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This Month's Featured Equipment Reviews |
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Media Server Forum Topics: |
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Classic Media Server Reviews |
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Music Servers
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Friday, 01 April 2011
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Written by
Andre Marc
Olive Media, in a few short years, has become a driving force in the movement towards hard drive playback of digital music files, and away from real time reading of optical discs. They have chosen the path that they feel will ultimately be what audiophiles and music lovers will choose. That choice is a one box, fully equipped digital music center that can rip, encode, catalog, and play music extracted from CDs. It does not end there, since the one box solutions hitting the market also can playback downloads, music stored on a network, and 24 bit high resolution files, even up to 192 Khz. Olive believes a major factor, assuming all of the above is in place, is the user interface experience. I agree. A clunky interface is a non starter. Most people want to select their music and ...
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Monday, 06 December 2010
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Written by
Todd Whitesel
In the early 2000s something strange happened in the world of consumer electronics: table radios became popular again – wildly so. I remember seeing ads for the Bose Wave Radio in newspapers and other publications, and because of the company's brand reputation and how easy Bose made it to purchase the Wave (extended payment plan), people were snapping them up and once again listening to radio in the home. But the real splash, for me, was when Tivoli Audio released its Model One Radio. This elegant set – based on Henry Kloss' design for the KLH Model 8 – was immediately recognized for its retro style, excellent sound (in mono no less!) and reception. I bought in several years ago and still use my Model One to this day. I love it as a radio but its limitations have kept ...
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Friday, 22 October 2010
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Written by
Todd Whitesel
A few years ago I asked my woodworking brother to build a cabinet to house my collection of compact discs. The result was a striking, wall-sized unit replete with gorgeous wood grain and a welcome addition to an otherwise drab basement. Here I could store more than one thousand discs, catalog them alphabetically by artist for easy retrieval and show off my collection for anyone who cared to investigate. But as the months went on and more CDs came into possession, the once-hulking shelf drew full to capacity and stacks of discs began to “decorate” various rooms in my house. I again struggled to keep my music organized and accessible. There had to be a better way. Always a latecomer to technology, I stayed away from computer-related audio and things such as digital music servers until 2009. I was content ...
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Friday, 23 October 2009
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Written by
Todd Whitesel
Back in 1981 Sammy Hagar had a big radio hit, singing, “There's only one way to rock.” When it comes to setting up a digital music server, however, there's most definitely more than one way. There's hundreds of ways, but most of us want something simple. Digital audiophiles go to great lengths to turn laptops or old towers into music servers, running them through digital-to-analog converters to boost the sound and then using any number of ways to stream the music to an audio system. The drawback of such an approach means that you have an extra computer, and that it always has to be turned on, and so on. A better solution, in my mind, is to bring all aspects of computer audio together into a single server, player and streamer. And that's just what the Olive Opus 4 ...
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Thursday, 15 October 2009
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Written by
Mike Flacy
With the rash of recent A/V components integrating the plethora of web related, streaming audio content into their feature set, Logitech has been streamlining their delivery of the same content in their Squeezebox series. The Squeezebox Radio is Logitech’s most recent release into this field. The compact form factor of the Squeezebox Radio is designed for an audience looking to bring their library of music into a smaller room. Additionally, the Squeezebox Radio is ideal for those who have a Wi-Fi network already established for streaming audio files. The Squeezebox (MSRP: $199.99) comes packaged in a small box and wrapped in light plastic packaging. It also comes wrapped in a thin plastic film designed to keep smudges off the finish. The piano black, glossy finish (also available in red) is very susceptible to fingerprints and dust is very visible as ...
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