The Memory Player got its public unveiling at HE 2007.
The Player was in several rooms:
Laufer Teknik was using it in an all Behold system.
Scanea loudspeakers/Nova Physics has a room.
Audio Doctor, me, was showing it. The response from the public was outstanding, we were using the DAC of the Audio Aero Prestige and comparing optical drive playing vs Memory and the Memory player was unbelievable. This is the next evolution in digital, mark my words you will be hearing a lot more about this product. The GUI is primitive and the build quality could be refined but the sound is the closest to analog I have ever heard out of digital bar none and I have been doing this professionally for 20 years.
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Hey Scott, here is the scoop on the Memory Player and I am sure you can get one for review, they are just right now rare as hens teeth!
Audio Doctor, as a displaying dealer got one in our showroom which was brought to the show by George himself.
All Memory Players are hand assembled by George. The proprietary software is undergoing copyright protection and until Nova Physics is completely legally protected they are very leary to have others assemble them.
So soon they will be able to mass produce them. I am in agreement with Bill Gaw as to the power of the Memory Player, we were able to directly compare Memory reading to direct optical playback and the difference was mind blowing!
The Memory Player is analog without the ticks and pops in a digital format! The quality of emotional connection along with the sound staging and naturalness of the sound makes the Memory Player a revolutionary movement in digital evolution. |
Scottr, you will be amazed! I will personally gurantee it.
I was soooooo skeptical about this product, but once we got it setup in our room on Saturday and started to listen to it, it was as they say "Game Over!"
I have read all the reviews and I am many times at odds with alot of reviewers, but not this time.
A lot of reviewers are getting it right, the Shakti stuff is really good, and the acoustic system resonators are also off the hook.
I have over the years seen and heard way too many products that I thought were good but not worthy of the praise fostered by many critics.
I wonder if the main stream press will endorse a product like the Memory Player which has no advertising dollars spent, or will they continue to rally around the big spending companies whose technology is now dead.
At the show DCS was unveiling a $30k transport which I am dying to take my Memory Player against, the price differential is staggering and with a Memory Player you can have the convience of hard drive music access and I am willing to bet the Memory PLayer will kill it dead.
Like you I am equilly thrilled, to have mine, good luck and congradulations you are taking a musical step like you have not experienced before.
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The Shakti Stones and Holograms.
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Audio Doctor update.
After living with the Memory Player for a little while, here are my observations:
1: Sound quality is remarkable and actually mirrors many of the qualities of a really good vinyl front end.
2: GUI is very primitive.
3: Operation can be improved.
4: Build quality is okay and needs improvement.
But even with those caveats I can not recommend this thing enough! I have for the first time found digital to be as involving as a really good analog system and in some ways superior.
The absence of noise, clicks and pops and the easy of digital combined with the soundstaging of analog and an sense of musical involvement that analog gives, makes me so excited to have a Memory Player.
It is also refereshing to find that so many reviewers are right on the money. |
A GUI is a Graphic User Interface ie the connected part of man and machine, ie Windows any version and of course the MAC!
In the case of the Memory Player designed by propeller heads for propeller heads.
In our showroom we are running the Memory Player into an Audio Aero Prestige which is in itself is a remarkable cd player.
With the Prestige's built in DAC we can switch between built in optical and external Memory drives. In every way the Memory Player bests the optical reader.
If you stop and think about the built in optical player should have no jitter as it is a direct read from the laser to the DAC vs, a long external digital cable and connection jacks, but the superiority of the Memory Player is huge and is a different world of realism and involvement. |
To Todd,
The Memory Player uses proprietary software and processing which extracts a pure bit perfect copy of the disc on to a hard drive, then the data is processed, then played back from solid state ram.
The only other player that does this is a $100k Sonic Solutions work station, also Exact Copy does not do this either!
Even David Chesky of Chesky Records is impressed by the Memory Player, and how good it sounds.
Also many critics are smitten with the Player and most reviewers agree that the Memory Player is a breakthrough and have purchased one.
A Toyota Prius is a car that has an engine, however, it also has an electric motor and a control system. A Prius drives like a regular car yet offers superior gas mileage.
A Memory Player is a computer with a hard drive, ram chips, proprietary software and in principle works in a similar manner than any hard drive based server.
The difference is in the details,
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To Bigamp,
I got my Memory Player back after George did a couple of upgrades to my player, which I got during HE 2007, and right after the show we were too busy putting the sound rooms back together again.
Anyway there is more to the Memory Player than what you surmise: for one: the software is quite different than EAC and a ram disc is still ram setup as a virtual space on the hard drive, which means you will still have timing errors.
