It is no secret that the competition for global domination in the operating system market has moved from the desktop to the living room couch. The Olive Symphony, a Linux-powered hi-fi wi-fi stereo hub, stands a decent chance for a prime position before the living room throne.
Check out this alternative, it was reviewed in Stuff Mag, got a very good review :
http://www.redten.com/displayPage.asp?page_key=19
From the “Software” page: “Configurable cross-fade”.
How about implementing true gapless playback in one of these things for a change??
I can ssh into my fridge and write a perl script to feed my dog.
So you have a library of classical CD’s. What is the value add of “Olive”? The ability to store all your CD’s as digital music and pull them up more easily? For lossless sounds this is only 200 CDs. And 200 CDs would easily fit in a small rack next to your existing audio equipment. If you forego the jewel cases, then 200 CDs fits into one or two binders. Staying in the disc world, you get the highest quality available.
The mobile pod is a bit more interesting in that to make the same thing for SlimServer would be a hassle. The Olive Sonata mobile doesn’t seem to use the latest MIMO WiFi so it will only work in places like on the ones pictured — metrosexual art lofts.
The sticking point with any digital music library is getting the music into portable digital form. The better solution would be for Sony and the other big classical music houses to do this once and then find a good licensing model to get SACD quality images of their big classical libraries.
The end user should not have to waste time converting discs to portable digital. Given a reasonable ability to store SACD locally, many people would jump on this. It would also be a good way of solving the SACD distribution problems that exist today.
I would gladly subscribe to an SACD quality library of classical music. Much more gladly vs. ripping a lot of CDs — or sending my CDs to some place where they will make their own copy of them and probably damage them as well.
Broadband has been looking for good apps. Classical SACD quality audio would be a nice app. Then hard drive players could take off and Sony and others would have all sorts of interesting business models to make more money off their languishing classical libraries.
I wouldn’t put this device on my 802.11g network – it would slow everything down. What a shame to develop a sexy piece of gear and then futz it up by putting obsolete technology inside. Blah…