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Loading ...MP3 hifi seperates, a gap in the market?
l3v1ck
Is it just me or is there a massive gap in the market when it comes to playing MP3’s in your home. Ok, you can plug any hand held MP3 player (eg iPod) into the auxiliary port on a hifi, put how good is the sound quality? In my experience, not good. So what dedicated hifi MP3 players are out there? Well as it turns out, not many. If you pick up a copy of What Hi*Fi Sound & Vision and flick to the product guide at the back, there are only five products in the Recorders section, and only three of those have hard drives. The Acoustic Solutions Sp150, the Cambridge Audio Azur 640H and the Yamaha CDR-HD1500. The Azur 640H and the Yamaha are both £600, so that rules them out and the SP150 only has a 40gb hard drive which is no use to anyone who wants to store a full music collection as MP3’s.
So as I see it there’s a gap in the market here for a sub £250 separate here, and to my mind there are two obvious companies that could profit from this. First of all is Apple. They could easily integrate their excellent user interface onto the front of a separate size box and fit a standard 500gb hard drive inside. The second is Creative Labs. Although their controls and user interface isn’t as good as Apple’s, they do have an ace up their sleeve. The X-fi. All they need to do is fit a 500gb drive and a low end X-fi (which only cost around £25 by themselves) into a separate size case and you’d have top quality sounding MP3’s in the home without having to run things through a PC. Of course with that kind of drive capacity available, people may elect not to compress their music at all, fully quality music is within easy reach.
If such hifi separates existed (especially if there was space for consumers to add a second hard drive) then I could see CD’s effectively becoming nothing more than a backup in case the music on the hard drive was ever lost. I know I’d buy a product like that. If you’re having a party the last thing you want to do is spend half the night looking for the next CD you want to play.
I know exactly what you mean, which is why I went to the effort of building my own hifi-separate-sized PC audio jukebox with a touchscreen. It’s got an X-Fi in it, and it always wows everyone who comes round to my house. It’s amazing how much stuff there is for video recording and PVRs, but so little in the way of flexible hifi-separates.
I’m going to write a full blog on the PC at a later date some time I think.
Well if you wanted a mp3 playing box, for £250 you might as well build a pc in my mind. It would do what you want and with a bit of fiddling and coding would work like any other player. Hell, just a pc would do. Their becoming more common in the home for media centers.
Can see the why anyone should make a box just for mp3 when a pc will do it.
I can see your idea behind it, but why transfer everything to a HDD to take to a hifi system only to have to load it to another HDD. A pc you could just stream it via a network.
I did (for about a nano second) think about building a PC in a Zalman HD160XT, but that’s way too expensive. The screens on smaller cases like the Antec Fusion seem to be too small, and I don’t want a full TFT sitting next to my hifi.
All I’m asking for is something hifi separate sized that’s as easy to use in day to day use as an MP3 player with X-Fi sound quality for a reasonable price. Since I’ve just taken out a mortgage I can’t afford to throw money at this so I’ll either have to buy a regular MP3 player and use the hifi aux port or use my laptop and X-fi Xmod, but the Xmod isn’t that good (too much background noise).
MP3s won’t replace CD’s for some time.
Tracks recorded on Audio CD play music at 1411.2 kbit/s – if you buy an album online or from HMV it will very closely meet or succeed this bit rate
MP3’s work between 128kbit/s and 192kbit/s.
Therefore, the quality offered by MP3s is far behind that of ‘Compact Disc Digital Audio.’
It is true that a standlone MP3 player which you talk about could handle more complex and demanding CODECS but then the file format would no longer be MP3 and you could not transfer music between you MP3 player and standalone hi-fi undetermined file format player
I agree with you there. I did use the term MP3 Player in the original post as it’s a generic term, I did mean a device that could also play uncompressed audio. The Azure can play wav files, but wav files don’t have tags like MP3’s so they’re not as useful. I did email Cambridge Audio and although they don’t currently support Apple ’s Lossless format, they may do in the future.
Is it possible to encode MP3’s at a CD’s 1411 kbit/s bit rate?
@ Dom Law:
Rubbish. MP3s can be from 32K to 320K (Or more with the unofficial MPEG 2.5 standard). MP3s from the Amazon store are 256K.
Also, a CD’s bitrate is not comparable to an MP3’s bitrate - it’s apples & oranges. One is compressed with MP3 and one is raw. It would be kind of like comparing a JPEG picture with a BMP on file size alone rather than actual image quality.
Besides, a CD’s 44.1Khz is the sampling rate, not the bitrate. An MP3 can have a sampling rate of 32, 44.1 and 48 khz.
@l3v1ck:
That’s the whole POINT of MP3. You DON’T want the same bitrate as CD because the same bitrate and same length = same file size.
