeboxen, a 1 and a 3. Going to change the 1 to a 3 in a few
months.

All MP3. About 3/4 of my library was ripped before I'd even heard of
Slim Devices. This is probably 1/3 of my CDs, but most of my dance
music (the library was originally scanned for my DJing purposes). Dance
venues generally have accoustics that sound like a toilet, so MP3s were
fine and carrying the CDs (what I did before) was breaking my back.

I also have vinyl stretching back to just after the flood, and I
shudder to think what I'm going to do about those. Most I haven't even
cleaned in 10 years but I'm still reluctant to part with them before
ripping them, and I never seem to find the time to do that.

All MP3s are 320kbps CBR. I think some file utility once told me that
all my MP3s are encoded using LAME. If so, it was under the covers. I
use this ancient application that came with my Audiotron to rip all my
CDs. It still works, it's the next best thing to automatic, it almost
always does a good job, and I haven't had the time to research other
less automatic options.

Then I often fix up the tags, add artwork, etc, with Tag & Rename.

[Jack Coates]

928 albums with 14025 songs by 958 artists.

However I'm still having some tag trouble, particularly with older albums
that were ripped with id3v1 tags that mp3tag is obstinately not deleting,
despite configuration telling it to do so... I think the track and artist
numbers are right, but the album number is probably 10 or 20 too high.

I force all multi-CD albums (e.g. Physical Grafitti, the White Album, or
audiobooks) into a single album.

[Kevin O. Lepard]

619 albums with 6386 songs by 800 artists.

I have some tags that need to be tweaked, but nothing serious. I
haven't upgraded to 6.3.0 yet. I really need to go through and fix a
few things. I also need a better way to tag all my classical albums,
but I'm not entirely sure what that is yet.

I force all multi-CD albums...into a single album

Me, too. If disk 1 has 14 tracks, I make the 1st track of the second
disk 15 and go from there.

Slimserver 6.2.2 - 7135 - on a iMac 700 MHz G3 with 1 Gig RAM running
Mac OS X 10.3.9 (7W98)

[dangerous_dom]

186 albums with 5163 songs by 116 artists (way more artists than that
really, it just the way i tag various artist albums to aviod confusing
myself and girlfriend).

1 Wireless Squeezebox. Prefer to use Foobar2000 than Softsqueeze.

limServer Version: 6.5b1 - 8509 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252 <- Waaaaay
better than the bug tastic 6.3.1 IMO.

Athlon 64 3400 - 1 Gig'o'RAM - Samsung Spinpoint 250Gb SATA with an
Seagage 120Gb for backups.

My music is a mad mix of mostly Ogg and FLAC, with quie a bot of MP3
and WMA too.

[synergicity]

2173 albums, 27935 tracks, 2186 artists.

Server: 6.2.2 on an Infrant X6 ReadyNAS, modded with 512 mb RAM and a
quiet fan. It has four 320 gb WD drives in a RAID5 array. After much
fiddling and finetuning, it's working great over gigethernet. I use
Moose for my PC front end, when the PC is on. The Infrant also houses
the rest of the media library which streams to the modded xbox.

[bdelp]

Your music library contains 9414 albums with 131005 songs by 12136
artists.

P4 3.2 Mhz 1GB Ram
SlimServer Version: 6.2.2 - 7135 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252

[el payo]

"Your music library contains 2066 albums with 22535 songs by 2698
artists."

Main server: PowerMac G4 Cube, 1.25GB, OSX 10.4.6,
125GB internal IDE/250GB external backup drive
connected via Firewire 400 for nightly mirroring of
the Music folder, Slimserver 6.5b1, iTunes Update &
LastFM/AudioScrobbler (thanks James)

1 Squeezebox 2, connected via optical to a Sony
DA80ES, with a pair of old Infinity bookshelf speakers
(which my cable company blew out thanks to unmodulated
volume differences between channels, EAT IT COMCAST) -
new speakers waiting on my bank account

1 Squeezebox 3, connected via optical to a pair of
Edirol MA10D powered speakers

Plus SoftSqueeze running on a MacBook Pro for when I'm
out of the house

[slimpy]

543 albums with 6334 songs by 287 artists

AMD Duron 800MHz
384MB RAM
SuSE 9.1
SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 7218 - Linux - EN - utf8

1 SliMP3
2 SB2 wireless

-s.

