2. misc-audio
  3. 1262213652

Is sooloos worth the money?

I saw a sooloos system in a local dealer. It has a touch screen, Raid 1 hard drive, very nice user interface with any music search criteria you can think of. It is hooked up to Bryston DAC and meridian DSP5200 active speakers. For that set up the music sounds very very digital, in some aspect almost like the mini stereo system you get at Best Buy.

I was very surprised to hear the sooloos sell for about $10,000. To me, it is just a very nice interface/software to read the music file, help you search and organize your music collection. It can not improve your audio performance whatsoever. It sounds like Mi-Fi with Bryston DAC and Meridian 5200 speakers. You still need to buy high end DAC and speaker to make it sound good. To charge $10,000 for a music organizer/software plus $1,000 hardware(touch screen, hard drive, CPU that have nothing to do audio performance) is beyond my believe. It is like charge you $1,000,000 for Microsoft Windows 7 (people can argue Microsoft can sell cheap because they sell lots of copies, but that is not our problem). Even with people have lots of money to blow, you should have a $50K+ system before you consider a $10K music organizer. They don’t even sell $50K system in my local dealer.

I like Linn’s approach better. I have Linn DS player that reads music file from your PC or Nas server and convert it to analogue signal. I need to spend $500 for a 1.5TB Nas server, 1GB network switch and some CAT6 network cables to set up the Linn DS with amp and speakers. Linn give you a Kinsky software to organize your music files for free although it is not as nice as sooloos. This is a more opened design than sooloos because sooloos charge a premium for touch screen, hard drive and other stuff that doesn’t effect sound quality. Then we can spend money on something that can improve the sound while buy non critical stuff cheap elsewhere. Sooloos probably has the best user interface in the market, but this is not the reason we buy high end audio.

I don’t know how many sooloos systems have been sold so far. I think sooloos should just sell the user interface to read music files and organize music for $1000. They do have a pretty nice interface.

This is just my opinion, maybe people who have more experience with sooloos can share their different idea.
yxlei
mikelavigne
2,196 posts
 
i think the Sooloos is a wonderful product. unfortunately it's biggest attribute, the interface, can now be had for much less. you would not get a full sized touch screen, but you would have a great touch screen remote.

the Sooloos's biggest shortfall, the inability to deal with hirez files, is becomming a bigger and bigger issue as more hirez files are out there.

i have a high rez music server that uses an Apple iTouch as a 'touch screen' remote control which competes with the Sooloos in terms of ease of use, but it also sounds at least as good on redbook and does high rez. of course; it is much cheaper. not only that, but adding more storage to my server is dramtically less expensive than the Sooloos.

the server DAC i use, the Playback Designs MPS-5, is not cheap.....i think it's the best hirez server DAC at any price. there are many good less expensive server DAC's on the market.

anyway; the Sooloos is still a very cool product and if you are redbook 'only' it can be a great choice.....but there are slightly less slick but better performing and much cheaper ways to go.
yxlei OP
31 posts
 
I didn't know sooloos can not play 24 bits file.

Mikelavigne: You are the very few people who have the Playback MPS-5 in North America. Is it a hybrid cd/digital stream player? How does it compare to other high end digital stream player like DCS Scarlatti or Linn Klimax DS? Very few people even heard of Playback design in US, but it is well known in HongKong and listed as top 2 cd player along with DCS Scarlatti in HIFI magazine in HongKong.
mikelavigne
2,196 posts
 
Yxlei,

actually; Playback Designs is quite popular here in the North America.....at least amoung friends of mine. of course, one of those friends is Jonathan Tinn, one of the owners of the company that makes and sells Playback Designs.

i have not heard the Playbacks directly compared to the Scarlatti or Klimax.....so i really cannot commet on that. i have heard the Scarlatti, although never as a server DAC. my guess would be that the Playbacks Design would have advantages as a server DAC over the DCS in terms of it's complete elimination of jitter from digital sources.

it is the best sounding server DAC i have listened to.....and it even compares very well with my analog sources.....a first in my experience for digital. i have some pretty good analog sources.
rbstehno
1,415 posts
 
i think the sooloos unit is way over priced and doesn't sound that good compared to a decent computer/jitter device/external dac setup. as for the interface, except for the touch screen, it doesn't offer as much as itunes release 9 IMO. also, the sooloos doesn't have the flexibility like a computer does for adding more external devices (like a NAS unit for example) and to hook up a backup device (possibly a drobo or nas for example).
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