Meridian Alfred Dunhill AD88 (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)I own both the F80 and the AD88. Guess I like them! Actually I love them both but they are different. The F80 is presently on sale because Ferrari did not want to renew their contract deal with Meridian and wanted their name or logo off the player. So right now the F80 is the one to get at nearly half price if you really look. I have the Ipod dock on both with an upgraded Kimber cable for the ipod dock and an upgraded power cable both available from the UK.
So what is the difference? The AD88 has a beautiful wooden cabinet with a metal structure and is better as a radio playing very close to you,on your bedside table or desk it will capture every note very tighly and is wonderful at playing beautifully even at very low volume settings. Plus you Ipod never sounded like this before. It has less dispersion than the F80 and is easier for your ear to locate in the room but it, like the F80, has adjustments for height of sound and width of sound projection so you can tailor it to your taste.It plays very delicately but with soul, precise like a lynn product while the sound is lush and beautiful.
If I had to get only one price notwithstanding, I would get the F80, it is simply the same with more dispersion , more spectular sounding, harder to tell where it is playing from and seems to play louder; it fills the room quite easily. I never regretted purchasing the F80. Do however remember that like any high end product it needs to be broken in , at least 150 hours of play and 200 is better before either one of these players will do what it is supposed to do.
How qualified am I? 30 years od owning Wilson speakers, Krell, Cello, Lynn, etc. I used to have pricey high end systems and now they are gone and I own these and I play them more and enjoy my music more, CD or Ipod. I simply will buy more of the F80 for other rooms.It took me a while to buy the first one because I kept listening to store displays with no break-in time; they do open up with time. The Ad88 has two very separate speakers while the F80 sounds as if it has one speaker. If you have uneven hearing the F80 is the one to buy, it is sold on Amazon.
I gave them 5 stars because I have not heard anything similar that played this well when smaller than those huge one room sound systems for audiophiles.

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VortexBox 1TB Automatic CD ripping NAS Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this gadget after a considerable amount of frustration with a Netgear ReadyNAs I had expected to use as a server for my Logitech Squeezebox Duet. The ReadyNAS supposedly performs this function but with a large collection of files it is simply too slow to keep up with indexing and searching etc. Plus ripping my 2,000+ CDs was a real chore. I read about this product and jumped on it.
Well, within a week of getting my Vortexbox appliance, all my CDs are in my mini storage, my Levinson 31.5 transport sold on eBay, and my entire CD collection is now available to me throughout my home without the slightest issues, disappointments or problems.
I initially corresponded with the manufacturer a few times with questions about configuring this device to suit my particular needs I got immediate, understanding an useful help. I cannot speak more highly of the builder. In fact, I sent a modest voluntary donation to them as I felt the help I got was above-and-beyond. Since I became familiar with this gadget, I have had zero issues, it has been up and running for over sixty days without a reboot, issue, glitch etc. You just pop a CD in the slot and it will rip it to flac and/or any almost any other format you care to have.
Useful tip: if you are ripping a large collection disable the creation of MP3 copies (the system rips to both flac and mp3 by default). This will speed up the tedious job of ripping enormously and you can go back later on and create MP3 versions of any or all of your stuff as a background task when you're done transcribing your collection. Info on how this is done is on the manufacturer's simple but very useful web site.
Anyway, this is a great product from nice people and if anything happened to it I'd buy another in a flash.

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Olive O2M Media Player (Silver) Review

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(More customer reviews)The touch display is really bad - my fingers aren't particularly fat, yet choosing a menu item requires incredible patience and precision - or you end up selecting an option you never wanted. The menu and font designs, the screen sensitivity - pretty bad. The wifi connection keeps dropping. I've been through a number of software upgrades and after each, I either have had no wifi connectivity, or at best it drops after an hour or two. Would NOT buy this product again.

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Squeezebox Wireless Network Music Player, Black Review

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(More customer reviews)Why are audiophiles buzzing about this inexpensive product? It is the first mass consumer unit to sound as good as much more expensive audio products. I had it up and running with my wireless network in 15 minutes, and was simply stunned by how good it sounded playing my music on computer. Even the internet radio playing through this unit sounded better than any standard radio tuner. Read my experience at musicserver.blogspot.com
I have a huge investment in my current audio system (more than $20k). I read about the Squeezebox on one of the audiophile websites, and was intrigued by having all my music accessible on a computer, but with sound quality to match my high end CD player. After a month of living with the Squeezebox, I can confirm how good it sounds, how simple it is to set up, and how versatile it is. I have not turned on my $3000 CD transport in 2 weeks, and plan on selling it shortly.
I encourage anyone ready to set up a computer system to visit my blog at musicserver.blogspot.com to see how easy it was to set up your music collection on a computer.
For the 95% of people out there who don't understand or care about audiophile quality sound, don't worry. A stock Squeezebox playing your music stored on your computer will sound better than anything you can buy for any reasonable amount of money.
For the uninitiated, a Squeezebox is part of a system of storing your CD collection on computer, and you use the Squeezebox to access/browse your computerized music collection. You need a computer, of course, and to get the best sound quality, you need to rip your music using a high quality format, like WAV or Apple Lossless or FLAC. It works with computers running Windows, Linux or Apple operating systems, and it does not require an expensive computer. Many users are running it with a laptop! It connects to your computer either wirelessly (using built in wifi connection) or via an ethernet cable.
After a month of playing with this unit, I cannot see how I could ever go back to using a CD player. I love being able to tune in and listen to Internet radio stations without having my computer turned on. I bought another Squeezebox for the family home theater system; now my wife can play my collection without me having to worry about misplaced cd's or the kids scratching CD's!!
For hardcore audiophiles who are dubious about how an inexpensive box can compete with separates, read my blog. This box is the real deal, and when upgraded (and particularly when used with your favorite high end external DAC), it is awesome!!! If you don't have or don't want a external DAC, the Squeezebox can be modified by a number of companies to upgrade the existing DAC and produce sound quality to rival top high end players.
The audiophile press and internet gurus are abuzz about this product for good reason. I was pretty skeptical, but it was so cheap I figured I had little to lose. I am not one to gush about gear, but this box is just phenomenal!!! I've rediscovered my music.