There are a lot of hidden tricks which they are doing.
On the Memory Player you rip the data without ECC to the Memroy and then load the Memory onto a hard drive to store the data, then on playback you reverse the process.
You can playback from the Hard drive which Bigamp would be working exactly as you describe, you can also playback from memory which sounds much superior! I did those tests this weekend.
The Memory Player sounds like no other digital source I have heard, it really sounds like you are listening to a live recording!
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This is to Bigamp and to MTKHL,
I have used the player by playing back tracks from Memory vs the Hard Drive, and there is no comparison between the two.
I think that you said all computers play back tracks from memory used as a buffer, so therefore if that is the case there would be no sonic difference.
Also Mr. Perry and his staff have tested EAC copies vs the Memory Player and again there is no contest.
What you fail to realize is that the Memory Player is doing processing that EAC does not do, there are tricks that they are applying to work with the data in an entirely different way then EAC is doing.
I have talked with David Chesky of Chesky records about the Memory Player and he is in agreement with the merits of the Memory Player.
As per Clements system and the Behold amplifiers I am hearing the same thing in my system and I am using Plinius, Edge and Nuforce amps in my showroom and the Memory Player has brought my system up to an entirely new level of sound quality.
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To RX8man, people have taken the lid of as Mr. Perry has said, and no one has been able to duplicate the sound of the Memory Player, and that does include VRS.
As per cost, of course the price of this technology will eventually come down, but what most people don't realize is that what you are really paying for is the two plus years and 1,000s of man hours developing the code employed by the Memory Player.
If you compare the Memory Player to Microsoft's latest attempt to get it right "Vista" then you can get a great perspective. A retail copy of Vista costs about $300.00 when the net cost to produce this product in quantity is probably less than $5.00.00!
What is in a box of software a disc, some printed pamphlets
and a nice looking box. So why $300.00? As I am sure Mr. Gates would tell you it costs millions and millions of dollars to develop the code over many, many years and a ridiculous amount of expensive programming man hours!
Unlike Microsoft both of these companies will sell hundreds of units not millions so the cost for a while will be high to cover, recoup and then to make profit for the designers and principles.
Most audiophiles have no problem spending a lot of money on a pair of cables or other associated hardware, the Memory Player and the VRS both are more than the sum of their respective parts, and should be thought of in that light.
The fact that you can take apart a $32,000.00 pair of Avalon Edilon Diamonds and build your own knock off version for the sum of its parts which would probably cost you less than $6,000.00!
So why doesn't everyone build their own? Obviously it isn't as easy to do, or everyone would be building their own speakers.
As per the difference between the companies just check out the bio difference between the designers.
With Nova Physics you have two of the most respected audiophile engineers in the industry: Mark Porzilli and George Bischoff. Melos had a ten plus year run with great sounding and innovative products and technologies.
Remember the SHA Gold, which was I believe the first audiophile headphone amplifier, then there was the photon coupled volume control developed by Porzilli, then there was the Pipedreams speakers which reinvented the line source array and there were also if I remember the first really high powered triode based tube amplifiers.
VRS looks like they have a snappier website, and probably has a real user interface, but given the engineering backgrounds between the two companies I would bet there would be no contest between them.
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Lets get together and do a shootout. How do you know what I may or may not have heard or what my friends may or may not have heard?
Your product and the Memory Player are more alike than different, how come you you don't rebut, these "we can do it ourselves guys" which is the major part of contention in these posts, you have half the guys who are naysayers who don't believe in the product, and the other half think they can cobble together an exact clone for no money what is your opinion?
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You may be using the same DAC! The Memory Player's DAC is still in development and is not shipping at this time, maybe they had designed it with this chip in mind and had a preproduction sample, just like you.
I will find out from George.
I find it rather interesting that Kana made this post about the 32bit DAC suddenly being here and then APLhifi came in to to say they are using it, when you first questioned how could Nova Physics be using a 32bit dac when they don't exist, well clearly they do.
Does Kana work for you? Your attacks on the Memory Player and this sudden shift to promote your product is rude.
Alex I don't care how expensive or magnificent your products are, Optical playback is inferior and can not no matter what compensate for the ECC related problems and recreated data that optical playback generates.
The entire industry will be adopting over time a hard drive based playback model it is superior, it is jitter free, and it makes cataloging music easy.
