2. digital
  3. 1054640289

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
128x128Ag insider logo xs@2xsdrconsultant
sstannard9f33
1 posts
 
Let me direct you to http://audiomonument.com who make a product called "a la carte Personal Music Library". New on the market, it has excellent audiophile features like archiving vinyl, uncompressed storage (most rely on MP3) and a 10.4" color touchscreen control (most rely on either TV or Crestron ($$$$))
ksales
228 posts
 
I use escient cd management for my general distributed audio. The new fireball is an excellent piece doing both cd control,mp3, and cd ripping. The new unit will apparantly work over the web. While not quite there I think this is the direction to go. Mp3 is great on the go music, but the quality is not good for me for regular listening. I have what I consider a high end system where I listen to individual discs and mp3 really falls down in that setting. I believe central storage is desirable and clearly the technology is there to distribute by virtue of a digital cable to mulitiple systems for good sound reproduction. One issue I have also found is that most systems lack the ability to deliver a digital cable to multiple systems without buying expensive add ons or gerry rigging other pieces. It would be great if the mfgrs. would provide a reasonable solution for this problem.
charlesz896c
1 posts
 
I'd love to see this sort of design become an audiophile mainstream reality. I'm not the best caretaker of CD's, and I place a very high value on storing them (uncompressed mind you) on a central server. Less chance I'll lose, scratch or misfile one of my 400+ CD's.

Also, I have to believe hard disk drives are ultimately a better transport mechanism. Hard disks have waaay high iops than CD's which ultimately has to be a benefit when spitting out a consistent stream of 1's and 0's. Also, HDD's are easily replaced when they wear out. By contrast when the drive motor in your CD player gets shot, God help you.

Has the problem just been mating them with a good DAC? I don't know. I'm just a layperson, but I'd imagine you'd want a very big solid state dynamic cache that spits out 1's and 0's at a steady pace. Would this be the DAC's job or the transport's job? The other potential limitation is jitter that I believe has never been dealt with in even the best separate DAC/Transport designs. I also think it would be mandatory that you be able to upload your music via 802.11.a or g. I know the Stereophile review of Linn's product remarked that it was a pain to actually get music into the server.

I also think it's worth segmenting your market into the purist, two-channel audiophile crowd. They won't go for this sort of design until it's very well established. Plus a lot of the two channel dorks (I'm one of them) don't seem to have very large music collections and won't get as excited about the value of a central server.

However there's also the networked home crowd. My understanding is this is becoming the much more lucrative market (installing wired houses or extensive home theaters) and those people are much more willing to experiment with such a design than the former group.

Good luck with your trials!

P.S. - I know of a HDD supplier who might be useful for this project. Contact me if you're interested.
aball
2,016 posts
 
ReVox has been making what you want for a long time now. It is called the M57 and now uses the new Xiva software that Meridian is also going to use. It is really "connected" technology - the most up-to-date I have ever seen. It will hold 4000 hours of music and you can connect a couple together, then it can gather music titles directly from the internet so you don't have to enter them in. Availablitity in the USA is spotty at best so this may be a good opportunity for you! In Europe, this is the cream of the crop. Good luck! Arthur
jposs
99 posts
 
There is another inherent problem; the technology changes so rapidly. I would envision an ipod type device with a digital out. That way you could put your songs, uncompressed onto a device like an ipod, carry it around for portable listening, and then connect it to an outboard dac for serious listening.

Ipods, in less than two years, have gone from 5 gig to 30 gig capacity. And this is something that I dont see slowing down in the foreseaable future. Nobody wants to drop a whole lot of money on a piece of high fidelity equipment that will be significantly bettered in less than two years. Of course, people will argue that is happening now with CD players and DACs....

I would love to see a modded ipod to use just like this. When they come out with 60 and 120 gig hard drives on them, it will become pretty practical to put a fair number of songs on them uncompressed, and then it is portable too.

Justin
More to discover