Article: The Bentley of Music Servers

[rgbyhkr]

As far as I know - and I looked into both the Sooloos and Qsonix servers over the last month - while initially delayed, the Sooloos is currently available. They have some additional components they are working on for release in the first half of next year (the Micro Source and the 7" wireless remote), but the 17" Control, Source:One, Source:Five and Store are available. They also have a product they call the Control:Bridge which lets AMX and Crestron systems control the Sooloos with the same kind of touch functionality that the 17" Control offers, but I'm not sure if that is available yet.<br />

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It will be interesting to see how they follow through with some of the things they have in the pipeline. At CES, I expect that they will demo the Rhapsody integration (that's the online service they are going with). The idea is that via the subscription, users will be able to browse and listen to the Rhapsody collection through the Sooloos controller. If you found something you liked enough to get in full resolution, you'd have the option to buy the album and have the CD sent to you (of course, you could just listen to all of that stuff in lossy form right from Rhapsody for as long as you have teh subscription).<br />

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It's also possible that they will show an early beta of video storage and playback. This has been rumored but isn't definite. Such capability would require new source hardware (the current ones only have audio outs). No word on format support, etc.<br />

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The wireless 7" remote is very attractive. It will supposedly retail for $1500 and be as responsive as the 17" touchscreen. The spped of teh control is their trademark. With a capable processor and 1GB of RAM (I think thats what the tech said), they intended it to handle all the work of browsing and controlling the library in as snappy a manner as possible. From the YouTube video (

), it does indeed look to be snappy. They want the wireless remote to be just as speedy and not just a UMPC with a laggy browser-based control interface.<br />

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The Micro source will be a small, single-zone device with analog and digital outs for placement in different rooms (think Sonos ZP80). This is a natural addition as it accommodates homes without structured speaker wiring. Ethernet is required (I assume that will be the same as teh current source units - done to maintain adequate, clean, uninterrupted bandwidth for FLAC playback).<br />

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One thing that I got only a hint about is where they are going with the management options. As it is, they tout the "Focus" feature which lets you drill down into your collection and explore your library using extensive metadata from AMG. I asked about the ability for the unit to do what Qsonix just added - the ability to auto-populate playlists based on similarities. Qsonix uses AMG's Tapestry service builds playlists via things like "create playlist with songs similar to this one" and "mood" or "theme" based playlists (driving music, dinner party, etc). Sooloos says they are working on stuff like that, but they were kind of cloak and dagger about the details.<br />

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By the way, there have been a couple of write-ups of the Sooloos. The December TAS issue which had a special on music servers including Sooloos, Qsonix and the Arcam MS250. All TAS issues are available for paid download (deliverable is a pdf) from their site (http://www.avguide.com/the-absolute-sound/back-issues.php). Tone Audio also had a review which you can get from Sooloos' site here:<br />

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http://www.sooloos.com/press/Sooloos-ToneAudio.pdf<br />

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Ultimately, for me, I don't know if Sooloos is right. If the wireless remote, micro source, Rhapsody integration and auto-playlist features were there now, I'd likely be sold. I'll have to see what they show at CES.<br />

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Hope this helps.<br />

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Jeff