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Cambridge Audio DacMagic Digital-to-Analog Converter with USB, Silver Review

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(More customer reviews)I recently purchased a Logitech Squeezebox to stream my music collection to my HIFI and have been pretty happy with it. The sound quality from the Squeezebox's DAC did however not impress me, compared to my old rather cheepish Denon CD player, it was dull, lacked attack and was generally uninspiring. So when I discovered that Cambridge Audio had made this little (and cheap) gem I immediately bought it.
So how good is it ? - In my opinion its the cheapest thing I have ever bought that made so clear a difference; the music is now warm, organic, detailed and full of attack. It is sturdy build and has a very cool and professional look. The device itself has a ton of nice features (such as being able to remember different settings based on input channels) yet is still very easy to use. It comes with three different high quality filters: "linear", "minimum" and "steep" which can alter the audio experience to your personal taste. Of these I have found the "minimum" filter to provide the best audiophile experience.
To sum up, if you have a Squeezebox or a similar device, but feel that its analog output is somewhat lacking, then get this brilliant little device.

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Revo AXiS Wireless Internet Radio with iPod Dock Review

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(More customer reviews)I am thrilled with my axis radio. I have programmed in my favorite internet stations and there are lots more stations to find and listen to. I like that it has a touch screen and that I stay connected and never have a problem with streaming. It's a blast to listen to radio stations from all over the world. I am planning to purchase another one for a gift.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased my Squeezebox Touch directly from Logitech, and have enjoyed it enough over the first few days of ownership to write a quick review.
To understand where I'm coming from, it may help to know I enjoy classical music, especially when its reproduced by a traditional stereo system with high quality discrete components. I own a British designed and built integrated amplifier and some tall floor-standing speakers from a Canadian manufacturer. Sound quality matters a whole lot to my enjoyment of music, and that shows in the care with which I select the components in my audio system.
I have owned a number of Logitech's previous Squeezebox WiFi streamers, including the Squeezebox Classic and some Duet receivers, so I am not new to the Squeezebox ecosystem. I keep my music collection as a large library of FLAC-encoded files, so as to avoid any potential losses due to codec compression artifacts.
On receiving my new Squeezebox Touch, I swapped out an existing "Slimdevices" branded classic Squeezebox in my main HiFi system for the new device. The Squeezebox Touch first discovered MySqueezebox.com as its source of music and asked me to provide login credentials, which caused it to upgrade its firmware from that site. After that, it rebooted and was able to connect to my local Squeezebox Server that I have running to serve music around the house. After that, I was able to browse my music collection and navigate to internet radio stations either using the touch interface or by using the supplied remote control.
I noticed that the interface automatically uses bigger fonts if you are controlling it from the IR remote and smaller ones if it finds you are controlling it via the touchscreen, which obviously makes sense when you are within an arm's length of the display.
As a first test, I played back a 96kHz, 24-bit high resolution copy of Marianne Thorsen on violin with the TrondheimSolistene playing Mozart's D-major Violin Concerto. At first I played the tracks via a Benchmark DAC1, which is a studio-quality monitoring DAC for use by mixing engineers. The sound was detailed, rich with a deep stereo image and musically involving. Next, I removed the Benchmark DAC from the signal path and tried again. Once again the sound was clearly better than a CD could provide and very close to that rendered through the Benchmark DAC. There has clearly been an improvement to the quality of the analog stereo outputs compared to previous Squeezebox versions, which was already pretty good.
I then went on to listen to Emanuel Ax, Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma playing some Mendelssohn Piano Trios. This recording was "only" in 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality audio, nevertheless I was soon captivated by the musicality of the performance, and could find no significant short comings of the quality as rendered by the built-in DACs compared to the external, studio quality Benchmark DAC1.
Someone starting to use this system without prior experience of Squeezebox Servers or software might face something of a learning curve to begin with. I can't speak to that, but I appreciate that I was able to drop this new device into an existing system and, within a few minutes, start to enjoy some very high quality reproduction of my music library.
The advantages over the previous Squeezebox Classic are:
* Color, touch-controlled user interface and display
* Ability to play back high resolution music without loss of quality
* Excellent audio quality from the analog outputs; significantly better than previous versions.
Another possible advantage is to use the Squeezebox Touch as a music server as well as a client, by attaching a USB hard drive to the supplied USB port. I have not tested this functionality, so I can't comment on how well it works. This review was mainly focussed on sound quality.
Based on my short experience, I recommend this device highly. I think it is a worthy successor to the Squeezebox Classic, as it provides significantly more in terms user interface and sound quality for the same retail price as the older player.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch. The color touch-screen Wi-Fi music player that lets you discover a world of music—all through your stereo.

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