[jhurley]

1489 albums with 19160 songs by 536 artists

SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 5073 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
iTunesUpdate 1.4

2 x SB1 Wireless

Intel Pentium 4 3.2MHz
1GB RAM
120+200GB Internal + 160GB External (480GB) Disk Space
Netgear DG834G Router

[MrStan]

Your music library contains 1536 albums with 19515 songs by 716
artists.

Slim Server version 6.2.2 Official
Hardware Pentium 4 2.5GHz 1Gb Ram
2x300 GB Raid 0 plus USB2 backups
OS. Win XP Professional SP 2

Cleint SB3 Homeplug.

[Richard Scales]

2803 albums | 48526 songs | 6783 artists

All MP3 stored on a Fujitsu Primergy Econel E50 server 4GB RAM, 2 x 300GB
HDD in Raid mirror.

Running Windows 2003 Small Business Server

2 x SB2 wired
1 x SB2 wireless

Slimserver 6.2.2

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: erland [mailto:erland.27fnsb1146998103-NUepA2SMhDQqspMVqqL2D+4xXEVPTSb/***@public.gmane.org]
Sent: 07 May 2006 11:31
To: discuss-***@public.gmane.org
Subject: [slim] Poll: What is your library size and hardware


I need some information about how large libraries I should use when
testing performance on my plugins. So could you all post some
information about the number of albums/tracks in your library and which
hardware/software you are running slimserver on. Please post your
configuration independent if you are using my plugins or not.

I'll start with my own configuration:

Library size:
217 albums with 2779 songs by 96 artists

Hardware:
Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB memory

Software:
Slimserver: 6.2.2
Database: MySQL 4.0.23
OS: Ubuntu 5.04 (Linux)
--
erland

Erland Isaksson
'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page'
(http://erland.homeip.net/download)
(Developer of 'TrackStat'
(http://erland.homeip.net/download/do/viewapplication?name=slimserver-tracks
tat)
, 'SQLPlayList' (http://tinyurl.com/pptqy) and 'DynamicPlayList'
(http://tinyurl.com/kfrgs) plugins)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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[EricBergan]

Your music library contains 510 albums with 8178 songs by 596 artists

All lossless WMA

Server:
1.5Ghz P4
1G memory
80/300/500 GByte drives
WinXP SP2
6.2.2

[mschr]

Library size:
582 albums with 7195 songs by 333 artists

Hardware:
Intel Pentium M 1,80GHz, 1GB memory

Software:
Slimserver: 6.2.2 - 7135 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
OS: Windows XP Home SP2

[mftech]

Library size:
674 albums with 7796 songs by 394 artists
All encoded in FLAC

Hardware:
Via M10000, with 300G external drive/USB

Software:
Slimserver: 6.2.2
OS: Windows 2000 SP4

Portable:
Rio Karma (compatible with Flac)

[Kyle]

361 albums with 4534 songs by 243 artists
All flac with artwork
Pentium 4 1800 MHz
250gb external HD
Slimserver: 6.2.2
OS: Windows XP Pro

[Nick Pettefar]

175GB MP3s (192)
Sun Ultra 10 with Solaris 10 and latest SS 6.2.2
300GB NAS Snap Server (Raid 1 mirror)

2 SB2s :-
SB2 (kitchen) - Quad 77 with Quad 500 speakers
SB2 (lounge) - Linn Linn Kollektor / LK85 Tannoy 607 speakers

Sounds good to me! Bach and Rammstein are particularly good on this setup.

Nick
--
Nick-iDIIdjisJglWk0Htik3J/***@public.gmane.org DoD 1069 MAG 73516 ZZR11 R90s VFR750 Bros 650

A Christian author in the US, for example, has just published a book
claiming RFID will evolve into the mark of the beast featured in
Revelations and presage the end of the world.

[rfish]

Your music library contains 1159 albums with 7170 songs by 1393
artists.

PII 300MMX 256MByte RAM, 350GByte diskspace
Fedora Core 2

[joncourage]

552 albums with 6892 songs by 883 artists

Mix of mostly FLAC and some MP3

SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 6939 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252

P4 2.8Ghz Sony Vaio Laptop with 256Mb RAM running XP Pro, dedicated to
running Slim for the most part, hardwired to my WAP.

SB3 running firmware 41 I believe, wireless, and occassionally when I'm
not feeling lazy, wired.
--
joncourage

SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 6939 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252

Player Firmware Version: 41

SB3 > Audio Note DAC 3.1x Sig > Levinson 383 integrated > Amphion
Argons
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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[cepheid]

Yikes... I thought I had a big library, but most of yours make mine seem
like a shoebox full of old cassettes! Yowzah!