Unless of course you WANT an album to take up 650MB on your MP3 player…
a great article proving the point of what my site aims at addressing. I have written a couple of how to’s on using a mac mini as a hifi digital music source.
I hope it’s ok to post a link here: http://www.sipedia.co.uk/mac/mac.htm
Nice article
@ Clive
I DO want that, as I want to have CD quality music but without the effort of having to carry CD around or changing them out all the time. Not to mention, playlists etc that you can’t do with CD’s. I have plenty of hard drive space, so why not?
I’ve been looking for exactly this - innexpensive mp3 seperates.
In answer to “why not use a pc”… well show me a pc for £200 that turns staight on like a cd player, makes no noise, has a simple built in display & controls and will look nice sat on my amp?
Part 2 of this blog is now available….
Maplins have an MP3 box which will connect to the AUX input on amps, reads SD cards and has a USB socket for ext Hard Discs. Also has a blue back lit display and remote control which makes a cheap MP3 ’seperate’. It does however look a little biz but looks like a step in the right direction. Anyone know of any similar types of audiophile quality please let me know ;@}
The Acoustic Solutions Sp150, the Cambridge Audio Azur 640H and the Yamaha CDR-HD1500.
They’re the ones I found, yes.
I am looking for exactly what you are. The Yamaha is on the right track, but it only supports CD media, not MP3. It’s pricey though. But what I wnat is an on-screen display for controlling the songs, cataloging, etc., and a proper remote control. What I’m looking for is something like Windows Media Player in a standalone Hi-Fi component.
My Pioneer standalone DVR (DVR-340H) has the capability to do exactly what I want — unfortunately the media management and menuing system is so primitive as to make it close to unusable. On the other hand this unit was built to record video to hard drive and create DVDs. I guess the fact that it even does a part of what I want is a plus.
I’ve kind of given up looking for the right bit of kit at the moment as it doesn’t seem to exist (at a reasonable price). I can’t justify the expense of building a media PC around the Zalman HD160XT media case (which would be ideal).
My current solution is playing my MP3’s on my laptop and routing the sound into my amp’s AUX port via an external X-Fi card (to get the sound quality I want).
Maybe in a few years I might have enough spare cash to take the media PC route, but that’s a long way off.
No gap mate…it’s been done a while back by arguably the best Hi-Fi manufacturer there is:
http://www.linn.co.uk/akurate_ds
http://www.linn.co.uk/akurate_music_server
http://www.linn.co.uk/klimax_ds
Let’s see, I found one review of the Akurate that said:
“Akurate DS will be available from LINN Specialist retailers from January at the suggested retail price of £3,450.”
http://hiddenwires.co.uk/resourcesnews2008/news20080128-01.html
Hardly a sub £250 device!!!
Here I am trawling around the web, desperately seeking something that sounds so simple. A hard drive, in a hi-fi seperates size case, with a digital display, touchscreen/remote even?, that I can plug into an amp and speakers. A usb port for transferring data would be excellent. If I want music I want to be able to point, shoot and choose, which I cannot do with a PC.
Wharfedale made one and sold it through Argos at £250, but that has vanished.
There is a glaring hole in the market here and no one is filling it…why not? At which point, Plug In Baby by Muse starts up on my Itunes..spooky huh!
I’m looking at two lines of enquiry at the moment: I bought a Koolu Works Everywhere appliance for a different idea a while ago, and I’m thinking about repurposing it as a music player by booting Linux from flash (or an internal disk) and adding a USB hard drive to it, although there are people who have tried this and report that the processor and the ethernet interface are rather slow for the purpose. I’m also considering finding a music player circuit on Alibaba or somewhere similar and looking into getting it to work with Rockbox and putting it in a separates case with a big hard disk.
How about this. You can even use it with any portable HD - I’m gonna get one. And it’s under 40 quid!
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?TabID=1&criteria=usb&ModuleNo=222291&doy=search&C=SO&U=Strat15
Add my name to the list of people waiting for a box to come along….
All I do at present is connect my Ipod directly to my amp using a cable that converts headphone plug to red/white audio plugs.
I came across the Squeezebox but I can’t work out what it does?
I agree there’s a real gap in the market. Tbe best solution I’ve seen so far is the Brennan JB7 - Digital Jukebox. Cheapest version is £259
Add DAB radio & wifi connection to the above. Wifi for transfering your collection from PC and grabbing updated track info for newly-released CD’s - perhaps a 300quid price tag. Whatever manufacturer does this first will be rich rich rich !!!
Can a laptop not be built by your local PC shop - basic operating system, decent soundcard + media player with single USB port to connect a portable drive, no other s/w or h/w required (’cept for a (small) screen) - surely this would come in at
I’m currently using my laptop for that exact job when I’m at home. The on board sound is pants, so the sound is getting to my amp via a USB X-Fi card.
