Linn DS, and multiple MAC OS machines

[minidravid]

Hi, I am a newbie and was pointed to this site by the LINN forum.
I have 2 Apple machines (MAC Pro and IMAC) with music on then both. I am planning to rip my CDs onto an external hard drive and connect it to the IMAC. I have a LInn DS and want to be able to play the music resident on the Mac Pro, IMAC and external drive on the LInn DS as well other (capable) devices on the netwrok.
I also want to be able to control the music playback from both computers which I plan to do through Kinsky

Would like tio know what I need to download / install on which computer.
Also when ripping, which is preferable ALAC or FLAC?
Thanks in advance

[simoncn]

(05-06-2012 18:33)minidravid Wrote:  Hi, I am a newbie and was pointed to this site by the LINN forum.
I have 2 Apple machines (MAC Pro and IMAC) with music on then both. I am planning to rip my CDs onto an external hard drive and connect it to the IMAC. I have a LInn DS and want to be able to play the music resident on the Mac Pro, IMAC and external drive on the LInn DS as well other (capable) devices on the netwrok.
I also want to be able to control the music playback from both computers which I plan to do through Kinsky

Would like tio know what I need to download / install on which computer.
Also when ripping, which is preferable ALAC or FLAC?
Thanks in advance

You need to download and install MinimServer 0.31 on both the Mac Pro and iMac. See this page for details of how to do this. If you already have Java installed on these machines, scroll down to the section titled "Installing MinimServer on Mac OS X" and begin at step 3. If you don't already have Java installed, you should be able to install it by opening Java Preferences (in /Applications/Utilities) and clicking the Install button when prompted.

When you have MinimServer and Java installed, you can start MinimServer by clicking the MinimServer application icon. You can then start Kinsky (on the Mac or iPod/iPhone/iPad) and Kinsky will show a MinimServer icon in the Library section. If you have MinimServer running on multiple machines, you'll see MinimServer icons for each of these machines.

Playing music from an external drive (as well as music on the Mac's hard drive) is a bit tricky at the moment because MinimServer 0.31 can only support a single content directory (the top-level folder that contains all your music). This means that you'd need to stop and restart MinimServer when switching from music on the hard drive to music on the external drive (or vice versa). The next release of MinimServer (available soon) will remove this limitation by adding support for multiple content directories.

MinimServer, Kinsky and the Linn DS support both ALAC and FLAC, so you can rip your music to either of these formats. The quality is equivalent, but there are differences in what else you can do with these files. For example, if you want to play them in iTunes or download them to an iPod/iPhone/iPad, they'll need to be ALAC.

I hope this gives you all the information you need to get up and running with MinimServer. If you have any more questions, please post back here.

[minidravid]

Thanks. This clears everything up.

[minidravid]

Simon
One last question. How do you select the root directory (whether internal or external drive) so one can switch back and forth each time one relaunches ?
I haven't downloaded the s/w yet.
Thanks.

[minidravid]

Simon
Please ignore that last queestion. I see the answer in the instructions.

[minidravid]

Simon
I ran into a problem with the IMAC and external HD (the mac Pro installation worked perfectly_
I installed the miniserver s/w on the IMAC and launched it. I selected the music folder on the external drive as the library folder when prompted but when I did this the library was not available on Kinsky (neither on the Mac Pro or IPAD)
I can however see the MAC Pro library on the IPAD as well as on Kinsky on the MAC Pro. I tried to quit and relaunch on the IMAC hoping to change the music folder to the one on the internal drive of the IMAC (not the external drive)to see if this would work but found that I now do not have the option to choose a new music folder. I then tried to uninstall by moving the minimserver and Minimwatch to the trash and then reinstalling by clicking on the downloaded file (.dmg) and then copying the 2 files again back into the app folder and then relaunching minimserver. This still did not give me the option to choose a new music folder. I am sure I am doing something wrong.
Your help is much appreciated.

[minidravid]

An Update
I edited the properties and changed the content directory to /users/xx/music and this worked showing the music in Kinsky on my Mac Pro. Prior to this the content directory was /volumes/ext_Harddrive/music which did not work

[minidravid]

A further update. I loaded Kinsky onto the IMAC (to which the ext drive is attached) and still cannot see the library when I make the content dir /volumes/ext_Hardrive/music. Once /users/xx/music works fine.

[simoncn]

(07-06-2012 00:21)minidravid Wrote:  Simon
One last question. How do you select the root directory (whether internal or external drive) so one can switch back and forth each time one relaunches ?
I haven't downloaded the s/w yet.
Thanks.

To change the content directory, you need to click on the MinimServer icon in the system tray (looks like a minim) and select Properties from the popup menu. You can then change the value in the contentDir field and press OK to save the change. After doing this, you need to select Restart from the popup menu. If you have music playing before doing the restart, the music will continue to play while the restart is in progress.

I'll update the documentation to make this clearer.

[simoncn]

(07-06-2012 06:50)minidravid Wrote:  Simon
I ran into a problem with the IMAC and external HD (the mac Pro installation worked perfectly_
I installed the miniserver s/w on the IMAC and launched it. I selected the music folder on the external drive as the library folder when prompted but when I did this the library was not available on Kinsky (neither on the Mac Pro or IPAD)
I can however see the MAC Pro library on the IPAD as well as on Kinsky on the MAC Pro. I tried to quit and relaunch on the IMAC hoping to change the music folder to the one on the internal drive of the IMAC (not the external drive)to see if this would work but found that I now do not have the option to choose a new music folder. I then tried to uninstall by moving the minimserver and Minimwatch to the trash and then reinstalling by clicking on the downloaded file (.dmg) and then copying the 2 files again back into the app folder and then relaunching minimserver. This still did not give me the option to choose a new music folder. I am sure I am doing something wrong.
Your help is much appreciated.

Reinstalling doesn't change the properties. This is deliberate, so that your settings will be preserved when you upgrade to a new release of MinimServer. To change the properties, you need to use the Properties selection from the MinimServer tray icon and then restart MinimServer.