[Sound Science]

Greetings everyone,

I am Neal Van Berg and I helped develop the Music Vault. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have about the Music Vault.  As has been stated and speculated in the posts that I have read here in the Square Circle the Music Vault is a Linux Computer.
It is running the latest Beta version of Squeeze Center for Linux. 

The Music Vault is intended to go into the same room with your wireless router and attach to your network.
It has a built in wireless card that will allow you to communicate directly with the Music Vault through this wireless card or through your existing network. 

As long as you have an active internet connection to the Music Vault, when you place a music CD into its CD player, the Music Vault will go out to Free DB to get the meta data for your CD and then rip it to the Hard Drive using CD Paranoia.  It first rips the Music as a Wave file and then rips the wave file to a FLAC file and then erases the wave file.  We can pre configure the Music Vault to only Rip to a Wave file or to convert to an MP3 file, not that anyone on this forum would want a MP3 file.

If you don't have an active internet connection the Music Vault will not Rip your CD as it can't find FreeDB and just hangs.
You will be able to play music from it but until the Internet connection is restored it won't rip your CD.

For those of you who prefer EAC as your ripper, you can still rip with EAC from a different Computer and set the Music Vault as the Destination Drive.  As far as we can tell there isn't a Linux version of EAC, if any of you know different please let me know and we will see if we can make it work with the Music Vault. 

If you have already ripped music it is easy to transfer your existing files to the Music Vault.

I am the Audiophile partner and find it to have a bit more fan noise than most of us would like. I was mistaken as it has a Fan for its Celeron Processor and one for the Power Supply, we are looking at passive cooling for the Processor.  I will be working on ways to quiet the Music Vault without increasing its price.  I will make some noise measurements this week and post them on my website.

One of the problems of a small case is that heat builds up in it and can destroy the processor as well as the Hard Drives which is why the fans become critical.

How do you all feel about larger cases versus smaller cases?
How many of you want to use the Music Vault in the Same room with your SqueezeBox or Transporter?

The Music Vault is essentially free of the latency issues I have read about, we have done our testing with the Music Vault Serving a SqueezeBox and Transporter at the same time playing different material and had no issues.

The Music Vault's operating system will come on a USB memory Stick, we will have a copy of everyones operating system and will be able to send out a replacement in the case of a system failure. This frees up all of the Hard Drive(s) for music storage.

At this time in the current case, we can provide you with a 500 Gig with or with out Redundancy, up to 1 Terabyte.

If you want to back up your Data yourself with an external Hard Drive we can provide up to 2 Terrabytes of Storage in the existing case size but no built in redundancy.  Our prices for a 1 Terrabyte Music Vault without redundancy is the same as a 500 Gig version with Redundancy.


If any of you would like to Trade in your Squeeze Box towards a new Transporter, I will give you what you paid for your SqueezeBox off the Retail Price of a New Transporter.

[kbuzz3]

Has anyone tried this thing yet.  For those of us who are not cpu savvy and are willing to spend a bit more it seems like a well thought out product.

On a related note--although this may open up a can or worms-- any opinions on sound quality/audible difference between CDs ripped via CD paranoia on this unit v. EAC.  And yes, I think we can all agree that EAC is probably the best. So the more detailed inquiry is does the sound quality come close?

[Sound Science]

Hi,


For the overwhelming majority of CDs there will be no difference in the sound.

A person can still use EAC from a remote Computer and set the Music Vault as the Destination Drive.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Neal - I just sent you an email. I'm very interested in this product.

[JEaton]

Specs?

Price?

Warranty?

Web site?

From what I've read in the Slim Devices forums, particularly from European customers, energy use seems to be one of the biggest concerns.  Heat output and the need for fans, and therefore noise, are closely related.  Unfortunately, performance is inversely related and SqueezeCenter can suffer badly on underpeforming hardware.

What kind of user interface is used when ripping CDs?  Can it be done headless or does it require a keyboard, monitor and mouse?  If it's intended primarily as a headless server, then there's not much need for CD ripping, since the majority of users will have other PCs on the network.  If it requires a keyboard, mouse and monitor, then that may be a deal breaker for someone who wants to just park the thing in a corner.

Warranty and support will be key, but realize that you'll be selling these primarily to the not-too-computer literate, so any trouble with SqueezeCenter will come back to you as a support incident.  That could be a nightmare, or could cut drammatically into margins.  I've been using SlimServer/SqueezeCenter for about four years, and frankly, it's not something I'd want to support.

Oh, and if you call it an 'NAS' you'll sell 10x the number.  Those not-too-computer literate folks mentioned above have strange ideas about what is a computer and what isn't.  If you don't attach a monitor, add some sort of of RAID implementation and call it an NAS, they eat it up.

[Sound Science]

Hi thanks for your comments.