The only problem is the fans on the laptop and laptop PSU can be quite annoying if you’re sat next to them.
Have you guys not heard of the Sony Gigajuke? Google for it. 80gb hard drive, USB connector, DAB, £400 I believe on eBay. I’ve tried it out in Currys (I assume this is a UK website?) and the quality is awesome. Sony have also released a 250gb separates version as well, albeit in the £500 range. I doubt you’ll find anything worthwhile for sub 250.
I compleatley agree with the gap in the market, however it also reminds me of the first generation of mp3 players ( Creative Zen - not the new solid state one - and the sony NW-HD1,3 and 5 that i know of) These all had a specific Aux out setting - specialy for plugging it in to hifis. i found this worked very well with my amps, gave good quality sound and you didnt have to whack the volume up to hear it. Ive stuck with my old Sony NW-HD1 for this feature as none of the new mp3 players have it - WHY???
As long as you have the right cable you can go from a normal headphone socket to the left and right aux in on a hifi . Most hifi’s have them.
If you do that however, you have to put amx volume on the mp3 player to give the amp a decent volume input, but it still isnt at the standard voltages the amp is designed for, the result being bad quality sound from the amp. i dont know how noticeable it is on cheap systems but with a good amp and speakers the quality just doesnt cut.
Sorry for the double comment, i meant amp volume, not amx volume… Could it be edited? thanx
I’m joining the hunt! I’ve been in the exact situation as you for about 3 years… i’ve also settled on the laptop with the external sound card!
Of all these ideas that Brennan looks bloody awsome, but a bit expensive and i don’t need the amp… and i wonder how good that Maplin is?
Further to my comment a month ago, the Maplin box finally arrived. It works fine, I connected a separate hard-drive to it, sound quality was reasonably good. However, I have just returned it on the 14-day money back guarantee as the display was only for track/file numbers which made it impossible to find specific album/tracks. I’m going to fly from Heathrow next week and will look at the Asus EEE, which is obviously more expensive (c. £200) but should do the job. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
I suspect the reason why there aren’t many MP3 hi-fi components is that MP3 and hi-fi aren’t really compatible…. *if* we’re talking about genuine high quality sound reproduction.
Using the headphone socket on a laptop/PC just isn’t good enough (because of electical noise) and relying on digital outputs will only give you a clean output of your MP3 file…. which is effectively damaged goods anyway. For most people though, mp3 is good enough for things like the car, kitchen, workshop and other situations where you don’t actually care much about true sound quality…. or where they can’t be appreciated.
Your other option…. is to take the Western Digital MyBook World NAS box, mess about with the Linux distribution on it, add support for an external USB based sound card (and use the digital outputs), and then with a little bit of extra software/development effort use the MyBook as a audio and file server.
I agree that there is a market gap as I am also looking for a device to connect to my HIFI and store my entire music colletionn on it. But I am not convinced of devices that come with a two-line alphanumeric display to select from thousands of titles - I find it already cumbersome with MP3 CD players.
The best I have seen is the ARCHOS605Wifi with dockingstation and remotecontrol and COWON Q5W.
Actually they are portable media players supporting video but who wants to watch a movie on such a display? But as a user interface for audio it seems to be fine.
I am in the same vote and would like to research making my own HTPC, however please be patient with my ignorance. Can someone explain the following to me:
1 - How does the operating system on the hard drive work the LCD display ?
2 - Is there any OS I can use other than Vista Home Premium or XP Media Centre, eg., Linux ?
(obviously as its free.)
3 - All I want is a music hard drive so I don’t intend to put a graphics card in. Therefore would the only way to update the music library be to remove the hard drive and slave it to my PC ?
1- It depends on the size type of display. For example the Zalman HD160XT Plus has a large enough screen to plug into the output from a graphics card. Others connect via USB.
2- I’m sure many distro’s of Linux are suitable. Though they may not be quite as user friendly as Media Centre. (Now I’m going to get flamed my the Linux users on these forums.)
3- You should be able to plug it into a network and get access to the files that way.
My search for such a device brought me to this blog, and none of the gadgets linked from here are quite what I’m after (I didn’t even bother looking at the £3500 Linn one!)
Like heartofgold I’m concerned that navigating thousands of tracks on a two line display could quickly get tiresome. So what I want is a sub£200, component-size, 500GB hdd player which is driven by a remote control with an interface as good as an iPod. Touch screen on the remote would be nice. All I need to see on the device itself is current track and time, everything else is on the remote’s screen.
Too much to ask for?
apparently not! I promise this is not comment spam, but I’ve just come across the Squeezebox Duet, which looks very promising. The only thing it doesn’t have is any storage capacity - you need a PC on the network running a upnp server, which isn’t too much of an obstacle for me.