Continued from musicstorage [musicstorage4, musicstorage6, musicstorage1, musicstorage2, musicstorage-solved3, musicstorage3, musicstorage-solved1, musicstorage8, musicstorage-solved2, musicstorage5, musicstorage7]
Taking a different view on file format and codec ![[WikiPedia]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
support than what I've found on the client side, here is the software that I've used or am aware of on the server side.
| Communication | WinXP Server | Linux Server | Lossy | Lossless |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple Rendezvous | iTunes | daapd or mt-daapd | MP3, AAC | Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF |
| SMB | Directory Share | Samba | All Formats | All Formats |
| UPnP | SimpleCenter or Windows Media Connect | TwonkyVision | MP3, WMA9 | WMA9 (also WAV, LPCM on TwonkyVision) |
| HTTP | SlimServer | SlimServer | MP3, WMA9, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, DTS | WMA9, WAV, FLAC, Apple Lossless, PCM |
Note 1: There are many other solutions for HTTP streaming, such as Icecast and Shoutcast.
Note 2: RokuLabs has a nice breakdown of different servers on their web site.
Like the client side, there is universal support for MP3. And again like the client side, everyone but Apple supports lossless WMA9. However, all servers seems to support WAV, which is interesting.
If I want to rip my music to a lossless format on a Digital Audio Storage server, there appears to be only two solutions to support playback on all possible clients:
the digital audio on-the-fly, either from WMA9 to Apple Lossless and MP3, or Apple Lossless to WMA9 and MP3Noting the storage requirements for 350 CDs, there shouldn't be an issue with storing a duplicate copy of my music in MP3 (other than automating the maintenance of two copies). However, it seems really inefficient to store two lossless copies.
Next step: I need to figure out which server software would be the easiest to configure for transcoding. mt-daapd looks very promising… 