You can get most of the answers you are looking for here http://www.soundsciencecat.com/MusicVault.html

Be sure to check out the manual on the website.

I am the owner of Sound Science and will be doing the marketing at this time for the Music Vault.

Neal Van Berg
owner of Sound Science.

[BradJudy]

I don't see anything about a warranty or support on the website. 

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't get Logitech's permission to use their images of the Squeezebox hardware. 

[Sound Science]

I have a working relationship with Logitech as I sell more Transporter than any other Dealer in the country.

Warranty on the Music Vault is one year parts and labor.

Support is provided by me at this time.

The Music Vault is very simple to use and set up.

It is designed to be as bullet proof as possible.

Feel Free to review my feedback on Audiogon, I am moonlightaudio there.


Regards,

Neal Van Berg
Owner of Sound Science

[kbuzz3]

author I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't get Logitech's permission to use their images of the Squeezebox hardware. 

Not to start a flame war but the comment above is a bit snide-unless im reading it wrong. Save that stuff for bad guys like monster cable. Anyway, since this thread has become active, I thought id ask a few questions that may help others....who knows if maybe we can make a sticky for faqs.

1) Can the vault be set up and operated with a mac?

2) What are the benefits of running the vault's wireless as opposed to your own network?

3) If one has their own homemade recordings which obviously have no meta data, can we assume they have to be ripped on another cpu where one can label the folder-then transferred?

My two cents are if this product has legs, it can only get better as memory becomes even cheaper and cooling regulation technologies more prevelant

On a tangential note, once one decides on this product, what slim device route should the audiophile take-eg can someone  just tell me whether i should get a modded SB3 or a stock transporter or a SB3 or duet with an empirical pace car-that would be something!!! 

oh I forgot to mention sonos.....

[BradJudy]

author I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you didn't get Logitech's permission to use their images of the Squeezebox hardware. 

Not to start a flame war but the comment above is a bit snide-unless im reading it wrong. Save that stuff for bad guys like monster cable.

I wouldn't say it's snide, although I'll certainly agree that it's not a positive note.  Use of images (or other content) without permission is a pet peeve of mine and is a rampant problem on the internet.  When people do it as part of their business, I often prod them about it.  Anyone who deals a lot with a product can readily take a few minutes of their time to take their own pictures. 

The product has some interesting attributes like the OS on a flash drive that could be upgraded.  What is your plan for handling upgrades to the SlimDevices/Logitech server software?  Will customers be able to download a new flash drive image to upgrade their software? 

Your manual mentions using the wired interface, but not the wireless.  It doesn't discuss configuring the wireless to connect to a WPA protected network - is this possible? 

[kbuzz3]

No sweat on the photo thing...good questions as well....

[Sound Science]

Hi Guys,

I don't understand what you thought was snide.

My comments were factual to let you know that I work closely with my Sales Rep from Logitech.


At this time we are working on a way to automate updating the SqueezeCenter software.  Until that is worked out we can send new Memory sticks to customers to replace their existing one with a self addressed envelope to return the original.  Not the best solution for us but we haven't got that issue worked out yet.


At this time the Music Vault must be hardwired to the internet. We will take all requests seriously and try to implement the ones we can.

The Music Vault is intended for the average music lover who isn't a computer jock.  THE Music Vault 500 with a SqueezeBox is an easy to use full function music server at $1K capable of storing the equivalent of 1,000 CDs. 

We will be coming out with more complicated and more expensive models in the not to distant future.
Hot swapable Hard Drives, mirroring etc.  They will be in larger cases and at that time and we can add more features too.

Regards,

Neal Van Berg
Owner Sound Science

[BradJudy]

I don't understand what you thought was snide.

He meant I was snide, not you. 

[Sound Science]

Thanks for clearing that up, I was getting confused. :>)

I am curious why you are so concerned about the pictures although it really doesn't fit the forum, you might drop me a private email to explain.

I did add to my site that they are from the Logitech website.

Did I get all the questions answered or did I miss some?


Regards,

Neal Van Berg
owner of Sound Science.

[kbuzz3]

neal...please see above re mac, internal wireless v. network questions..thanks

[Sound Science]

Hi,

The Music Vault can be used with a Macintosh Computer, PC and Linux computers.

I will be adding a section for the Macintosh soon to the manual, my wife has an older Mac and was able to load the Squeeze Center software.  She had to specify its IP address rather than http://Http://Musicvault:9000.  So I am looking into what is going on there but we can certainly provide and publish the Music Vaults IP address for Macintosh useres, if it turns out to be necessary.


Because of the way we have the wireless card set up to talk to the Squeezebox family of products it can't wireless-ly access the internet.

There may be a way around that but we won't be adressing that issue for a few weeks.

