[John Casler]

Do these devices have the potential to be any good?

http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=3695109

http://www.russound.com/sms3.htm

http://www.perceptiondigital.com/products/audio/480/

It would seem that they are the HD recorders and players (without the PC fan)

Looks like pricing is from $600 to a couple grand.

Are they useful?, and or can they be modded, or are they "flawed" in some way that will not allow them to work?

[BradJudy]

What makes you think these don't have fans?  

[John Casler]

What makes you think these don't have fans?  

Hi Brad,

Well I've seen a couple of them and the ones I saw didn't have fans, outlets or vents for fans.

And I haven't seen fans mentioned in any of their literature, or spec sheets.

Haven't seen the Yammie though.

[audioengr]

I would expect that these are full of audio quality compromises just like any other high-volume consumer gear.  The main focus seems to be ease-of-use with remote controls and GUI.  Some of them might be modded to result in something interesting.  

I prefer to use a laptop myself and freeware.  With a PC-driven audio system you dont really need a remote control, just a laptop nearby the listening position. Muting and volume control is done via the preamp remote.

[John Casler]

I would expect that these are full of audio quality compromises just like any other high-volume consumer gear.  The main focus seems to be ease-of-use with remote controls and GUI.  Some of them might be modded to result in something interesting.  

I prefer to use a laptop myself and freeware.  With a PC-driven audio system you dont really need a remote control, just a laptop nearby the listening position. Muting and volume control is done via the preamp remote.

Hi Steve,

They are actually made as "digital jukeboxes" for whole house systems, where you can store all you music (and in some cases DVDs) on HD.

I just wondered if they might eventually make more sense than a PC, since most all PC's (even laptops - or at least all of mine) have loud fans to cool the chips.

Likely they don't have compatible operating systems either.

[ekovalsky]

These music servers are interesting, and may function okay as a transport if the outputs are implemented fairly well.  I'd still rather have the full functionality of a PC though.  I've been thinking about building a completely silent PC for use a music server and to dabble with PC-based room correction.  Plus internet and perhaps a little Doom3, Counterstrike, or Far Cry action too when I'm in the mood

Zalman TN (totally no noise) 500A can support a powerful PC with no fans or pumps.  It isn't cheap but the extra cost is worth the $ for use in a high end audio environmet.  Think about how much you'd pay for some upgrade that would drop noise in your audio system by 40-60dB and this case is a steal !  Water cooled systems can be extremely quiet too -- with a Zalman  Reserator or something similar the only noise producing part would be a pump.  And there are plenty of water pumps that are inaudible once placed inside a case.

Neat as this stuff is, I doubt I'll be abandoning my conventional transport anytime soon.  I have somewhat of a religious ritual in selecting the CD and loading it, then sinking into my chair to listen.   My serious late night listening is done in pitch black, after turning off the displays of my equipment and all the lights in the room.  The last thing I'd want to do during these cherished sessions is surf the net or be interacting with a computer.  That said, off to the media room I go ....

[brj]

Zalman TN (totally no noise) 500A can support a powerful PC with no fans or pumps. It isn't cheap but the extra cost is worth the $ for use in a high end audio environmet.

There is also the Silentmaxx ST-P1, which is quite similar in concept.

[ScottMayo]

These music servers are interesting, and may function okay as a transport if the outputs are implemented fairly well.  I'd still rather have the full functionality of a PC though.  I've been thinking about building a completely silent PC for use a music server and to dabble with PC-based room correction. ..

I started to walk down this path. "Completely silent PC" turns out to be difficult to do. Traditional water cooling is not silent; forget fan cooling as it can never be made quiet enough, and that leaves passive cooling. That's possible (hush technologies has a unit) but in order to keep the heat down, you have to run a slow processor and can't attach modern periph's. And since I wanted to prototype game software designs, slow processors didn't do it for me.

The problem is that you *must* have cooling with modern processors, but the only materials that conduct heat efficiently also conduct noise efficiently. The cheapest solution I found amounted to having the computer in another room, with long cables for keyboard, mouse and video. A bit annoying when you want to change CDs, but of course you only put in CDs to rip them to disk, so it's not that bad really. You will want many gigs of disk space, because wav files are big, and ripping to mp3 just isn't an option unless the source is low quality to begin with...

If people want to turn a HD into a jukebox, consider a Roku. The specifications aren't too bad, and you can leave the computer (or even just a disk server) in another room. I plan to get one for Christmas, I will try to remember to review it.

And if your computer needs are trivial enough, a Roku contains a linux system and with hacks can serve as your internet box...

[ScottMayo]

Zalman TN (totally no noise) 500A

Nifty unit. Does nothing to limit disk and CD noise, though - and the whine of these will drive you insane after a while, when there's no fan noise to cover it. One trick people have started to use: notebook disks drives, while limited in capacity, tend to be very quiet and don't put out much heat. Putting them in a large case is practical, and adding sound absorption layers help a little. Sadly, dead silent CD drives are still an unsolved problem, but some are better than others.

For having a computer *in* the music room, the best approach I found (and I did a lot of research) was a large, heavy case, with several fans, run at lower-than-spec'd voltage. If you decrease the voltage (and hence the CFM of air) enough, the noise really does drop off very significantly. The options are then to underclock the CPU (runs cooler, lasts longer); or to just run it full bore, and have it cook to death in 5 years - which, for some of us, is when it's time to upgrade anyway, so that's not so bad.

If you want 16db @ 1m, look up http://www.silentpcreview.com/ . If you want 5db peak, good luck.

[lcrim]

Not sure if this belongs in this forum but anyway-the Slim Devices Squeeze Box 2 allows you to store the music files on a PC remote to the sound system and then stream them w/ ethernet (CAT5) or WiFi (IEEE 802.11G) to the Squeeze Box which lives close to the DAC or preamp.  It has its own DAC or you can do your D to A conversion with a separate DAC.  It includes a server software to build playlists and inventory your files.  It has a remote and a display at the stereo rack.
You can buy a barebones PC system for well under $200 and add USB/firewire connected hard drives (I found 120gigs for $80) The Squeezebox2 is $300.
The noise is remote from your system and the price is attractive.  I think this is the way I would go if I had the cash.

[John Casler]

Here is another of these servers from Cambridge = Azur 640H Music Server

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=39&Title=Azur%20640H%20Music%20Server%20-%20with%20AudioFile%20technology

[ScottMayo]

Here is another of these servers from Cambridge = Azur 640H Music Server

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=39&Title=Azur%20640H%20Music%20Server%20-%20with%20AudioFile%20technology

I don't like it. You have a fixed size disk (go ahead, try to add a second one in there) which will fill up sooner or later. You have what's probably a good CD player, sharing power supply with a disk controller, which is a noisy device electrically. I notice they don't seem to publish s/n info. You have disk whine, and someday, inevitably, disk failure. They don't seem to talk about the ability to do backups, either. All that for $1400.

Meanwhile, if you have a PC, you can rip essentially perfect bit copies of your digital media to disk (and add more disk space whenever you like), put the PC in another room, buy a Roku for <$250, and use the Roku's optical out to delilver those accurate bits into your existing audiophile stereo rig.

If you're rich, not an extreme audiophile, just never got the hang of PCs, and just can't be bothered sorting through your big-but-not-vast music collection to find a CD, ths thing might well be a way to go. I can see one in the bedroom of a techophobe CEO with an interest in music. But for most AC-type folk, this thing looks like a solution in search of a problem.