Category Archives: Released in 2008

Pioneer PDX-Z9 SACD Receiver

[prodccat level=4 cd=1 flac=1 digital=1 upnp=1]

PDX-Z9 Pioneer have outdone themselves mating purist zen like styling and an outstanding feature set in this new SACD receiver. SACD receivers are not exactly one by the dozen in the first place and one that can receive audio streams certainly less so; not mentioning that it supports Flac albeit not the wildest of surprises since, after all, this is a SACD player. With a continuous 40W at 4Ω it is definitely no power station but it appears that Pioneer are signaling a new digital world order with this nice little device. They do have a new surround beast called SC-LX90 that does roughly the same as the PDX-Z9, only its 5 extraneous channels has caused some rather severe swelling, drastically impairing the zen stuff.

By the way, what is it with these product names? Do you remember Franquin’s comic series Spirou et Fantasio? Z comme Zorglub anyone? Ring a bell?

Pioneer Pioneer

Sony NAS-SC55PKE

sonynas This is a complete system with zone system serving up to 5 rooms, ripping from CD and lossless streaming [LPCM, not Flac]. But like the Arcam or the Colorado vNet and unlike practically everybody else, this thing supports recording and streaming of analogue sources. Damn that is cool! It even support finger print recognition of analogue sources making it possible to tag tracks. Other strange analysis features include a 12 tone analysis-gizmo which can distinguish between talk and music. I wonder where the line is drawn between rap and sports commentary? Not to mention why you need to distinguish?

One thing that makes this device stand out, however, is what appears to be support for runtime conversion – the very thing I have asked for. It can publish tracks to a USB device. Since it can save tracks in LPCM when ripping and the publishing appears to be unconditional this must be the conclusion. Well done!

It has an FM radio and in some versions a DAB. The device supports recording from all sources onto the harddisk and can do it at set times.

The NAS-SC55PKE is the bigger brother in a duet of devices, with a heavily crippled smaller sibling. Big brother comes with a wireless client so you will have something to stream to. I shall refrain from mentioning the speakers that come with system.

Sony Sony

Impact Acoustics USB wall plate


usbsuperIf you have a USB device you need to connect to your media streamer and need to run it more than the 5 metres USB is usually capable of, Impact Acoustics offer a neat little wall plate kit that lets you run USB through twisted pair up to 50 metres. The end points fit a standard American wall plate but a bit of ingenuity should suffice to fit it in a European panel. This repeater is USB 1.1 compatible so it should actually be able to feed a DAC like the Bel Canto or Benchmark from a PC based media center stoved away in another room. Definitely worth a try.

Impact Acoustics offer a broad range of connectors, flush mount or on-cable.

Impact Acoustics Impact Acoustics

Philips NP1100 Streamium

NP1100 The Philips Streamium system has been extended with an internet radio, not entirely unlike the SLA5500 mentioned in the Terratec Noxon article. This time, however, the device looks a lot more together – it’s got a bit of bling, even. It doesn’t appear to support lossless encoding but it does recognize uPnP services on the network and connects both wirelessly and with twisted pair. On the output side there are 2 analogue outputs, headphone and line out, as well as a coax for digital connectivity.

Philips Philips

Chord QBD76 DAC

QBD76 I mentioned the Chordette Gem earlier. Now this little diamond has spawned a big brother in the Chord QBD76 DAC. The QBD76 is a truly high end DAC as you would expect from Chord Electronics. The major addition to DACs in general and its predecessor alike, is a the very same thing that makes the Chordette Gem so original – Bluetooth reception. An abundance of digital inputs, including USB, makes it a versatile hub in your audio system even so; but Bluetooth A2DP support now adds your mobile phone to the equation.

Incidentally. If you remember the old Flash Gordon comics, do you not hear Dr. Zarkov exclaim while straightening his back and pointing: “Duck Flash! That rocket ship is armed with a QBD76!”?

Chord Electronics Chord Electronics

Pinnacle Audio athenaeum

athenaeumI think the guys at Bel Canto may have had a finger in the soup when Pinnacle Audio named this raw beast. House of Athena? Whichever way you look at it, it is a beautiful name for a device that would more aptly be called a machine.

The athenaeum holds up to 4 750GB harddisks for a total of 3TB of disk space and unlike any other streamer I know of [at least of the type befitting this blog] supports RAID1. Supported file format include Flac and Ogg-Vorbis but it can rip to MP3 and AAC as well. The device is managed from a web interface or from the included [wifi enabled] remote control with colour touch screen.

The athenaeum has a smaller sister called folio. The folio has roughly the same specs but has only 2 fixed disks instead of 4 replaceable. It comes in 2x250GB, 2x500GB and 2x750GB flavours. Ample space for most, even in Flac.

Oh, and guess what?! The brochure for the athenaeum quotes Henry VIII… “In sweet music is such art”. Could it be an ode to miss Capulet?

Pinnacle Audio Pinnacle Audio

Chordette Gem

Chordette Gem British audiophile magazine What Hi-Fi? just released a quick news article on their web about an interesting device from Chord Electronics [otherwise known for their insanely exquisite high end audio components] – the Chordette Gem. The device is something as ingenious and yet so simple as a Bluetooth DAC. The idea is that you stream music from your mobile phone via Bluetooth. For more orthodox purposes it offers a USB socket as well.

What Hi-Fi? What Hi-Fi?

Chord Electronics Chord Electronics

Tivoli Audio NetWorks

Tivoli Audio are known for some of the coolest table top radios on the market in general and for Henry Kloss’ design in particular. They too have jumped on the wagon and done a streaming piece of art with their new NetWorks.

NetWorks streams internet radio stations as well as playing FM radio and DAB. Supported file formats include MP3 and WMA. It is unclear if lossless formats are supported but unlike most others it supports Real Audio.

More on this little cutie later.

Tivoli Audio Tivoli Audio

Logitech Squeezebox Duet


duethandset This is a clever device, in that it detaches navigation from the device completely and uses only the remote. The remote control has a small color LCD display which shows everything from playlists to album cover artwork. More Squeezeboxes can be linked together between rooms and either play different tracks or in-sync.

Just like with the Transporter, Logitech-owned Slim Devices once more shows true excellence in spec writing. One thing, however, they managed to keep somewhat hidden, is the fact that the Duet [unlike the Transporter] only supports streaming from their own SqueezeCenter server software. You cannot, in other words, stream from just any media enabled NAS disk or directly from a file server.

Like its bigger brother it supports Flac and Ogg-Vorbis. Indeed a neat device, even considering its obvious short coming.


Squeezebox Duet Squeezebox Duet

TViX HD M-7000A

tvixm-7000a Korean DVICO has come up with a very nice modular package that supports streaming 1080i HD TV as well as audio, including Flac coded music. The clever thing about the TViX M-7000A is in part that it acts as a network device where you can add or remove media using standard operating system file operations such as Windows Explorer. Another part of the cleverness lies in its modular build. A DVB receiver matching the base of the device can be added in one simple operation in a fashion suggesting future add-on possibilities.

A slick user interface displayed on the attached TV makes for an easy but full fledged means of navigation. In the department for curious features it boasts a connection for an HDV camcorder.

TViX TViX

Barebone device Barebone device
Cheap good featured Cheap good featured
Actual hi-fi device Actual hi-fi device
High end hi-fi High end hi-fi
Out of this world Out of this world
CD CD drive
Wifi Wifi
Flac Flac audio
Digital IO Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support uPnP support
Video Video

Please note that the ratings are not objective in any way nor are they a measure for quality. They are a measure for what I think the target group for the device was intended to be; my expectations if you will.

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