Has anyone heard the Bladelius Embla?

"The Embla offer a silent system playback system without any moving mechanical parts when playing from the built-in flash memory. ... Unlike other computer based playback products the Embla is based on our proprietary audio DSP design, allowing us to completely control the timing and reading of the discs."

I have no experience with this player. I must say, though, that the claims are dubious. First, all players have a memory buffer; loading the track into flash memory is unnecessary and irrelevant. A good DAC should be able to handle the streams from the buffer. Jitter is limited by the timing in the DAC. So why is timing the reading of the disc necessary? Computer processors are powerful enough to read the discs pretty much continuously, buffer, and process the information to the DAC.

"The Embla comes preloaded with a database for album and track names and will display album art if connected to the internet with its Ethernet port."

So does Windows Media Player. It's called freedb (www.freedb.org) or Gracenote (www.gracenote.com).

By the way -- I apologize if this isn't useful -- assuming you have your music stored on a NAS in another room (so noise isn't an issue), you could buy a fanless PC with a SSD drive (flash) for a couple hundred, or a battery operated eeePC, then spend the rest of your money on the best USB DAC you could afford, for the same result. The Bladelius player retails for $9000, and aside from its "world class" DAC, the technology is rather pedestrian, in my opinion.

With a name like that how can they fail? Computer generated do you suppose?

Yes, I've tried both the basic and full option of the embla and now have the latter. The player is excellent and far now the only one I know of not based on a computer.
I've used with a usb external 1T hard disk, the internal memory (compact falsh 32Gb on the basic), 64GB HDD SSD Sata2 on the full version.
The construction is excellent, signal path very short the dac is able to play up to 32bit/192khz.

Have had the possibility to listen to some linn 24/96 recordings and they sound grate especially when you play them without the internal upsampler.

The player takes some time for burning in, the first week it's better just to let it play all time and start listening to it after 150 hours. There are big improvements specially in the soundstage.

SW updates are very easy. If you have it connected to the net when there is an upgrade to letters "SW" appear on the display and just go to the menu and click on sw download and in a couple of minutes the Embla is upgraded.

Forgott to mention; I bought it
to fit in a dcs stack but at the end the sound was so close that i sold all the dcs.

I great product that should be listen.

At the moment I own the top models of Bladelius: Embla cd, Saga pre and Ymer power.
I can describe the Embla as a extremely high resolving, sophisticated and refined player with unlimited future possiblities. Therefor, for me this is the ideal choice for a source. In future I will buy an external server to store all my cd's (they can go to the attic).

I heard the Embla in a demo a few weeks ago.
At the same time I also heard the Ayon CD5.
The Ayon CD5 has had fantastic reviews by a number of on-line publications
so that helps to put it into perspective when I add my opinion that the Embla is better.
The dealer where I attended the demo said that of the 6 staff working there
that 3 prefered the Embla and the other 3 the CD5.
Anyone interested in the Embla should also read the Hi-Fi Choice review:
http://www.sounds-of-music.co.uk/downloads/HFC%20Embla%20Collect.pdf

I heard the Plinius ca US$6K player.
It's a good cd player.
The Embla is a very good music reproducer.
I'm an analog man, always prefered a good vinyl spinner.
Embla does not sound like a record player, but I really enjoyd it's sound

I had read about this and bought the one I heard at an exhibition. The internal "flash" memory is actually an SSD of 64 Gb. Mine is now full with just over 100 albums in it. The English importers will change the original SSD for larger ones as they become available. The Embla should handle up to 2 Tb. As for the sound, I prefer it to my Ayre CX5e, but that's just me. The Embla is much better at playing the initial part of the note. The amount of information it retrieves is astounding. Fingers on strings, breath between teeth and saliva in mouths, it's all there.
Just need to afford some more Solid State drives.The bits in memory are to the DAC under total control of the player. This is not possible when the data is read off a disk.

Can somebody say something about the preamp built in Embla ? How good it is comparing to separate stuff ?

This is unbelievably good. It acts like real preamp: control and stability. And you save money: one pre amp, one interconnect cable and one power cord. If you have a turntable you need a separate phono amp. Very recommendable especially with their Ymer power amp.
If you want better results with pre-amp, you have to invest at least 10K more.

Anyone know where to buy or test one in san Francisco?