Why don't you move to the future and create your own version of the memory player? If you are so smart to beat Mark Porzilli, the man who at age 12 was designing technology for Baush and Lomb, then prove it, for your edification here is a bit about Mark:
Mark Porzilli, a former child prodigy, was able to wire simple circuits and draw schematics at age 5. He completed a masters level education in Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Chemistry at age 14, after winning a national competition to miniaturize electronic circuitry for Bausch & Lomb at age 12. That same year, he designed biofeedback electronics for several New Jersey hospitals, and
entered two state science fairs, winning first place in both. A scholar of religious philosophy and a prolific artist/
By strange coincidence, new designs in LASER seems to be a 'family tradition'. Anthony Porzilli, Mark's father, was the chief electronics technician under Lucio Vallese at ITT Laboratories during his pioneering work on the Ruby Laser, in the early 1960s. He
recalls the extremely precise polishing of "barrels" of rubies, until a single frequency of light ONLY could pass through them!
Mark designed all of Melos Audio's solid state and vacuum tube
products with George Bischoff from 1979-1999. He is also the
designer of the original, award winning Pipedreams Loudspeakers.
He is the designer of the new Scaena Line Source Loudspeakers
as well.
In its 20 year history, Melos Audio garnered over 200 rave reviews
from 30 countries, on six continents. Melos won Stereophile's
"Product of the Year" for its legendary SHA-1 Headphone
Amplifier and "Editor's Choice" in The Absolute Sound. The
original Pipedreams won TAS' "Golden Ear" too.
Mr. Porzilli and Mr. Bischoff are true pioneers in the field and have a proven track record of producing excellent products and creating great sound. Melos was a company that was booming in the 90's and was lauded by many magazines for their great sound and engineering prowess.
Why digress, because a company is as only as good as the people behind it and these two men are both gentleman with knowledge and talent.
You are only focusing in on the DAC side of the equation, a DAC can only perform with the data it is given 32bit or 24bit is almost immaterial when you are dealing with ECC corrupted data you are over before you've begun.
The Memory Player as wells as the VDS are the first audiophile products to address this new model. Wake up fellow audiophiles Memory Playback is vastly superior to optical reading it is that simple and yes it is that much better!
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Okay, maybe I was being a bit hard on Alex but he has the one questioning how Nova Physics could be using a 32bit dac, in the first place.
Then shortly after he questioned how they could be using one, Kana chimes in with the announcement that low and behold 32bit dacs are available and then Alex comes in with with the fact that he too is going to be using this new chipset, it looks like first an attack on Nova Physics credibility and then as a PSA for APL hifi.
Personally I have never heard Nova Physics DAC nor APL's.
I would love to do a shootout in the DAC department.
All I can say is that I am using the Memory Player and the sound quality is a revelation and it crushes optical playback.
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Yes hard drives can fail, that is why there will be redundant external storage with the Memory Player.
Yes optical storage is pretty durable but scratched discs, miss filled discs, and lost discs will be a thing of the past which is a good thing.
However, valid your point is we are all moving away from owning content in its native form.
With Fios, Satellite TV, and other such services high speed down loads of content is the future. CD sales will eventually be as quaint a concept as spinning music via an LP. Just try to find a good record or cd store, Tower is a shinning testament to that future.
Don't get me wrong I love my albums and cd's but this future is inevitable. The wholesale adoption of the Ipod proves my case. Our children will grow up in a future without software in a hard format, the handwriting is on the wall.
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Kana you are right on that one. The Memory Player was envisioned for the person who already has thousands of CDs.
Down loadable music in most cases is already corrupted, so buy your CD's now or forever hold your piece!
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Maybe my post wasn't clear. The DAC's design has been finished for some time, what is stopping shipment has been chassis issues.
Originally the DAC was planned to be internal and now the DAC is going to reside in a similar box which goes under the transport. This will allow for more hard drive space in the Transport for redundant storage.
As per the 32bit chip set I will have to find out, but I loved what Audio Tweekers said, how many bits you are using in processing is really immaterial, it is how the device sounds is what matters.
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Raquel, I think your points are well taken. Here is how I would comment on the whole garage based thinking.
I would say that that almost all of the smaller companies are one to 10 person operations, and almost all of the larger more established companies are not.
Examples of large companies; CJ, ARC, Krell, Levinsion,etc.
Examples of small compamies: CAT, Resolution Audio, Lamm, etc.
Some of the best sounding gear comes from some of these smaller companies.
I remember many years ago when a dedicated recording engineer hand made out of corrian an ultra high performance two way recording monitor to master his own recordings on.
That man was David Wilson. Fast forward and look at the company now, they are not in a garage now. This is the story with many of the now giants of this and many other operations.
Apple computer was started in a garage.
What matters is your comfort level in the product, technology, and the people behind the product.
Part of the charm is that most of the products we covet are rare hand made devices. |