From SlimServer: "Your music library contains 476 albums with 5403

songs by 643 artists."

("Various Artists" is turned off, and I haven't yet enabled parsing of
the semi-colon separation for multiple artists, so the artist count is
quite off.)

All files in Apple Lossless (ripped from my CDs). Server is a PowerMac
G4 tower ("Gigabit Ethernet" version from 2000: dual 500MHz CPUs, 720 MB
RAM), music on an external 250GB Lacie "F.A. Porsche" drive).
6-year-old computer still runs like clockwork and is even acceptably
fast for "average" usage.

I would *love* to have a library as big as the rest of you... just
don't have the cash to buy all those CDs, even from used-CD stores.
Oh, would that I could...

[bephillips]

Now that I've finally sorted out a problem of not being able to access
one of my directories due to some problem with a symbolic link, I am
able to answer.

My music library contains 1511 albums with 22560 songs by 1686 artists.
Motly FLAC ripped from my CD collection or downloaded live shows, some
SHN, APE, MP3.

Hardware:
Serving on a Mac G4 400 MHz Tower w/ 704 MB RAM (circa 2000)
Apple Airport Extreme WiFi router
Squeezebox

Software:
Mac OS 10.3.9
SlimServer Version: 6.2.2 - 7135
ripping to FLAC and auto-tagging with abcde in the UNIX terminal
tagging with MediaRage
Azureus BitTorrent client
Transmit FTP
Browser: Firefox

Currently listening to Tomorrow Never Knows from 801 Live by 801

http://db.etree.org/bephillips

http://bigbluetarp.com
--
bephillips

The chaos on this planet is due to the music that musicians are playing
that they are forced to play by some who just think of money and don't
realize that music is a spiritual language, and it represents the
people of Earth. When musicians are compelled to play anything, it goes
straight to the throne of the Creator of the universe, and that is how
He sees you: according to your music... It's what goes to the Creator
as your personal ambassador - and your personal nemesis.
-Sun Ra
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[relen]

1082 albums with 12342 songs by 623 artists. Mainly FLAC except for some
really early rips to mp3 (gradually being replaced) and downloaded TV
music mp3s.

400GB music library drive with 100G free.
SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 7336 (at the moment) - Linux FC3
Intel Celeron CPU 1300MHz

[CarlOtto]

Your music library contains 1776 albums with 10049 songs by 1277

artists.

Almost all in FLAC (I was lucky to come in rather late and I didn't
have a large MP3 collection). Classical CD's (Album = "Symphony
no.1..." etc so each CD is tagged as typically a couple of Albums).
Around 900 complete CD's.

Hardware:
Media PC built using a Zalman TNN300 (Totally No Noise = no fans
anywhere). Windows 2003 Server + Athlon 3200. 500GB hard disk, no raid
since I keep only copies of the music here - second copy on my main
computer (untill it has filled up in estimated 6 months from now...)
and third copy on a NAS (paranoid...).
Player = SoftSqueeze via a Lynx-II sound card (because it has balanced
outputs and can be clocked externally).
Using a SqueezeBox for display and control (sync'ed with SoftSqueeze)
but as it is not needed for playing, none of the outputs are connected
anywhere.

[bobajobrob]

Around 4000 mp3s.

Software: Fedora Core 2, 2.6.5 kernel, SlimServer 2.6.2 with
Softsqueeze.

Hardware: Abit BE6 mobo, PIII 700Mhz, 750 Mb RAM, Sound Blaster Live!,
40Gb SCSI disk, 250Gb IDE disk.

[Bustofa]

Your music library contains 767 albums with 10695 songs by 1668
artists.
All MP3 at 256KB VBR - at the moment

Main Server:
Buffalo Linkstation HD-HLAN160
Slimserver Version: 5.4.1

Alternate Server:
AMD Sempron 3000+
2GB RAM
Windows XP
Slimserver Version: 6.2.1
Music Magic
[Your music library contains 772 albums with 10696 songs by 1664
artists.] - Hmm. Same source disk.

2xSB1

[Nicola Fankhauser]

the nslu2 has 32mb ram and a 266mhz ARM processor. :)

my library is about 10'000 tracks.

regards
nicola

[gutted]

Most info in my sig - but the web panel reports the following:

1022 albums with 6397 songs by 609 artists.

Other details:
Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard, with an adaptor to allow installation of
the 1.4GHz Celeron chip.
512MB Crucial RAM.

Soundcard is actually disabled in this particular PC, as I don't use it
for anything other than storing MP3s and running slim.

