Another piece of Adcom gear bit the dust. My 14 year old GCD-600 developed a fault and the nearest authorized repair center couldn't fix it, saying Adcom no longer had parts (laser and laser board). I'm disheartened.

I'm looking for a replacement. I really like a changer (purists can go throw up in private, besides which, a CD changer is not analogous to a record changer). Anyway, so long as I have a set of inputs on my 990 specifically for CD use, and because I abhor the disc to disc delay on my DVD changer, I want a changer to replace the Adcom.

Years ago I had a Yamaha that I liked (the only reason I donated it to my son was to get the Adcom which matched the rest of my gear). I'm now looking at a CDC-697BL as a possible replacement. But I'm also considering going a little bit higher and considering a Marantz CC-4001. Surprisingly, I can get either for about the same price.

Anyone have any strong opinions one way or the other? Don't try and talk me out of the changer. The discussion is essentially between the Yamahammer and the Marantz. I'm somewhat price limited due to the recent 990 and Sony Bravia 52" purchases. I'm sure you'll understand.

Thanks.

Yeah, I swear by changers, too, but I'd caution against the Marantz. I've had carousel mechanism issues with two Marantz CC4300s, and though that's admittedly a step below the CC4001, recently when I happened into an audio store and inquired about a Marantz universal-disc changer (I was kinda killing time while an authorized repair guy fixed one of my Marantz's for the 2nd time), the salesperson let slip something about quality control problems with the carousel mechanism. He said Marantz had gotten the situation under control, but I felt the telltale sign was that he was aware of an issue. Before purchasing a Marantz changer, I'd definitely inquire about that. Hope this helps…

Any reason why you wouldn't consider something like a squeezebox? A lot more convenient than a cd changer and it can play FLAC (lossless compression) files.

As clever as I sometimes think I am, I was unaware of the Squeezebox. It's certainly something to consider. In fact, your post made me hold off on my "one-click order" to study the matter. In fact, now I'm thinking in terms of a standalone computer in the equipment closet to function as a music server.

Of course, I'm not sure how that's done and whether I have the stuff to proceed, but it's an interesting concept.

Thanks for your insight.

Well, here's the other changer guy chiming in to say go with a music-server if it enhances your setup. I've done some serious thinking about it also, but my apartment is small enough that I can live without it—for now.

+1 on the Squeezebox. My library is also ripped into FLAC. Also, you don't need a standby computer, just a NAS external. Not sure how it works yet, I still have my computer as my main server, but NAS would be a good fit. The slimdevices forum has a ton of info on it.

I have a buddy that's using a squeezebox with a cheap Atom 330 (dual physical cores and 4 logical cores) machine with a 500gig laptop drive inside. The machine is virtually silent and I think he was able to fit the better part of a few thousand CD's worth of FLAC files on it.

The machine he bought is one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101079

Figure another $25-30 for 2GB RAM and $90-100 for a 500gig laptop drive and you've got a cheap/silent server for your music. He's running Redhat Linux on it and the squeezeserver application. Total cost for the "server" was slightly more than $300. The physical size of the machine is about the same as an Apple Mini.

Good times.

Almost exactly what I was thinking, although my Linux machine is Ubuntu. Wouldn't be hard to build another...

Thanks.

I run Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop. That would be a fine choice as well. And if someone ever needed more space, they could always just plug in one of those 2.5" external drives that are about the size of a pack of cigs. I believe those come in 500gig sizes now too. For people that are able to live with mp3 files, you could fit a pretty substantial collection and the OS on a 64gb flash drive and go completely diskless. Something like this would be tiny and silent. You could "hide" it pretty much anywhere.

Regards,

Another one for the Squeezebox rout. I've had mine for 2 years and one of the best pieces of equipment I own.

The first thing I do with a new CD is rip it to my library. I hardly ever listen to physical CD's anymore.

I don't download anything from the net as the quality is so poor.

I went with a Logitech Squeezebox Duet system..well..actually three of them, for my music listening on three audio systems in my house. They work great and I could never go back to playing the CD's.

I ripped all of my CD's, over a thousand, to a lossless format onto my main computer, and they sound every bit as good on a high end audio system as playing a CD direct.

The Duet remote is amazing. It uses your existing wireless computer network or can also use it's own built in wirelsss network, to communicate with your computer and the Duet receiver located with your audio equipment. It has a great color LCD screen and a scroll wheel that allows you to look through all of your music and sort by artist, album title, genre, etc.

The response is instantaneus...you select the music you want and there it is. You do need to download and run a small piece of software from Logitech on the computer you have your music stored on. It runs in the background and does not interfere with using the computer for other things at all.

Once you enjoy the benefits of a music server, you will never go back to using the CD's directly.

More than a year later, here's what I did: because I've built computers in the past (thus, not intimidated by the prospect) and that I had some core parts already in inventory, I built another one. I'm running Ubuntu on it (9.04, I think), and I have it on my home network. I experimented a bit with player software from the native Rhythymbox to a couple more advanced players.

Although I initially didn't care for Rhythymbox, I was completely underwhelmed with any of the alternatives. I went ahead and started ripping all my CDs (using FLAC encoding), plus copied hundreds of albums loaned to me by a friend. Eventually, the capabilities of Rhythymbox won me over and I have a very satisfactory music server.

The bonus is I also have full internet capability in my media room although having a 52" monitor isn't as great as one might think. Still, it's been fun finding album artwork for all my CDs--even the most obscure--and it's especially fun to pause in the middle of a TV program to go to the internet for a bit of background or fact checking.

So thanks to all for getting me thinking about a music server (HTPC is the key word I learned in the process--Home Theater PC) and encouragement to anyone thinking about centralizing and digitizing their music collection. HTPC is definitely a worthwhile pursuit.