Pacific Valve - NETGEAR Music Server

[Audioseduction]

Anyone usint it? Very cool technology. Uses a solid state storage for better performance. You just wirelessly transfer your tracks from your PC to it. You also need to provide a external DAC.


http://www.pacificvalve.us/PVMedia.html

 

[tonepub]

That's all great, but 256gb is the size of an iPod. You can't store much music on that, barely any high res. The diff from solid state memory isn't that much. Just listen to a ss ipod vs a hard disc one on a Wadia 170i and you can see the small diff.

And these guys aren't very well known. You might be buying a door stop!

 

[Craig]

256gb is about double the size of the latest iPod. By today's standards it is small but SS drives are the way to go for a music server. However, the technology needs to mature more and allow the size of the SS drives to grow and the price to come down before I'll go that route.

I'm not so sure that USB and wireless serves are as bad as Netgear protrays them to be. My basic wireless squeezebox does pretty good going through my DAC but it would interesting to compare some of the current music server systems entering the market. There's a lot out there that I haven't heard yet.

 

[sleepysurf]

SS memory is certain to replace mechanical hard drive storage eventually, but the technology is new, quite expensive per GB, and not without it's own glitches. For the near term, for those getting started with streaming audio, I think it's best to go with a decent Terabyte server, with full backup/redundancy (e.g. Raid 5, plus offsite/online backup). Once you have your music properly ripped to lossless files, you can alway transfer it later to the newest storage technology of the day, which might offer improved fidelity.

 

[tonepub]

Yeah, and since when do we trust a company that makes 89 dollar internet routers as the last word in good sound?

 

[sleepysurf]

I watched their video demo, and read up on the Netgear EVA9150, which it is based upon. The biggest drawbacks are the lack of a display (you need a computer display or TV to control it) and it's dependance upon their proprietary software interface, for which I couldn't find any details. It's also limited to 44.1 kHz streams right now, but they say a forthcoming "firmware upgrade" will allow streaming up to 192 kHz, which would put it ahead of the forthcoming Squeezebox Touch (and even the Transporter). Unfortunately, the currently offered SS drives wouldn't have the storage capacity for 24/192 albums, so that becomes a moot point! In theory, this approach does make sense, and I'm sure we'll eventually see more practical and cost-effective solutions from mainstream consumer brands first (e.g. Apple, Netgear, Logitech), then audiophile brands to follow.