I'd love to see this sort of design become an audiophile mainstream reality. I'm not the best caretaker of CD's, and I place a very high value on storing them (uncompressed mind you) on a central server. Less chance I'll lose, scratch or misfile one of my 400+ CD's.
Also, I have to believe hard disk drives are ultimately a better transport mechanism. Hard disks have waaay high iops than CD's which ultimately has to be a benefit when spitting out a consistent stream of 1's and 0's. Also, HDD's are easily replaced when they wear out. By contrast when the drive motor in your CD player gets shot, God help you.
Has the problem just been mating them with a good DAC? I don't know. I'm just a layperson, but I'd imagine you'd want a very big solid state dynamic cache that spits out 1's and 0's at a steady pace. Would this be the DAC's job or the transport's job? The other potential limitation is jitter that I believe has never been dealt with in even the best separate DAC/Transport designs. I also think it would be mandatory that you be able to upload your music via 802.11.a or g. I know the Stereophile review of Linn's product remarked that it was a pain to actually get music into the server.
I also think it's worth segmenting your market into the purist, two-channel audiophile crowd. They won't go for this sort of design until it's very well established. Plus a lot of the two channel dorks (I'm one of them) don't seem to have very large music collections and won't get as excited about the value of a central server.
However there's also the networked home crowd. My understanding is this is becoming the much more lucrative market (installing wired houses or extensive home theaters) and those people are much more willing to experiment with such a design than the former group.
Good luck with your trials!
P.S. - I know of a HDD supplier who might be useful for this project. Contact me if you're interested.
Also, I have to believe hard disk drives are ultimately a better transport mechanism. Hard disks have waaay high iops than CD's which ultimately has to be a benefit when spitting out a consistent stream of 1's and 0's. Also, HDD's are easily replaced when they wear out. By contrast when the drive motor in your CD player gets shot, God help you.
Has the problem just been mating them with a good DAC? I don't know. I'm just a layperson, but I'd imagine you'd want a very big solid state dynamic cache that spits out 1's and 0's at a steady pace. Would this be the DAC's job or the transport's job? The other potential limitation is jitter that I believe has never been dealt with in even the best separate DAC/Transport designs. I also think it would be mandatory that you be able to upload your music via 802.11.a or g. I know the Stereophile review of Linn's product remarked that it was a pain to actually get music into the server.
I also think it's worth segmenting your market into the purist, two-channel audiophile crowd. They won't go for this sort of design until it's very well established. Plus a lot of the two channel dorks (I'm one of them) don't seem to have very large music collections and won't get as excited about the value of a central server.
However there's also the networked home crowd. My understanding is this is becoming the much more lucrative market (installing wired houses or extensive home theaters) and those people are much more willing to experiment with such a design than the former group.
Good luck with your trials!
P.S. - I know of a HDD supplier who might be useful for this project. Contact me if you're interested.