Sleevenote digital music player

[Chris_Sleevenote]

Hi all,

 

I’ve signed up to introduce you to an audio product that I am launching, with the hope that some of you might find it interesting.

 

The product is called Sleevenote. It is a new format for a music player, which allows you to enjoy your music collection as a rich art-led experience. The device has a large square screen where albums are presented as full size images, with interactive back covers and full booklet art.

 

We have a free iOS app, but what we'd really love to do is to develop a dedicated product for this. We're currently trying to raise funds to make it happen on Indiegogo.

 

The device has a fairly premium price of £533/~$700. This is mainly due to the custom 1:1 display component. It supports playing hi-res audio, with a capable, but standard DAC chip from Cirrus. We intend to explore superior DAC circuitry in a subsequent R&D phase.

 

I'd love to connect with more people from the audiophile community and get feedback/hear any thoughts you have.

 

 

Thanks!

Chris

[The Computer Audiophile]

Note: This is an interesting concept and OK that it's posted in the forum. This is vastly different from USB cable manufacture XYZ posting about its new cable and trying to get sales from a post. 

[sphinxsix]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is an interesting concept

+1 it is indeed.

No MQA support though, I hope..

 

 

[Ben-M]

I actually bought an iPad Pro 12.9" Gen 3 so that I could replicate an experience kind of like this on Roon. 

 

I think what I've got is good, but for sure there's a ways to go and it's not quite up to the level that I'd like, which I think is pretty much aligned with what OP Chris is talking about launching. 

 

But for me, I like the flexibility Roon gives me, especially how I can use the hardware I know and love compared to just something they make and bundle with a software suite. I like that this part of Roon came out of Meridian, which was "locked" into that approach. 

 

It'd be a hell of a little long shot, but maybe that's an alternative and "better" approach here? Try and link in with Roon and provide like an "extended, tailored experience"? As I already said, that's actually what I designed my personal Roon experience around from the beginning and I'd sure as hell give your new thing a shot if it were like that. Otherwise, I'd have to consider divesting from what I do have and there's not a prayer in hell that'll happen~

 

Thoughts~?

[lucretius]

I put each album's artwork in a subfolder, named Artwork, within the album's music folder.  Roon automatically creates a link to this subfolder (as well as the parent folder) which is displayed (in addition to the cover art) when viewing the album.  Clicking on the link brings up the first image.  Then one can click the forward (or back) arrow to advance through the images.

 

Of course, this requires a computing device and screen (e.g. laptop, iPad, etc.) and you must find the images or create them on your own.

[Ben-M]

On 11/28/2020 at 8:03 PM, lucretius said:

I put each album's artwork in a subfolder, named Artwork, within the album's music folder.  Roon automatically creates a link to this subfolder (as well as the parent folder) which is displayed (in addition to the cover art) when viewing the album.  Clicking on the link brings up the first image.  Then one can click the forward (or back) arrow to advance through the images.

 

Of course, this requires a computing device and screen (e.g. laptop, iPad, etc.) and you must find the images or create them on your own.

The folder is named "Artwork"?

 

And can you show some pictures of what that's like? I follow, but my server is down right now and I can't test it. 

[lucretius]

24 minutes ago, Ben-M said:

The folder is named "Artwork"?

 

And can you show some pictures of what that's like? I follow, but my server is down right now and I can't test it. 

 

Here is a view of the folders:

 

 

Look at it in Roon -- notice the "14" on the middle right of screen.  That indicates there are 14 images (this includes folder.jpg in main folder + 13 images in the Artwork subfolder).  You can click on this link to view images without leaving Roon:

 

 

 

 

Hope this is what you were looking for.

 

[Ben-M]

On 12/10/2020 at 10:39 PM, lucretius said:

 

Here is a view of the folders:

 

 

Look at it in Roon -- notice the "14" on the middle right of screen.  That indicates there are 14 images (this includes folder.jpg in main folder + 13 images in the Artwork subfolder).  You can click on this link to view images without leaving Roon:

 

 

 

 

Hope this is what you were looking for.

 

I can't believe I never knew that! That's AMAZING news. That's honestly been one of my gripes with Roon until now. Thanks a million for that and the screenshots 👍

[One and a half]

@Chris_Sleevenote, I'm not sure what the item targets.

 

Functionally it's the same as a tablet, iPad, where artwork can be displayed as well as a song to play? Tablets have a stand to play and the display is bigger than the Sleevenote. Such devices need chargers which introduces cable clutter, so no better off than ipad/Tablet.

As a Roon endpoint Sleevepoint may have an advantage, but the price is about 2 x more than I would pay and an iOS Android app would need to be developed.

 

If the files are stored locally on the device, a lot of audiophiles have libraries in the TBs, will this work?

I can see the device as a control point, then the player software is locally on the device and routing music files on a network to a DAC to play. 

 

As others point out, artwork can be in a separate folder or in the same folder as the music files or embedded in flac/dsf files. It's possible the files are several MB in size, chewing up more local storage space. 

 

I wish you luck, but won't be a customer, just too many other choices to achieve the same objective.

[Chris_Sleevenote]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to answer all of the questions and add some comments from other discussions we've been having:

 

Yes, functionally it's kind of the same as a tablet but it's dedicated to one function, the Sleevenote app. In a similar way to how the Roon Nucleus is a computer which is dedicated to one function.

 

It's not only that artwork can be display with a song. It's more the case that you browse your music library through the artwork, and the back covers/tracklists are interactive so they are used to play back the songs. Additional artwork at the moment are images of the booklet but we have discussed the possibility of showing videos and other media relating to a specific album. Maybe worth pointing out that the artwork automatically appears, people don't have to manually add it.

 

A few people have mentioned that it could be a passive Roon controller. This is totally possible and something we'd be keen to build.

 

I agree that other choices achieve the same objective, but none of them are dedicated options. To do the same in Roon requires you to scan the artwork and manually add it to a specific folder on a PC. That's fine for some users but a lot of people will not want to go through all that work. As part of our offering, we have a database of scanned artwork which could be an open API at some point.

 

It's also worth pointing out again that we have a free iOS app which will give the same experience for people who do not want to go all-in for the square screen device. Link here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sleevenote/id527862161

 

We're also working on a web player. The difference with this is that you will see all the albums in our database so every album you choose will have a back cover. The iOS app relies on your albums from your library also existing in our database. Hopefully I'll be able to share a link to the web player next week.

 

Thanks

Chris