Anyone Familar With the Cambridge Audio Sonata NP30 Network Music Player?

Slapshot · « **on:** 4 Dec 2011, 06:56 am »

As the subject line says. Trying to find the best quality network music player for under $1k. Has anyone checked this one out yet?

http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=CASONP30

JLM · « **Reply #1 on:** 4 Dec 2011, 05:33 pm »

What's the advantages of this over a Logitech Touch for less than half the price?

Slapshot · « **Reply #2 on:** 4 Dec 2011, 07:51 pm »

While the Touch has received great reviews, the the Cambridge unit seems to offer much greater overall capability. That includes the ability to access subscription based music services without need for a pc. I owned a Transporter a few years ago, and connecting to the Logitech site every time you wanted to use the thing was a continuing difficulty and outright pain.

Also, according to an article I read, Cambridge designed this piece to equal or better anything available in the $1000.00 class. I can't imagine they just overlooked the Touch in that assessment. But I could be wrong, and so I was asking for peoples thoughts.

JC

JEaton · « **Reply #3 on:** 5 Dec 2011, 03:38 am »

Quote from: Slapshot on 4 Dec 2011, 07:51 pm

While the Touch has received great reviews, the the Cambridge unit seems to offer much greater overall capability. That includes the ability to access subscription based music services without need for a pc. I owned a Transporter a few years ago, and connecting to the Logitech site every time you wanted to use the thing was a continuing difficulty and outright pain.

The Cambridge unit works exactly the same way. It uses Cambridge's UuVol site:

http://uuvol.cambridgeaudio.com

mav52 · « **Reply #4 on:** 16 Dec 2011, 03:00 pm »

So this NP30 mean you do not need a PC to stream and copy music just a internet connect via the providers modem ?

I'm new to this streaming stuff and just wanted learn what is required to stream and copy music.

srb · « **Reply #5 on:** 17 Dec 2011, 10:34 am »

Quote from: mav52 on 16 Dec 2011, 03:00 pm

So this NP30 mean you do not need a PC to stream and copy music just a internet connect via the providers modem ?
I'm new to this streaming stuff and just wanted learn what is required to stream and copy music.

As mentioned previously, the NP30 manages Internet radio through the UuVol.com website. You can subscribe to streaming pay services like Pandora, Rhapsody, Last.FM, etc. and/or select from their list of (20,000) Internet radio stations. You cannot however simply add a radio station that is not on the list (like you might with iTunes), but UuVol might add it to their list upon submission and subsequent approval.

So yes, the NP30 and an Internet connection is all that would be required to play streaming music, but is a playback device and does not have any functionality for (illegaly) recording streams. It would be possible to record streams on your computer by connecting one of the NP30's digital audio outputs into a digital audio input on the computer (if so equipped), but since the computer would be on anyway, it would make more sense to record directly on the computer either from (a) a radio station in iTunes or other music player or (b) from one of the music pay subscription service software programs installed on the computer.

Not sure about the internal recording functionality on the Mac, but on many Windows PCs, anything that can be played back on the computer can be recorded, usually by selecting Stereo Mix, WAV Out, Loopback or similar internal recording input source.

However, not all PC soundcard hardware supports internal recording. On Vista and Windows 7, I was not able to get my Realtek sound chip to record when using the S/PDIF digital output (it would only work when using the soundcard's analog audio output) and had to obtain a third party sound recording program like HD Audio Recorder.

Steve