Black S2 106 Rallye LHD
I have been looking for some time for a single source that will fulfill all my needs. Many times I had thought I found the answer, only to change my mind. All of the products out there seem to do almost everything I need, but I need the help of CS technology to point me at alternatives I haven't considered.
The device will need to have an optical output to connect to the DAC in my HiFi. The sound side of things is sorted, so I need no help here.
What I originally thought I wanted was something that would stream music only. I have ripped almost all of my CDs losslessly to an external harddrive.
The cheapest and easiest solution to access this music would be to use a Squeezebox @ under £200.
The next option was a Sonos system, which will stream music wirelessly, but has a large remote with a screen so that I can navigate all of the music from my sofa without having a monitor turned on. This is a big plus. I actually ordered a Sonos but have now cancelled to re-think options.
I am starting to think more about just buying something that does the lot - i.e. a Mac Mini or a PS3, which will also play DVDs, and generally offer a lot more functionality for similar money to the music-based alternatives mentioned in the paragraph above. A negative to these solutions is needing the monitor on to navigate music, although Apple Front Row with a remote is quite stylish.
The bespoke solution would be to build some media PC and use a PDA to control everything and view my music playlists on the PDA without having the monitor turned on.
My concern about this approach is that it will take some fiddling about and use of 3rd party software I expect to add all of the functionality I need.
Is there a product that will do everything that I want, straight out of the box?!
To sum up, my ideal product would probably be something like a Mac Mini but with a Sonos-like remote.
Thanks to anybody who could be bothered to read all of this.
Darren
The device will need to have an optical output to connect to the DAC in my HiFi. The sound side of things is sorted, so I need no help here.
What I originally thought I wanted was something that would stream music only. I have ripped almost all of my CDs losslessly to an external harddrive.
The cheapest and easiest solution to access this music would be to use a Squeezebox @ under £200.
The next option was a Sonos system, which will stream music wirelessly, but has a large remote with a screen so that I can navigate all of the music from my sofa without having a monitor turned on. This is a big plus. I actually ordered a Sonos but have now cancelled to re-think options.
I am starting to think more about just buying something that does the lot - i.e. a Mac Mini or a PS3, which will also play DVDs, and generally offer a lot more functionality for similar money to the music-based alternatives mentioned in the paragraph above. A negative to these solutions is needing the monitor on to navigate music, although Apple Front Row with a remote is quite stylish.
The bespoke solution would be to build some media PC and use a PDA to control everything and view my music playlists on the PDA without having the monitor turned on.
My concern about this approach is that it will take some fiddling about and use of 3rd party software I expect to add all of the functionality I need.
Is there a product that will do everything that I want, straight out of the box?!
To sum up, my ideal product would probably be something like a Mac Mini but with a Sonos-like remote.
Thanks to anybody who could be bothered to read all of this.
Darren
