I believe Denon just introduced a $500 gold-plated ethernet cable. As for The Absolute Sound, I've actually been very impressed with the way they've embraced file-based playback as a serious emerging trend. It's just funny to see them approach it from a point of view which is heavily skewed by decades of traditional audiophilia.
The same issue features a re-review of the QSonix Q110 Music Server and in particular its partnership with MusicGiants online service. That review is also laughably naive in many spots. They do mention several issues which would be deal-breakers for Squeezebox users, but they tend to gloss over these fundamental flaws to embrace an overwhelmingly fun experience - "I was like a kid in a candy store!" The reality: The system costs $5,995 for a 250-GB capacity and $9095 for 1.5-TB. It's hard to justify a $3000 price increase for a $300 hardware upgrade. Ooh wait - the $9000 model has a 17" touch screen instead of a 15", LOL. There is no support for non-proprietary formats. The only choices are WMA Lossless, WMA 320kbps, and WMA 192kbps. UGH. A recent hardware upgrade features "far less fan noise" - as if ANY fan noise is acceptable in a high-end listening environment. I don't have the original review in front of me, but I believe that was the one where they panned the QSonix's sound quality as being very flawed and strongly suggested investing in a top-quality outboard DAC. So, $6000 - $9000 is just the beginning if you want the thing to actually sound good. Most of the review is concerned with the MusicGiants service. The reviewer was ga-ga over the idea that he could just point, click, pay, and get CD-quality music files. MusicGiants calls these files "HD", because according to the company, CD audio is "high definition" compared to mp3. The reviewer (Robert Harley) takes them to task and calls this policy "misleading". A few titles are available in "SuperHD", which is music encoded as 20-bit, 88.2kHz WMA files. No mention is made of the sources, though. I strongly suspect these are standard CD WAV files run through the WMP encoder, because the company says they will soon have "thousands of titles" available in SuperHD. Laughably, "the QSonix system "does not yet have the ability to handle SuperHD files". Pricing: Tracks are $1.29 each and the minimum purchase is $20. Hmm...so you'd have to buy at least 16 tracks every time you buy. That doesn't seem consumer-friendly at all. The reviewer didn't mention the price of the SuperHD files, so I checked the MusicGiants site. Looks like a lot of the SuperHD files are only available full albums, not as individual tracks. I added an album to my cart, and the price was $19.99. I guess I'd have to add at least one more track or album to my cart to meet the $20 minimum, LOL. The review also covers the MusicGiants "Concierge Collection" - groups of albums and tracks that you buy in a block (no discount over individual track prices, though). These collections typically cost $1200 - $1500 and are mailed to you on a small hard drive. The minimum "concierge" purchase is $495. The reviewer seemed to think this was a wonderful way to buy music, and the concept is heavily promoted on the MusicGiants site. Mr. Harley thinks this could be ideal way to build a hi-def collection: "Audiophiles want hi-res sources, but record companies have shown no interest in a new high-res packaged medium. With the availability of universally compatible files, who needs a new format?" Universally compatible? He's talking about WMA files with DRM. Mr. Harley is just completely clueless here. MusicGiants selection is also fairly paltry. There were only 3 Pink Floyd albums available, no Zappa titles at all, and for artists with extensive catalogs, there seemed to be offerings only from one record company, leaving out huge chunks of careers. Also an issue was a dearth of metadata. Mr. Harley lamented the fact that he couldn't tell when an album was released or who the individual players were. In addition, when metadata was supplied, it was often wrong. For instance, Clapton's "461 Ocean Boulevard" was listed with a release date of 1996. They're obviously pulling their metadata from Amazon. To address this problem, MusicGiants says they are "very close" to a deal with the All-Music Guide site to provide better metadata. Anyway, the QSonix + MusicGiants combo is a pretty expensive candy store! It's also an exclusively Windows candy store. But, expense is not a problem for many audiophiles, and the ability to show off their sexy touchscreen interface will trump any concerns about price, sound quality, fan noise, DRM, shoddy metadata, limited selection, or OS compatibility. -- Pale Blue Ego ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pale Blue Ego's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=110 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=49614 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