EDIT: reason that mine is all MP3 is because at the time I started
ripping my CDs I couldn't afford the disk space. Now that prices have
come down so much, I plan to get a couple more disks at some point and
begin the long process of ripping everything to a lossless format.
--
gutted

http://www.last.fm/user/gutt3d/

Slimserver 6.2.2 +MusicIP Mixer 1.6b2 +MoodLogic 2.7.1.18 +AlienBBC
1.02a +Slimscrobbler 0.34
Windows 2000 Professional sp4
Intel Celeron 1.4GHz
512MB RAM
Squeezebox 1 wireless (Player Firmware Version: 40)
Library of approx 6300 MP3s
------------------------------------------------------------------------
gutted's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=147
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23701

[streaml1ne]

Your music library contains 451 albums with 6302 songs by 623 artists.

Pentium 3 800MHz, 512MB ram, FreeBSD 5.3
SlimServer 6.2.2 (revision is a week or two before the official
release)
MySQL 4.1.x
1 Squeezebox v3

All APE files are stored on a separate file server with half a terabyte
RAID5 running FreeBSD 6.1. I export that directory via NFS.

[DLORDE]

My music library contains 323 albums with 4116 songs by 608 artists.

Hosted on a Dell Dimension XPS running WinXP SP2, 3Ghz dual core
Pentium processor, 2.5GB RAM, ~500GB HD storage. SlimServer 6.2.2,
SqueezeBox.

Lookin for a stand-alone wireless music server to get the full
collection on, but prices are a little high atm.

Currently listening to SomaFM Presents: Groove Salad @128k from Slim
Devices Picks. Not hi-fi, but very soothing :-)

[docbee]

My music library contains 3230 albums with 39877 songs by 1448 artists.

Server is a quite outdated P3 800 MHz, 384 KB RAM, 1.3 TB Raid 5
(6x250GB sw raid), SuSe 8.2

[chris.mason]

My library has 217 albums with 2645 songs by 108 artists.

My configuration is :

Windows XP SP2
MySQL 5.0
SlimServer 6.3.1 (lastest official build)
Music IP 6.4 beta
Intel Pentium 4 2.5ghz
2Gb RAM

SqueezeBox 3 running wireless

All music has been ripped to FLAC.

This PC also runs other stuff like games, generally browsing, word
processing and so forth. After I build a new PC, I hope to make a
dedicated media server.

[Squirrel]

623 albums with 8705 songs by 1269 artists.

Hardware: AMD AthlonXP 2800+, 512MB RAM, 120GB ATA-133 and 300GB SATA
HDs, gigabit LAN, NetBSD 2.0.2.

Dedicated media server, runs SlimServer, daapd (for iTunes), Samba (for
Windows and Audiotron) and Apache with custom PHP scripts for video and
music playback on Pinnacle ShowCenter.

I don't do any ripping on this box (got another NetBSD box set up as a
workstation for this, same CPU but 1.5GB RAM). Use cdparanoia for
extraction and lame (with options -V0 -q1 -b32 -mj) for encoding.

In a back to back test between WAV (or FLAC) and MP3, both played
through WinAmp with Creative MP3Blaster USB sound card feeding into
Arcam Black Box 50, Yamaha DSP-A592 amplifier and Eltax Symphony 6
speakers, I could just about make out a difference between MP3 and
lossless... but only just. Listened to in isolation it sounds just fine
running through an offboard DAC.

Interestingly feeding the digital output from the Squeezebox into the
Black Box 50 sounded better than using the SPDIF output on the USB
sound card. Tried with co-ax and optical connections, and both times it
sounded better. Less jitter on the Squeezebox's SPDIF out perhaps?

[Mark Lanctot]

Post by Squirrel
Interestingly feeding the digital output from the Squeezebox into the
Black Box 50 sounded better than using the SPDIF output on the USB
sound card. Tried with co-ax and optical connections, and both times it
sounded better. Less jitter on the Squeezebox's SPDIF out perhaps?

The Squeezebox is isolated from the electrically noisy PC environment.

Also the Squeezebox hardware is vastly superior to almost all
soundcards on the market.

[bp33]

My music library contains 2102 albums with 27182 songs by 947 artists. I
still have hundreds of CDs to rip.

Most are 128kbps AAC - it best meets my needs - but I have a lot of 192
MP3 from before I changed. I'm slowly converting the MP3s to AAC (by
re-ripping, not transcoding).

Slimserver running on a dual proc PowerMac G5. My two SB3s are on
ethernet; I reserve wireless for mobile devices.