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

[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