Media Server Reviews

My interest in wireless network music players began during David Hyman's keynote">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11662">keynote speech at Home Entertainment 2003. Then CEO of Gracenote, Inc. (footnote 1), Hyman stunned me with his opinion that CDs and DVDs were already obsolete. Rather than pursue discs with greater storage capacity, Hyman urged industry designers to design music-server units with large hard drives to allow instantaneous access to any digital music track. With all of your music stored on a central hard drive, you could, within seconds, locate a specific track among thousands just by knowing the name of the artist, song, group, composer, year of recording, or even recording venue. Music mixes could be instantly grouped into playlists by the owner.

How to integrate a computer into a high-end audio system is a hot topic these days. I'm getting more and more e-mails from readers asking for advice, Wes Phillips wrote about transferring his LPs to audio files in his Octoberhttp://www.stereophile.com/images/newsletter/1005Astph.html">October; and Novemberhttp://www.stereophile.com/images/newsletter/1105Astph.html">November; newsletters, and a lively thread on this topic ran on the forum">http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2067&page=0… at www.stereophile.com;.

Editor's Note: We were saddened earlier this month to learn of the death on December 7 of loudspeaker manufacturer Brian Cheney of VMPS, from prostate cancer. He contributed this review to Stereophile almost a quarter-century ago.—John Atkinson

The single-brand, self-contained music system has been popular at both ends of the price spectrum. A few hundred dollars at Macy's gets you a rack chock-full of offshore electronics, big speaker boxes, one plug (for the AC outlet), and—bingo!—instant music. Or, call your local Cello specialist and spend 60 times that amount, to roughly the same effect. Now Yamaha, a heavyweight in things from three-wheelers to VCRs, offers this imposing piece of satin-black furniture to the audio enthusiast willing to invest more than the usual amount of effort in order to hear his favorite tunes.