I have a love/hate relationship with hard drive servers. On one hand, they're damn cool -- pop in a disc, rip the music, instant Happy Days in your living room. On the other, a Mac Mini with a USB DAC or Squeezebox for less coin and infinitely more features seems like a no-brainer to me.
But you can't argue with the simplicity so here are three shiny toys for your listening pleasure: the Olive Symphony ($999), Cambridge Audio Azur 640H ($1399) and the big daddy McIntosh MS300 ($5100). All have hard drives (duh), all have video outputs for TV control, all have internet look-up of tracks, all have lossless encoding, all have pretty much the same guts except for hard drive size, expandability, quality of parts and number of blinky lights.
Keep reading to see how these guys stack up.
The big question is, of course, how does a hard drive server compare to CD players. Stereophile pits McIntosh's FLAC (lossless) against the CD player itself:
"But there was no question in my mind that the original CDs sounded better. The differences varied from recording to recording, but the FLAC files sounded subtly more homogenized through the midrange and less airy and on top."
I'd surmise the difference is simply McIntosh's 159+ years making CD players compared to their infant experience with FLAC. Mark my words, once lossless is mastered, the compact disc is finished. As for the other players, no word yet (to my knowledge) of their strengths against traditional transport options.
Interestingly, for a limited time, send your CD collection to Olive and they'll load them all onto your new Symphony for free, saving you a couple million hours of time. There's a company out there that rips-for-pay onto any old computer but, alas, the name escapes me.
What's interesting is the more features added (like Cambidge's wireless connectivity to leach music from your other computers), the closer these products get to a full-fledged computer. So the real question isn't if HD servers will replace CD players, but how long until we see a McIntosh-branded Windows Media Center.
Brave new world, here's where you can find out more:
McIntosh MS300 Review [Stereophile]
McIntosh Labs Home
Cambridge 640H First Look [6Moons]
Cambridge Audio Home
Olive
Olive Symphony above and Cabridge 640H below. McIntosh at top of page.
"I'd surmise the difference is simply McIntosh's 159+ years making CD players "
I don't think it has been quie that long.
I slos suspect the problem is more with the analog output on the M300 or how they create the rip rather than an inherent problem with FLAC.
Regards
Very much appreciated your words. I was very indifferent as to which "hard drive" I was to purchase. I ended up buying the McIntosh for after all; it's about the sound, istn't it? The others do offer more features but I sucked it up.
I am still sucking it up as none of my Sony 400 disk changers will be acknowledged by the MC300. I am sitting here bored inputting one CD at a time.
You're article is one I remembered and holds true relevence. It's basically a trade off between better sound or convenience. I chose the first and am paying the reaper for the other half...
RSS
