Hi everyone,
My trusty old Technics systems has finally gone to the great technology place in the sky after many years of use and I'm looking for a new system.
I would appreciate some advice as I'm not really up to speed with all that there is out there. I've read up on the newer things such as Hard Drive systems & streaming devices, but I haven't erally seen a system that seems to do all that I want and wonder if there is actually such a thing or if creating a small PC that's just used for audio would be simpler.
I'm looking for a small (ish) sized system with DAB/FM/AM radio, CD player and the ability to be able to read MP3s (128, 193 & 320Kbps) on a USB drive or and SD card (including displaying all of the ID tags/album names) or perhaps with an internal Hard drive. I'm not at all interested in an Ipod docking system and would prefer to pay no more than about £600 (including speakers) - if at all possible.
I went into a local Richer sounds the other day and took some songs on a USB pen drive thingy with a few different albums worth of songs to see what sort of interaction there is on those systems with USB ports on them and was pretty disappointed. I looked at a TEAC model (sorry forget the model) and the Denon DM38 and it didn't show the file names, Just track 01. The sales assistant said that they don't really do a device like I am looking for and my best bet would be the (expensive) SONOS- yeah right!
I have looked at the Sony Gigajuke and Phillips Streamium and they seem to get poor reviews due to the interface.
So is there such a device, I really want to be able to play radio, CDs and listen to MP3s with the same sort of Interactivity (is that a word) as MediaMonkey, so can listen to album, genre, artist, playlists and random in all of those. I'm not opposed to some sort of streaming system, but as I understand they usually require the PC to be on to stream from, so thats not really suitable if it does.
Does such a system exist?
My trusty old Technics systems has finally gone to the great technology place in the sky after many years of use and I'm looking for a new system.
I would appreciate some advice as I'm not really up to speed with all that there is out there. I've read up on the newer things such as Hard Drive systems & streaming devices, but I haven't erally seen a system that seems to do all that I want and wonder if there is actually such a thing or if creating a small PC that's just used for audio would be simpler.
I'm looking for a small (ish) sized system with DAB/FM/AM radio, CD player and the ability to be able to read MP3s (128, 193 & 320Kbps) on a USB drive or and SD card (including displaying all of the ID tags/album names) or perhaps with an internal Hard drive. I'm not at all interested in an Ipod docking system and would prefer to pay no more than about £600 (including speakers) - if at all possible.
I went into a local Richer sounds the other day and took some songs on a USB pen drive thingy with a few different albums worth of songs to see what sort of interaction there is on those systems with USB ports on them and was pretty disappointed. I looked at a TEAC model (sorry forget the model) and the Denon DM38 and it didn't show the file names, Just track 01. The sales assistant said that they don't really do a device like I am looking for and my best bet would be the (expensive) SONOS- yeah right!
I have looked at the Sony Gigajuke and Phillips Streamium and they seem to get poor reviews due to the interface.
So is there such a device, I really want to be able to play radio, CDs and listen to MP3s with the same sort of Interactivity (is that a word) as MediaMonkey, so can listen to album, genre, artist, playlists and random in all of those. I'm not opposed to some sort of streaming system, but as I understand they usually require the PC to be on to stream from, so thats not really suitable if it does.
Does such a system exist?