A few months ago, I did what was once unthinkable for many audio geeks and unplugged my Marantz CD player from a living room hi-fi setup that was beginning to get more complicated than it should be.

I had decided there was no turning back from what audiophile snobs once called “digital music”. Sure, the CD was digital but how could music encoded, stored and delivered from home computers be any good, compared to what’s played on a $20,000 CD player, they would say.

Well, thank goodness that type of argument is no longer the in thing now in audio circles, thanks to advancements that enable “bit-perfect” ripping and playback – with no detail lost. For me, the argument was settled by the fact that my Marantz CD6002 was no S$20,000 CD player, but a money’s-worth budget player that could be improved quite easily with a new digital music setup.

Thus began a sometimes unfamiliar – but ultimately fulfilling – journey to build a setup that could play high quality music using the affordable utility that everyday computing offers. …

Let me kickstart a new series here on Techgoondu – Goondu DIY, which gives a look at what goondus like us get our hands dirty with. By the way, it’s also disguised as a guide, so if you want to get your hands dirty, keep following these pages!

First off, I’m going to share my experience with FreeNAS, the freeBSD-based, open-source NAS software for turning your old PC or new, low-powered Atom-based PC into a NAS (networked attached storage). Since NAS is all the rage now, why not build your own, right?

Well, actually, it’s not for everyone. If you want storage, then a D-Link DNS-323 or QNap TS209 II, both of which I’ve tried and used, is a better bet. But what if you want to download fast over Bittorrent while sharing your files with your friends online and also to serve the media to your PS3 or XBox in the living room?

Then you need a proper server! This not only offers NAS functions, but also provides much faster BT downloads than the pitifully slow BT clients on regular NAS boxes.

Popular with many DIYers online, FreeNAS is the free software you might want to install onto your server to offer features that are essentially as good as regular NAS boxes. Why FreeNAS? 1) It’s free 2) It’s powerful 3) It’s relatively easy to run 4) It has low hardware requirements. Here’s my experience with FreeNAS… …