Sporting a wifi connection, wired ethernet and FM reception, this internet radio is very much that; an internet radio. A slick design centered around a pretty colour display and cool navigation controls paired with uPNP support and self sufficiency makes this a very attractive kitchen music piece, in so far that kitchen can mean just about any room in the house not equipped with a stereo system. It is yet unclear which media formats are supported.
I mentioned the Kupuk Zones a while back; an application for the Apple iPhone / iPod Touch that lets you control the Sonos Zone Players. Now Sonos themselves have released a zone controller for the iPhone. The reactions in the community the last couple of days have been hurrayingly positive and admittedly the logic of having Sonos themselves do the development would by itself be enough to warrant such a reaction. Now they only need to release a Zone Player application for PC and Mac to keep their shareholders a tad on the fringe.
Frankly this gadget was hard to fit into this blog but somehow it needs to be here. It is actually two devices. The X-Fi Notebook is a PCCARD soundcard with built-in wireless transmission using the other part of the equation; the Creative Wireless Receiver.
With the receiver it should be possible to transmit music to 4 discrete zones, each equipped with one. In other words: With a decent notebook, an X-Fi Notebook and sufficient receivers, you could build a multi-zone streamer fairly easily. The soundcard itself supports resolutions up to 24bit/48KHz and works pretty much as any other soundcard.
Adding to their Squeezebox line-up, Logitech has recently released their Squeezebox Boom. It uses the same technology as the Squeezebox Duet, in fact it can be controlled from the same remote and be a part of a system. Not entirely unlike the Sonos players that also come in a line-out unamplified version and one with a 50W power stage. The Squeezebox Boom just adds a pair of built-in speakers to make it an autonomous unit.
With specs like its sister device, sound quality is only limited to the quality of the amplifier and the miniscule speakers which, incidentally, sound incredibly good for their size. There is a 7-day alarm clock [with a built-in snooze button, no less] and automatic dimming of the display, making this perfect for a bedroom setup.
First impressions are that of a solid device. It is heavy and feels rather rugged in its rubbery front panel covering and shiny cabinet. Buttons operate smoothly and the remote, however small, feels good even in large hands and has quite a good reach. The display may seem old fashioned but the fact is that this type of Nixie-look-a-like display works very well in a dimly lit room, where color LCDs have a tendency to be overly bright. In addition to the ever present Squeezebox controls, the front panel offers 6 preset buttons that can be programmed directly from the device or from a Squeezebox Server using the KidsPlay plugin. Using this plugin gives you an almost unbelievable amount of programming options, such as (but all but limited to) choosing a random mix of tracks of a given genre while showing a brief message on the display as to which genre that is while clearing previous playlist selections. Nice, eh? In fact, it is difficult not to fiddle.
Should you need to, the Squeezebox Boom can be mounted in several positions with an optional L-bracket.
Behind a very long name lies a sleek, if somewhat conservative looking music server split in two – a desktop chassis with a CD-drive and a 15” or 17” touch screen. It supports 4 distinct zones that can be controlled separately, either from the touch screen or from a 3rd party remote [presumably via uPnP]. The server comes in 4 flavours from 250GB to 1.5TB. Files can be stored in lossless format and there is a digital output for attaching an external DAC at a resolution of up to 24bit/192KHz.
From the more unusual side of the feature set, we find not only CD burning but downscaling for iPod playlists and direct purchasing and download from Music Giants at full resolution. Not to mention the ability to play 1-second samples of arbitrary songs without interrupting whatever else is playing [except, of course, for the played sound sample].
Those who own both a Sonos system and an iPhone or ipod Touch now have the option of controlling their Sonos system from not only the indeed very jazzy Sonos controller but from their phone as well.
Specializing in making software for the iPhone, Kupuk has done a very nice job of making this a slick interface. The program identifies Sonos zones and lets you control each individually. It doesn’t mirror the Sonos controller but is an interesting addition. The application can be found at the Apple iPhone App Store.
The Avoca VIP Music Edition sports some pretty nice specs in a pretty case accompanied by a slightly less pretty PDA based controller. The media center rips CDs to Flac onto an internal disk, optionally mirrored, and serves files at up to 24bit/192KHz resolution depending on your choice of output, although it appears to support only 96KHz sampling rates, possibly upscaling from there. Could be a spec glitch, though.
One of the more curious aspects of the Avoca is the controller. You get to point and click your way through your music selection but that is not all; you can actually talk to your music system. Now how about that? “Hey! Turn down that racket, son! – Can’t hardly hear myself think!”… and sonny boy can rebel all he likes.
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.
Like a bunch of other devices here, the Yamaha MCX-2000 offers CD ripping, storing and streaming. A total of 16 playback clients, including the server, is supported, letting you access music from its 160GB upgradable harddisk from just about every conceivable location. While it does not appear to support Flac it does support raw PCM letting you record and stream lossless audio.
Unlike most others it can write CDs as well.
It just occurred to me that I had forgotten one of the major players in the field of digital media – Apple. Last year they canonballed their Apple TV into the arena and it really does deserve a mention.
The device is, as the name so subtly implies, primarily a video streamer. It can stream from internet services such as YouTube or movie rental services, as well as from an iTunes equipped computer. More interestingly, at least within this blog’s scope, is its audio support. While it doesn’t do Flac or Ogg-Vorbis, it does support Apple Lossless, which is just as good, if somewhat proprietary. In fact, B&W Music Club offer their recordings in Apple Lossless as well as Flac. Otherwise you will have to convert from other formats which can be excruciatingly tedious.
An obvious short coming, is that it requires an iTunes service to stream from. That means that it cannot stream from your average NAS disk, if any at all, but requires a computer be turned on somewhere. Making up for that it sports a 40GB or 160GB harddisk to hold tracks locally.
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Barebone device | |
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Cheap good featured | |
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Actual hi-fi device | |
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High end hi-fi | |
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Out of this world | |
 CD drive |
 Wifi |
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 Flac audio |
 Digital IO |
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 Ogg-Vorbis |
 uPnP support |
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 Video |
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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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