Not sure, if it's gonna be as popular, as the Squeezebox. The most appealing thing with Squeezebox was that you could take your music off the computer wirelessly and feed it to an external DAC of your choice. $249 + $975 for the Benchmark DAC 1 and you're all set! $1999 is quite a bit more expensive and won't beat the DAC 1 - hey, it's already perfect :)

Not sure why it has a word-clock in instead of a word-clock out. Seems like you want the transport to use the clock of the DAC and not the other way around.

It is the analog style VU meters that rock my socks off.

I still think something like this should be priced at $1K or even lower if it really aims to hit the mass market. The fact that you can get a laptop for that price or less creates a huge psycological barrier to invest double that on something that does "less"... if you know what I mean.

The regular Squeezebox has the analog meters too.

It has the word clock in, I believe, so you can use it as a DAC from another transport, so they must believe that the DAC in it is really great.

Just wanted to respond to some of the points raised here and elsewhere.

The analog VU's are just one of the many visualizers integrated into our SlimServer software. I love them, but you're not stuck with them if you don't. In fact what's displayed is very flexible - I personally use a plugin that displays a local weather forecast when my Squeezebox is not playing music.

My understanding is that we have word clock in for folks wanting to us a different DAC that can provide a 'master' clock signal to drive Transporter's digital circuitry and therefore minimize jitter.

As you have identified - this is definitely not our 'mass market' offering. Squeezebox is far more representative of what wee believe most people want and are willing to pay for their digital music player. However around 20% of our customers have very high-end audiophile systems, so we wanted to build a 'no-compromise' player for them. Over time the things wee have learnt from Transporter will obviously make their way into more mainstream products. However right now we believe Transporter and Squeezebox will cover a lot of people's listening needs.

Jez Hildred
Slim Devices

Thanks for taking the time to address us consumers, Jez. Please allow me to give you the old-fart perspective on your new product.

I've been waiting and hoping for something just like this -- an all-in-one computer audio machine that looks like a hi-fi component. But here's what makes me wary: It's taken more than 20 years to realize the full potential of compact discs, but computer technology changes so fast, I fear your machine will be obsolete in a few weeks (hyperbole, but you get the idea). I know modifications would be possible, but I try not to buy things I'll have to repeatedly disconnect and ship all over the place.

Can you please address these concerns? I can't promise you my business, but I assure you my interest is real.

Rods84
you make a good point and voice a concern a lot of us have with IT-based products. Obviously I can't promise to hold back the tides of technology - especially as we might be viewed as part of that movement.
However, our architecture is deliberately built with future flexibility in mind. Our products are 'slim devices' with most of the heavy lifting done back at the computer running our SlimServer software. This makes us able to add new functions and formats relatively easily. Similarly is easy to add more horsepower or storage as your collection grows or you want to use more additional features.
There is some firmware within the hardware, but this upgraded when necessary as part of the overall software upgrade process.
The hardware has been designed with current and future digital music formats in mind. We can't guarantee that in the next few years someone isn't going to come out with a new wonder forrmat that sweeps the industry.
As to the time for a format and the associated technology to mature. We've been in this business for several years and were amongst the earliest adopters of audiophile digital music formats (like FLAC). We've been streaming and playing these for ass long as anyone, now we are just upping the ante on the associated hardware to match the performance possible from these formats. Also our open source approach goes much deeper than a software development model. Our hardware was designed based in part on the requests of our audiophile community. Check out our forums to undeerstand how vibrant our community is and how much they help shape our vision.

I how this helps you get a glimpse of the thought and effort that goes into all our products, not just Transporter. If you get the chance to listen to a Squeezebox in a good system, I think you will understand why we believe that Transporter will become a standard for serious audio playback.

Jez Hildred
Slim Devices

Thank you, Jez. It sure seems like you thought this out and when I go computer-based audio (probably within a year), your machine is at the top of my list.