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Dealer needs input, next wave of gear?

This may strike some as awkward, but some dealers are people too. We are just trying to read the "tea leaves" like regular audiophiles and make decisions on what products and lines to handle. Rather than listen to the industry pitch I would really appreciate your insights.

We are a client driven custom system designer/installer using only the high end products. For a number of years the question of what to do with large CD collections comes up. While we all accept their are no "high - end" multi-disc solutions we are still confronted with the questions as many of the clients engage us after they have already obtained collections of 200, 300, 400, or 1000 CDs. Previously we have cobbled together soltuions involving daisy cahining some Denon 5000/5001 together or similar such gear. While this may have been "best you could do with current technology" solution it feels as though we are on the horizon of another solution.

In the last year or so we took on a project to begin building "audio servers" - meaing a high end pc/server, dead-silent cooling, and massive hard drive/storage array, high end audio processing card; in order to fill the need for managing larger CD collections. I would grade our "success" as modest at best.

Now we are beginning to see "audio hard drive" components address the market with something more than a passing oddity approach. We are currently engaged in field testing one such unit. (inappropriate to name brand here). Of these type of products this one actually seems viable as a high end solution to this dilemma of ours.

Framing my question to you: Does it make sense to offer real audiophiles a single component sized horizontal piece that holds hundreds of CD titles with all the expected editing features and high end digital output stream (to go to your outboard processor) and have a separate high end SACD/DVD-A transport for the cutting edge audio performance, thereby preserving our CD collections effectively while auditioning the new formats being produced?

All opinions welcome! :-) Please be kind to a dealer of limited mind. And a Pledge to honor no soliciting to anyone who is so moved to comment on this idea. Thank you for your time, Paul
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Showing 2 responses by rsbeck

rsbeck
887 posts
 
I use an i-book and an external 80 gig hard drive to store
1,000 CD's in slightly compressed form. I use this to store CD's I have ripped to the hard drive.

I connect from the headphone jack to analogue L & R inputs in pre-pro.

I certainly do not use this system for critical listening.

I mostly use this "player" for background music for parties.
I let guests make play-lists and it is quite fun to have everyone participate in the music selection for the evening culling songs from 1,000 CD's.

I would be interested in a higher quality solution that does
everything I can do with my set-up. My set-up is connected
to the internet via airport. I scroll through titles on
a 12" i-book screen. I can rip CD's to the hard drive using several different gradations of compression or I can rip them completely uncompressed.

What is needed is a player with these attributes plus a big
enough hard drive to store about 1,000 CD's uncompressed that can output the music with high quality sonics. It would be even better if the unit could upsample the music.

I don't know how this would all be accomplished. I just know that I have seen several products [Escient, Yamaha]
try to address this and the ones I've seen do not present
an upgrade from what I currently have.

Hope that helps.

Rob

rsbeck
887 posts
 
The i-book will store CD's uncompressed on an external
hard drive. It is connected to the internet via Airport,
so when I rip CD's, I can get song titles instantly. It
does seem to me that a machine could be built that would
connect to the Plasma or TV Screen, negating the need for
a monitor and I would echo those who have said that a
digital out instead of having to use the headphone jack,
split to L & R analogue pre-pro inputs, would be ideal.

I have a pretty high end music system and I can most
certainly tell the difference between compressed music
and uncompressed. When I started this project, 80 gigs
was the max so I stored them slightly compressed. Now
that you can get 360 gigs....if I were starting again --
which I will do when I feel I have a lasting solution --
I would store it all uncompressed. High volume, uncompressed storage would be a necessity for any company
seeking to get me to trade in my i-book system for their
product. Make it so it would interact with a surround
pre-pro like an Anthem AVM20, Proceed AVP2, Lexicon MC12b,
Krell, Levinson 40, etc. etc. Through a digital out.

Or, if anyone works for Apple -- THEY should equip their
i-books and desk-tops with a digital out!

Finally, the idea of an i-pod that could be plugged into
your home stereo, your car stereo, and be used with head-
phones, would be a natural. All of your music goes
everywhere. You listen at home, you plug into a slot
in your trunk or glove box, which connects it to a screen in your dashboard, you get to the beach, you pull it out
of the slot, plug in a headphone and you continue to
enjoy your music collection. Etc. etc. etc.

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