Although there is a related thread on this topic over in the General Rants 'n Raves section of the forum that thread does not address several of the issues that I have with this review. That other thread
First, the Sooloos units were provided to both reviewers with over 2000 CDs worth of flac files no them. These flac files do not contain any DRM and could easily be copied by the reviewers to their own hard drives. Isn't this a very clear voliation of copyright infringement since Sooloos is not the copyright holder of the material that they made available to the reviewers? And more importantly by providing the reviewers with a pre-loaded system Sooloos has very cleverly spared these reviewers both the time of having to rip their own music collection or the expense of having their music collections ripped for them. Therefore, for many buyers the overall cost of the Sooloos system can actually be much higher than its already high list price once the cost of the Sooloos ripping service is added to the total price. Having a reasonable amount of first hand experience with ripping and tagging music from CDs for use in a music server system I feel that both reviewers may have had additional comments and concerns regarding this process had they had to rip the 2000+ CDs instead of being handed such a nice neat prepackaged system.
Second, neither reviewer seems to have any prior experience with music server systems and no comparisons to any of the other music server systems currently available was made. Instead the Sooloos system was compared to CD and SACD players which would be okay if there were no other music servers available but does a major disservice to the readers since many other music server choices are available.
Third, the Sooloos form factor may have been clearly described but how easy or hard it may be to integrate these three devices into one's listening room was not discussed. A 17" touch screen needs a some place to stay and since it is connected by a wire to the other two pieces of the system I would assume that placing the touch screen within easy reach of one's listening position may not be an option.
Plus a couple of very minor issues:
I don't know how Sooloos does it but finding high resolution cover art via the Internet is next to impossible. And by high resolution I mean a resolution greater than the maximum of 500 pixels by 500 pixels that cover art from Amazon tops out at and with a maximum file size of 50KB, hardly high resolution. Also the information obtained from AMG, while first rate, is not always correct nor is complete information always available, such as artist bios, reviews and recording information like personnel, producer, etc., for many less well known recordings (like a lot of the jazz I so dearly love).
No mention was made of how one would go about adding flac files of music sourced from something other than a CD, such as downloaded music or music converted from vinyl and analog tape. And no mention was made of how the Sooloos system handles, or if it even can handle, music encoded in any of the many other formats available, such as Apple lossless, APE, WAV, MP3 or Windows Media lossless. Inquiring minds want to know.
Although there is a related thread on this topic over in the General Rants 'n Raves section of the forum that thread does not address several of the issues that I have with this review. That other thread
First, the Sooloos units were provided to both reviewers with over 2000 CDs worth of flac files no them. These flac files do not contain any DRM and could easily be copied by the reviewers to their own hard drives. Isn't this a very clear voliation of copyright infringement since Sooloos is not the copyright holder of the material that they made available to the reviewers? And more importantly by providing the reviewers with a pre-loaded system Sooloos has very cleverly spared these reviewers both the time of having to rip their own music collection or the expense of having their music collections ripped for them. Therefore, for many buyers the overall cost of the Sooloos system can actually be much higher than its already high list price once the cost of the Sooloos ripping service is added to the total price. Having a reasonable amount of first hand experience with ripping and tagging music from CDs for use in a music server system I feel that both reviewers may have had additional comments and concerns regarding this process had they had to rip the 2000+ CDs instead of being handed such a nice neat prepackaged system.
Second, neither reviewer seems to have any prior experience with music server systems and no comparisons to any of the other music server systems currently available was made. Instead the Sooloos system was compared to CD and SACD players which would be okay if there were no other music servers available but does a major disservice to the readers since many other music server choices are available.
Third, the Sooloos form factor may have been clearly described but how easy or hard it may be to integrate these three devices into one's listening room was not discussed. A 17" touch screen needs a some place to stay and since it is connected by a wire to the other two pieces of the system I would assume that placing the touch screen within easy reach of one's listening position may not be an option.
Plus a couple of very minor issues:
I don't know how Sooloos does it but finding high resolution cover art via the Internet is next to impossible. And by high resolution I mean a resolution greater than the maximum of 500 pixels by 500 pixels that cover art from Amazon tops out at and with a maximum file size of 50KB, hardly high resolution. Also the information obtained from AMG, while first rate, is not always correct nor is complete information always available, such as artist bios, reviews and recording information like personnel, producer, etc., for many less well known recordings (like a lot of the jazz I so dearly love).
No mention was made of how one would go about adding flac files of music sourced from something other than a CD, such as downloaded music or music converted from vinyl and analog tape. And no mention was made of how the Sooloos system handles, or if it even can handle, music encoded in any of the many other formats available, such as Apple lossless, APE, WAV, MP3 or Windows Media lossless. Inquiring minds want to know.