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Meridian sooloos, Olive 6HD, ??

Confused with choices. What music server to buy? Budget $2500-$4000 new or used. Looked at Olive and Meridian. The exterior of the Olive 6HD disc slot has the aesthetics (puke green) of a Fischer Price toy (what were they thinking?). I want a screen and disc drive to copy my large CD collection to build-in hard drive and ability to add backup hard drive. Plan to use iPad Mini for control. Keeping my SACD player for my large SACD collection but ideally would like to copy my SACD's to disc and put SACD's in storage with my CD collection but not possible with current SACD copyright restrictions.
bgeofft-duplicate-0

Showing 2 responses by audioengr

audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Mac mini late 2009 will deliver better SQ with Amarra or PM and may be cheaper too IME. It can be further improved with some published tweaks and replacing hard disk with SSD. About $1200 total outlay.

Ripper should be either dbpoweramp on PC or XLD on Mac. Makes a big difference.

You will need a good USB interface and DAC to go with it. This is where you can even outperform good vinyl if you make the right choices.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
The HUGE advantage with using a computer rather than a server is:

1) you have control over the playback software
2) you have control over the ripping software
3) you can add a device with a good master clock and not depend on the crappy clock in the server
4) if you buy Amarra, you can have one of the best EQ systems on the planet, totally transparent. This can change your $10k speakers into $100K performers.
5) control over the format of the files
6) ability to import files of any type, not just albums

Ease of use is fine, but is it really worth sacrificing all of the above? I think not.

If soem server actually did it right, then I would have no issues here, but it does not exist IME.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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