I would like to thank all of you who are asking questions, it is apreciated.

Regards,

Neal Van Berg

Owner Sound Science.

[BradJudy]

The Music Vault comes out of the box running an insecure wireless network (no description of configuring WPA in the manual section about connecting the squeezebox to the internal wireless on the MusicVault), which is then attached to your internet connection?  If this is accurate, this is a very bad idea. 

[Srajan Ebaen]

Hello Neal,

I have a few more questions.

You mention fan noise. My PC is noiseless because we installed three slow-running fans instead of 1 high-speed fan - and substantial heat sinking as well. I realize you priced the Music Vault to be high value so perhaps some of the snazzier solutions couldn't be incorporated.

I like that the OS is on a USB stick. Good idea. But why, if I understood this correctly, can't the Slim software auto-update itself while connected to the web? Having to swap out USB sticks for customers outside the US sounds rather inconvenient and even within the US. All virus protection programs auto-update the moment there's a live Internet connection. Can this not be done with Slim as well?

Re: back-up files - can you pre-install something like 2nd Copy so that whatever files are written to the internal hard-drive are automatically backed up to an external one? Since the Vault is envisioned to be ultra convenient for the non-PC savvy user, this would be a nice feature and back-up is a must. If it could be automated the moment the external hard-drive is sensed to be powered up, it certainly would be convenient.

Re: data grabbing - what protocol does the Vault use since it's not EAC as you state? I assume EAC can't be preinstalled because it's shareware and this is a commercial product? Is this another read-until-right protocol then?

Again, if I understood correctly, why does the Vault require an Ethernet cable to the router and can't access the router wirelessly? If one wishes to place the Vault outside the music room, this could require a rather long Ethernet cable and not all of us are prewired inside the walls.

How about defragmentation as one nears hard-drive capacity and does a lot of writes/deletes?

Best.

[Sound Science]

Hello Srajan,

The Fan noise is a question of what we can implement at this price. I would love to get feedback from people letting me know if they would be happy to spend what ever it costs to eliminate the fan noise.


I like that the OS is on a USB stick. Good idea. But why, if I understood this correctly, can't the Slim software auto-update itself while connected to the web?

This is not a windows computer so many things which seem trivial to do are not so trivial to make happen.  We are working on finding a way to have the Music Vault update itself automatically but it hasn't been implemented yet.  We will incorporate this ASAP



Re: back-up files - can you pre-install something like 2nd Copy so that whatever files are written to the internal hard-drive are automatically backed up to an external one? Since the Vault is envisioned to be ultra convenient for the non-PC savvy user, this would be a nice feature and back-up is a must. If it could be automated the moment the external hard-drive is sensed to be powered up, it certainly would be convenient.

We are looking into an option like this, copying to another drive on the network is very easy to do manually at this time from another computer on the network.

Re: data grabbing - what protocol does the Vault use since it's not EAC as you state? I assume EAC can't be preinstalled because it's shareware and this is a commercial product? Is this another read-until-right protocol then?

We use Grip as it is a completely automated protocol; EAC can't be fully automated to operate without Human involvement. The Music Vault operates without a monitor which defines in some ways what can be done.

I have instructions for using EAC from another computer to the Music Vault in the Manual.

Again, if I understood correctly, why does the Vault require an Ethernet cable to the router and can't access the router wirelessly? If one wishes to place the Vault outside the music room, this could require a rather long Ethernet cable and not all of us are prewired inside the walls.

The Music Vault does not require an ethernet connection for playback from its hard drive it only requires the connection to rip CDs because it must go out on the internet to access Freedb which is the same database EAC uses to get the CDs Meta Data.  IF you want to listen to internet radio thru the Music Vault it would require an internet connection for that as well.

How about defragmentation as one nears hard-drive capacity and does a lot of writes/deletes?

The version of Linux we use minimizes fragmentation issues of the Hard Drive so it will not be a problem for the Music Vault.

These initial versions of the Music Vault offer a lot of bang for the buck and should satisfy a great many customers with its existing feature set.  I recognize that some people want and need more options. We will be offering those products as well.

I plan on offering a model with a larger case that can hold more hard drives that are hot swappable.


The Music Vault is designed to complete the Logitech Family of Players and turn them into a complete Music Server at a price that makes it worth while for us and our customers.  There are a number of music servers on the market now that are priced over $10,000; they are proprietary systems that offer many features. 

The Music Vault at $1,000 when paired with a SqueezeBox or Transporter offers the lion’s share of conveniences of these other systems at a fraction of their price.  Certainly with the Transporter used as the player few of these high priced systems if any will sound as good and I don’t believe any will send better.   


Regards,

Neal Van Berg
Owner Sound Science

[BradJudy]

Neal, can you address the wireless security issue I raised?