CES 2008

We now have a website (under construction) with more information about The Black Box.www.bluesmokesystems.com

"With no moving parts in the box into which one inserts a CD, the DSP-based system reclocks the data after reading the CD, basically eliminating jitter. It copies the audio data from a CD onto a hard drive"News Flash- a CD drive and hard drive have movingparts.

Dan - maybe they meant solid state drive. And processor might be some fanless VIA-type cpu. Still, I'd like to know what is so expensive in that box.. you could build a via system with great sound card fraction of that cost

I was thinking the same thing as both of you. I can't find any information about this company or system on the Internet and I missed their room at T.H.E. Show when I was there.

Some information on the box - I was there.They said it was in "Pre-Release" and only there as Rockport wanted to use it as their front-end. It did sound GREAT - far better than any other "Music Server" I have heard.They did mention that the pricing was Preliminary and that it was for everything. They did also mention SSD storage as one reason for the cost, but thought that by the time of release it would be much cheaper. It is already much cheaper than almost all of the packaged solutions out there and these guys seemed to be interested in keeping it small and intimate for the moment.All I can tell you is that I gave them my information so I can keep in touch when they release (and actually announce with a web-site or something) later this year. It truly sounded analog to me.

What a strange market this is. The Black Box Audiophile PC looks to be little more than a battery operated PC (a laptop) with something akin to Exact Audio Copy software (DSP software???) for ripping CD's and a solid state drive. The posting doesn't mention a DAC, but I'm assuming the DAC is included as the posting claims support for "24/192". All this with "preliminary pricing" of $7999! While SSD drives are currently expensive (I found a 32 GB SSD drive on NewEgg for $399), unless they've included a large SSD drive in the box, it's hard to see how they could remotely justify that price.

I heard this thing at the show and it sounded amazing. This 'black box' removes everything but the music stream from cd's and stores them to a server. Upon playback, the data comes off the server, is pumped through a d/a converter and into the preamp, amp, speakers. It is by far the best sounding system with a digital front end I have ever heard. I was absolutely floored by how analog it sounded.

Blue Smoke Entertainment Systems demonstrated The Black Box as the digital front-end in pre-release form with Rockport Technologies at THE Show. The Black Box is the result of over a year of development and testing of various components, systems, software loads, D/As, DSPs, power supplies, etc. in order to achieve the best possible sound from a digital source. The unit as demonstrated at THE show is not yet available as a commercial product

...Contact Blue Smoke Entertainment Systems at (847) 977-0220, or ron@ultimateaudio-video.com

This truly innovative disc playback system combined with State of the Art speakers and electronics, delivered simply the Best Sound at THE SHOW !!