[John Casler]

.

I assume many are aware of this new unit?



http://www.memoryplayer.info/Memory%20Player%20Home%20page.htm

I have read it is to be outrageously expensive.

Wondering if it is "ALL THAT"

Anyone have any "inside scoop"?

[hum4god]

here is a big scoop from the last issue of positicve feedback.i actually didn't read it yet .

http://positive-feedback.com/Issue24/cjdiaries.htm

yes price would be interesting to know i agree.

malcolm

[Hogg]

It is very difficult to believe this player will solve any problem.  Whether the data is stored on RAM or not, the key is the dac.  I didn't see any data provided on what percent most or any player reads without filling in with the ECC.  

I'm wondering how this differs from Rega's implementation of the Apollo.

                                                             Jim

[Double Ugly]

I have read it is to be outrageously expensive.

Wondering if it is "ALL THAT"

Anyone have any "inside scoop"?

Price-wise, I'm hearing $10k for the transport version, $14k for the player.  I can neither prove nor disprove the validity of those prices, but that's what my source tells me.

I'm also told they've yet to determine how the product will be distributed.

As to whether or not it's "ALL THAT", no one I contacted has even seen one, much less heard it.

[ted_b]

Funny, as open as I am to all things tweaky and digital, be they George Louis's RealityCheck or a host of HD-based buffer/jitter/dac solutions...I always took this thing as purely an April Fools joke.  Dunno why, really, just did.

[Double Ugly]

Don't know about it being an April Fool's joke, but it seems to qualify for vaporware status.

[shokunin]

It will re-read a CD up to 99 times, to capture all the information and store it on banks of solid state memory.

So it stores all songs on "banks of solid-state memory"... yeah right.  I'd like to see the as advertised "holds 700 CDS" on banks of solid state memory.  If it did, then it really would cost $10K or more of SSD (solid-state disks).

[PhilNYC]

I know someone (in the industry) who has one on order, so hopefully I'll be able to check it out soon.  I'm skeptical that this "Read Until Right" process does anything that would offer a sonic benefit over simply ripping a CD with Error Correction turned on...but that's not to say that the remaining aspects of the design aren't going to make it sound terrific.  Still, $10K sounds a bit steep based on what they say are the significant benefits of this player...

[Papajin]

Looks like a glorified, overpriced HTPC to me.

[kfr01]

So, what benefit does this provide over EAC rip w/ Secure mode?

Likely none.

[Jon L]

So, what benefit does this provide over EAC rip w/ Secure mode?

Likely none.

Absolutely NOTHING at all.  The key difference is EAC is free.  

I imagine the market for this player are folks who have a mental block when it comes to PC audio but still want some of PC audio's obvious benefits without actually having to touch a computer, kind of like the folks who bought those RealityCheck gizmos.  

Wait a minute. Isn't that writer for Positive Feedback announcing the Memory Player the same writer behind the RealityCheck

[mgalusha]

My bet is that they just shove a couple of gigs of ram in a PC, configure about 1/2 of it as a RAM disk, rip the cd to that using something like EAC and copies it to disk for long term storage. At playback it could be copied from disk to the RAM disk and viola, you are playing it back without any moving parts.

I'm sure it has lots of other cool features but the above is certainly a way to accomplish what they are offering, at least in terms of playing from memory.

[John Casler]

So, what benefit does this provide over EAC rip w/ Secure mode?

Likely none.

Absolutely NOTHING at all.  The key difference is EAC is free.  

 

Hi Jon,

That was what I was wondering.  So EAC does not use ECC?  

With the speed at which HD music is moving, I was wondering if this was a "break through" or a "bust" (with a high ticket).

[mgalusha]

With the speed at which HD music is moving, I was wondering if this was a "break through" or a "bust" (with a high ticket).

That's the crux of the issue John. Once it's "read until right", i.e. without errors it really doesn't matter if it's being read off of the HD or out of memory. When playing back, it's read from disk and stored in a memory buffer, albeit not the entire track. This can be changed in most players. I tested it in foobar, set to buffer 100 megs, playing tracks from my server and once the track is playing there is zero network traffic, so it's definately playing the entire track from memory. The only time it would be a real issue is if something else was hitting the disk hard but I suspect that for most audiophiles won't be doing much on their PC based music system while doing critical listening.

Devices like a Squeezebox have onboard memory, likely shared between the OS of the device and a buffer for the data, so they too are buffering part of the track in memory.  

EAC reads all bits at least twice and will keep re-reading them until it gets two reads that are identical. It doesn't do error correction in the sense than an audio CDP does.