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Category Archives: Airplay

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Technics Ottava Goes Atomic

The Technics Ottava series introduced 1½ years ago has gotten an atomic sibling, the SC-C70 or more poetically Ottava f, that sits on your shelf and plays all by itself. At an alluring price half the Naim MuSo it looks mighty tempting from that perspective alone. Stacking a CD transport on top of that makes it that much more interesting right there.

Big sister SC-C500 received some mixed reviews, mostly targeting a less than optimum price-quality ratio. This time that ratio appears to be more inline with expectations in its price range. The all-in-one unit packs a 100W amp feeding 2x30W to the stereo front and 40W to the sub woofer, which all things considered, is very small. On the input side it plays not only CDs but also hi-res audio files in pretty much every conceivable format. What it does not, however, is support multi room synchronicity which could prove to be a suicide omission.

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Naim Mu-So In The Lottery

Naim have put a Naim Mu-So up for draws among customers who purchase a Hi-resolution digital album from their music shop. The Mu-So is Naim’s take on a wireless, monolithic speaker to compete with products such as B&W Zeppelin. Inline with Naim’s usual graphic style, the Mu-So has a visual punch unlike most other products in its genre. It streams everything up to 24-bit/192kHz Flac on a wired connection and plays it back at 75W per channel. Unusual among its peers it supports multi-room streaming with more Mu-Sos connected and is controlled by either an iOS or Android device or via the [equally] unusually rudimentary remote that comes with the package.

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SOtM SMS-100 and SMS-1000

These products have strangely eluded me for some reason despite having been available for a good two years now. They more or less duplicate Logitech’s now long buried Transporter in terms of features and specs. The SMS-1000 even has balanced XLR output like the Transporter. Only thing missing are the goofy VU meters. We can live without them.

What you get is a 24bit/384KHz streamer capable of connecting to Logitech Media Server, Apple Airplay [natively – you hear that Sonos?], DLNA and Signalyst HQ Player. The SMS-1000 adds to this a Vortexbox media server with a built-in 2TB harddrive and automated and iTunes compatible CD ripping. Oh, and the SMS-100 can of course connect to the Vortexbox as well.

Using Sonos as a reference, this system corresponds to the Sonos Connect, feeding an external amplifier. DAC and preamp, you can get from SOtM as well. A power stage; alas no.

Both SMS-100 and SMS-1000 can be fitted with a assortment of upgrades for even better fidelity and esoteric noise reduction, as well as battery buffered power supplies.

SOtM

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