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I admit to being a little surprised at the results of our Discs or Downloads poll a couple of weeks ago. More of you (65%) see a future for downloads as a viable music medium than I would have expected. As reader Mike Garner put it, "As bandwidth and storage continue to become cheaper, audiophile quality music downloads are inevitable." "Downloads save you trips to the shop or having to wait for shipping when you shop online. We'll soon be loading the data into a music server anyway," adds reader Ola Roll.

Linn bounced out of the gate early with a hard disc–based music server, the Kivor, and new entrants and consumer electronics giants alike are now putting dogs in this race. Assuming that download audio quality can catch up to audiophile expectations any time soon (admittedly a rather large assumption), the market for better media servers should take hold in the near future, following their seemingly inevitable adoption by the mass market.

There are at least two ways to use music servers: as a place to store downloads (if the DRM, or digital rights management software, is compatible—unfortunately a big if) and as a place to store your current collection of discs. Considering that you could also carefully convert and load your vinyl LPs onto a hard-disc system, as well as your CDs, this second use makes the better music servers attractive to audiophiles today.

Two recent product announcements illustrate the range of media server options. The first is from Digital Techniques, a new company to the market that sees the potential for audiophile servers and has just announced its Blackbird Digital Music Player. Essentially a custom-built computer and enclosure that is optimized for audio storage and playback, the top-of-the-line Blackbird 300A sports a 300GB hard drive and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound cards.

While based on a computer architecture, the Blackbird looks like a typical audio component and has both digital and analog audio connections on the back. The company says that consumers also have the ability to control the Blackbird from any web browser, computer, or PDA within their home network (wired or wireless). Digital Techniques notes, "Consumers can now simply take out their pocket PDAs, and play any song in their entire music collection on their home audio systems."

Blackbird supports the MP3, MP3PRO, Ogg, WAV, and FLAC formats and the device also comes preloaded with the addresses for hundreds of Internet radio stations. Pricing begins at $499 for the entry model and tops out at $899 for the 300A.

Also recently announced is Integra's NAS-2.6 multizone Net-Tune audio server, which the company says is capable of streaming audio to up to 12 Net-Tune client devices, and which also features four independent zone outputs for fixed/variable line-level distribution for hooking up to analog audio gear.

The NAS-2.6 has a 160GB hard drive and Integra claims that when connected to a home network, "the hard drive is available to home PCs as an external device, making it simple to transfer music between the server and other devices, such as a portable MP3 player." Once again, this will be true as long as the music's DRM cooperates.

The NAS-2.6 has a suggested retail price of $3600, and also has a built-in CD drive capable of a 22X "ripping" speed. The company says this means that you can rip a typical CD in under five minutes. The server stores audio as uncompressed PCM files, or at MP3 bit rates of 128kbps, 192kbps VBR (variable bit rate), or 320kbps.

The back panel of the NAS-2.6 has a single Ethernet jack for networking the device with home PCs and up to 12 audio "clients," defined as either stand-alone units such as Integra's NAC-2.3, or Net-Tune–ready home theater components such as the DTR-10.5 receiver or DTC-9.4 processor. The NAS-2.6 can access the Internet either by broadband connection or using the built-in dial-up modem. The NAS-2.6 also includes four rear panel analog outputs. Each of these zone outputs can be used as a completely independent audio source, delivering line-level audio to additional receivers or zone amplifiers, with complete control via IR input, RS-232 port, or using IP protocol over the network.