T+A Music Player

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Spike

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For those European members, have you seen or heard this unit from T+A Elecktroakustik? Here's some info from the T+A ElektroAkoustik website. According to the web-site, it should be available now (Sept 2007). Looks to be a well thought-out product geared for the high-end market :cool:
T+A is introducing a completely new series of electronic units featuring the latest, highly innovative technologies. Our audiophile music source is to be known as the MUSIC PLAYER, and is a completely new development.

This is a unique and hugely innovative machine, as it is the first to combine the classic music source of CD with music sources from the world of the computer and the Internet. Please note that the MUSIC PLAYER is NOT a computer. It is a high-quality audiophile CD player which has been expanded to provide supplementary capabilities, with the result that it can exploit other digital sources as a streaming client. For this purpose we have developed a network-capable processor board which includes W-Lan, Lan, UPNP, USB and iPod interfaces. As a result the MUSIC PLAYER can access anything which delivers music: Internet radio, network music servers and USB media storage devices, iPod (including control system) and – of course – VHF radio. DAB radio is also available as an option.

We are convinced that the classic CD will remain one of the most important signal sources well into the future. For this reason the MUSIC PLAYER was designed from the outset as a thoroughbred CD player, in the tradition of our legendary disc players, and employs the completely new High-End loader and disc mechanism of our high-end SACD player, the 1250 R. The decoder is a completely new development utilising the latest processors, and is specifically designed to provide the highest possible quality of CD reproduction. The disc mechanism is equipped with components of the highest quality obtainable: heavy-duty Mabuchi motors, a superbly damped sub-chassis, stainless steel pushrods, a laminated metal – ABS disc drawer and an all-metal enclosure for effective shielding.

D/A conversion is carried out by highly-selected Burr Brown converters; these are also employed in the SACD 1250 R, and are acknowledged as the best available. The sophisticated signal processing section with its precision jitter-free oscillator, high-quality audio output with two different, switchable bandwidths, and the high-performance mains section ensure outstanding results in terms of sound quality. A jitter-free digital output is provided, as are two high-quality digital inputs which can be used for converting external sources. In this way other devices can exploit the extraordinary sound quality of the MUSIC PLAYER.

Spike
 

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Interesting, but doesn't appear capable of handling FLAC files (only MP3, WMA, LPCM, WAV, per their website). Can it also RIP CD's, in addition to playing them?

The display looks pretty small, not sure if it has a larger font option. They mention a system remote control, but I doubt it has a built-in display for viewing playlists, albums, etc. Looks like you'd need to use a laptop or wireless Win Mobile PDA for controlling it from your listening position.

Overall, I think a Squeezebox (with outboard DAC), or Sonos, or one of the Olive music servers might offer better SERVER functionality. How it performs as a CD transport remains to be seen.

I wonder what the pricing will be?
 
It looks VERY interesting!

I have a lot of respect for the T+A brand - everything I have heard has been great!

I wouldn't worry too much about FLAC these days - it was really only necessary when disks were smaller, but with 1TB+ available these days for almost spare change there really is no point in compression.

Sleepysurf has made some other valid comments, but it does look very very good. Me wants!
 
I'd also like to know more about its server capabilities. Shame it's not compatible with SlimServer. I know that Windows Media Connect is junk, but what is UPnP1.1? How does this work?
 
It looks VERY interesting!

I have a lot of respect for the T+A brand - everything I have heard has been great!

I wouldn't worry too much about FLAC these days - it was really only necessary when disks were smaller, but with 1TB+ available these days for almost spare change there really is no point in compression.

Sleepysurf has made some other valid comments, but it does look very very good. Me wants!

I hear ya.... soon FLAC will be a relic of the past and pure WAV files will replace it.
 
I dont think FLAC will die any time soon. I mean, sure it would save some steps not having to compress anything at all, but why would you not want to nearly double your hard drive space without sacrificing sound quality? It just makes too much sense to abort it just yet. At least thats what I think. For now. :)
 
I agree that FLAC will be around for quite a while, if not even the lossless protocol of choice. The fact that its in the public domain and developed as an open source project will almost assure this.
 
Aside from file size, the MAIN advantage of FLAC over WAV is the embedded tagging capability (and also the option to include replaygain, which is helpful for casually listening).
 

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