Responding to some of what Sanjay wrote:
0. A way to purchase individual songs online in lossless format.
This is coming. Nothing to do with SD directly, of course, but I've
seen industry reporting that hints at this. Some specialty labels and
sites already offer this.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_music_store#Online_Music_Store_Comparison_table
1. More reliable WiFi transmission (not a signal strength or channel
interference issue - see above).
Recent firmware changes have addressed many issues. Not sure what
problems you are having, but you might consider going to the latest
802.11n technology or switching to HomePower or wired Ethernet. SD may
still have some work to do in this department, but can only take so much
responsibility for local conditions beyond their control.
2. bigger display with more characters readable from 12 feet away by 40
year olds - skip the screensaver spectrum analyser
Agreed, strongly. This is one hardware enhancement I'd happily pay
extra for. If the graphical remote options are good enough, the need
begins to fade however.
3. a low jitter digital only version (SPDIF only no BNC/XLR, no DAC)
Not sure that the cost savings from leaving out these components would
outweigh the expenses of keeping separate models in the channel. Also
there are definite benefits in keeping the DAC close to the source
clock. To my mind the upgraded DAC in the Transporter, and the removal
of SPDIF and the interconnect from the signal path, is the most
worthwhile feature of that box. We just need to hear with our own ears
how it sounds in order to judge it's value. I'm hopeful.
4. 96Khz/24 bit output option - upsampling from 44.1khz/16 bit
Makes sense for native 24/96 sources. I doubt upsampling will sound
better, but some may want to try it. Not important to me.
5. a legal way to rip DVD-Audio in 5.1 96kHz/24bit or even just a two
channel mixes at up to 192 kHz/24 bit onto Slimserver for personal use
and stream it to Squeezebox - consider using MLP to reduce data rate.
E.g. Figure a way to pay a license fee to decrypt the data, re-encode
with DRM to permit only streaming to Squeezebox not file copying, and
charge the small DVD-Audio market $100 extra for a Slimserver plug-in
that does this.
Interesting, but I suspect only a fringe might find this useful. Are
any of these formats seeing significant numbers of releases? Could be
useful for pulling audio off of DVD concert and music video compilations.
6. A way of running multiple Squeezeboxes with lossless, synced audio
without multiplying use of WiFi bandwidth. Multi-cast? Ad-hoc mode
from one SB to the next on a separate channel/SSID?
I agree that sync'd playback is a very important feature. The system
needs to get this right w/r/t bandwidth, server performance, drift, etc.
For me, it's mostly usable right now but I feel there is still some
ways to go before this is really nailed.
7. WMA lossless decoding native in the Squeezebox assuming a sound
quality benefit or reduced delay between songs. Surely the open source
community can reverse engineer WMA lossless decoding without needing to
run Windows on the Squeezebox?
Being investigated:
http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2565
8. A remote with an IPOD style wheel control
I would love to see a richer remote. For now, the Nokia 770 or a
Windows PDA is a good option.
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