Digital Jukeboxes and the USB input on latest NAD

[admin_exported]

After reading the review of the NAD C565BEE, I was wondering whether the feature highlighted in it, namely the USB input was a recent development only on high end players or whether there are other machines on the market which the same facility but not that price tag.

I am using the WD HD Media player with 1 Tb drive as a ‘jukebox’ connected to an amp and TV which is hardly a hi-fi experience but is more for convenience for someone with too many audio files and a sizeable CD collection too. Clearly the upside of the WD HD is price and that it plays mp3s, flacs and oggs, etc. leaving aside is AV capabilities.

So is there a solution that steps up from this and avails of what one would assume superior DAC performance from and convenience of the NAD ?

 

[chebby]

To quote NAD.....

"USB Input allows playback from solid state memory devices and plays MP3 music files up to 320kbs/VBR"

It also does not use the main built in Wolfson DAC for this purpose.

There is, however, a rear panel optical SPDIF input that may be better suited for what you want.

 

[manicm]

chebby:

To quote NAD.....

"USB Input allows playback from solid state memory devices and plays MP3 music files up to 320kbs/VBR"

It also does not use the main built in Wolfson DAC for this purpose.

There is, however, a rear panel optical SPDIF input that may be better suited for what you want.

Chebby, it also plays WAVs (definitely) and may use the main DAC (could be wrong)

With 32GB USB sticks available today you may go this route, but if my Solo Mini is anything to go by it's a royal pain in the *** for a seriously sized collection, even though it sounds great, in fact I often find enjoying 320k WMA rips of a few CDs more than playing the discs themselves.