I'm sure I can't be alone in thinking that the hi-fi manufacturers are missing a trick - and more importantly a big segment of the market - by trying to over-complicate and over-feature the emerging breed of streaming devices.
I'm sure that their must be a significant number of music lovers out there that are computer literate enough to rip CDs and manage their own network, but who don't want to use their computer as part of their hi-fi set-up for a variety of reasons.
For instance I'm currently using my MacBook Pro because with lossless and uncompressed files fed into a decent DAC it just about betters the Arcam CD37 I was previously using. The convenience of iPhone control and not having to swap CDs sealed it. That said it's not a perfect solution. If I want to use my Mac for something else whilst listening to music then I have to stream to an Airport Express and suffer the inherent susceptibility to wireless drop-outs and the AEs sloppy clocking which leads to occasional 'blips' in the digital output. If I plug it in directly then obviously it's hard to use it for anything else.
If I buy one of the streaming devices that's currently out there (or any of the forthcoming ones that I have seen) then it's going to do far more than I want or need it to do and consequently cost subjectively too much. I say give us a pure streamer - no ripping, no storage, no analogue output, no FM/DAB radio etc. Just something that can handle all the common file formats from a NAS device via ethernet or wirelessly, a spdif output and the contemporary range of control options. In other words, in the long-standing hi-fi tradition, something as true to it's primary function as possible, not a jack of all trades.
This may be a little cynical, but I think I know why we haven't got that yet and perhaps are not likely to - there would be no excuse for such a device to be priced anywhere other than the £low-hundreds and it might render more feature-laden and therefore more expensive alternatives in manufacturers' ranges rather hard to shift.
Linn seem to have got closest, but have included expensive (although no doubt excellent) analogue stages. Sonos too doesn't seem to be too far off and doesn't cost too much - at the moment (cheap analogue stage, un-switch-offable wireless and lack of high-res support notwithstanding) it looks like my front runner.
I'm conscious that I might be envisaging something that fits my particular needs perfectly without realising that those needs are not so common place, so I was wondering what everyone else thought?!
Cheers.
I'm sure that their must be a significant number of music lovers out there that are computer literate enough to rip CDs and manage their own network, but who don't want to use their computer as part of their hi-fi set-up for a variety of reasons.
For instance I'm currently using my MacBook Pro because with lossless and uncompressed files fed into a decent DAC it just about betters the Arcam CD37 I was previously using. The convenience of iPhone control and not having to swap CDs sealed it. That said it's not a perfect solution. If I want to use my Mac for something else whilst listening to music then I have to stream to an Airport Express and suffer the inherent susceptibility to wireless drop-outs and the AEs sloppy clocking which leads to occasional 'blips' in the digital output. If I plug it in directly then obviously it's hard to use it for anything else.
If I buy one of the streaming devices that's currently out there (or any of the forthcoming ones that I have seen) then it's going to do far more than I want or need it to do and consequently cost subjectively too much. I say give us a pure streamer - no ripping, no storage, no analogue output, no FM/DAB radio etc. Just something that can handle all the common file formats from a NAS device via ethernet or wirelessly, a spdif output and the contemporary range of control options. In other words, in the long-standing hi-fi tradition, something as true to it's primary function as possible, not a jack of all trades.
This may be a little cynical, but I think I know why we haven't got that yet and perhaps are not likely to - there would be no excuse for such a device to be priced anywhere other than the £low-hundreds and it might render more feature-laden and therefore more expensive alternatives in manufacturers' ranges rather hard to shift.
Linn seem to have got closest, but have included expensive (although no doubt excellent) analogue stages. Sonos too doesn't seem to be too far off and doesn't cost too much - at the moment (cheap analogue stage, un-switch-offable wireless and lack of high-res support notwithstanding) it looks like my front runner.
I'm conscious that I might be envisaging something that fits my particular needs perfectly without realising that those needs are not so common place, so I was wondering what everyone else thought?!
Cheers.