Dealer needs input, next wave of gear?


This may strike some as awkward, but some dealers are people too. We are just trying to read the "tea leaves" like regular audiophiles and make decisions on what products and lines to handle. Rather than listen to the industry pitch I would really appreciate your insights.

We are a client driven custom system designer/installer using only the high end products. For a number of years the question of what to do with large CD collections comes up. While we all accept their are no "high - end" multi-disc solutions we are still confronted with the questions as many of the clients engage us after they have already obtained collections of 200, 300, 400, or 1000 CDs. Previously we have cobbled together soltuions involving daisy cahining some Denon 5000/5001 together or similar such gear. While this may have been "best you could do with current technology" solution it feels as though we are on the horizon of another solution.

In the last year or so we took on a project to begin building "audio servers" - meaing a high end pc/server, dead-silent cooling, and massive hard drive/storage array, high end audio processing card; in order to fill the need for managing larger CD collections. I would grade our "success" as modest at best.

Now we are beginning to see "audio hard drive" components address the market with something more than a passing oddity approach. We are currently engaged in field testing one such unit. (inappropriate to name brand here). Of these type of products this one actually seems viable as a high end solution to this dilemma of ours.

Framing my question to you: Does it make sense to offer real audiophiles a single component sized horizontal piece that holds hundreds of CD titles with all the expected editing features and high end digital output stream (to go to your outboard processor) and have a separate high end SACD/DVD-A transport for the cutting edge audio performance, thereby preserving our CD collections effectively while auditioning the new formats being produced?

All opinions welcome! :-) Please be kind to a dealer of limited mind. And a Pledge to honor no soliciting to anyone who is so moved to comment on this idea. Thank you for your time, Paul
sdrconsultant

Showing 1 response by rockvirgo

I have a friend who's already uploaded all his CD's to his iMac. He says he's got no use for DAC's and is happy with the convenience and sound quality. He never was much of an audiofile per se, but he had at least 1000 CD's. He mostly prefers to rock out so it works great for him.

Considering that the sale of whole CD collections might be a ready source of funding for your idea, you may want to consider taking them in trade. Once harddisk storage catches on, I'll bet all the little plastic disks will disappear. The catchword Paperless will give way to Plasticless. The links to make it happen are already gaining popularity: XM radio; digital cable; the web.

It still amazes me that a memory stick the size of a piece of chewing gum can hold 128megs. That's the capacity of almost 90 floppy discs! Bio-embedding isn't too far off. Imagine vitamin supplements that enhance your receptivity. File sharing will take on a new meaning, hehe. And sooner or later, the Sony ESneurolink InSampler will see the light of day, but only prior to installation :^)