Sooloos music server: Anyone hear, anyone a dealer

lessloss, interesting perspective from someone in the business. I am also a little surprised by your comments of sound quality, when you admit you have never heard the unit before.

I was told I could just transfer my already converted lossless files over to the system. There is a computer program that comes with it.

I was also told that you should use it with a stand alone DAC, if you want the highest quality play back.

In the end however, your comments about jitter and master/slave is not only a complaint about the Sooloos, but based on your website, your overall complaint on most digital players, lacking a clock input.

I have no idea what this is all about:
"Don't get me wrong. I just don't like the marketing that makes it sound like progressive technology in terms of quality, when in fact the only progressive thing is the business venture idea of screening your music playback and pooling the data for business executives to see trends, maximize profits, etc. Basically, you are then a terminal hooked up to the boundless internet, which somebody will control. It is a PC with good looks and in the end, none of the freedom."

One doesn't need to necessarily hear a digital playback system in order to tell (ball-park assessment) the quality level. It suffices to look at some of the data that is published. Of course, the data only has this correlation to sound quality once one has heard many, many other devices or tweaks of devices and has a grasp for the correlation between lowered Jitter and sound quality.

So, hearing that there is less than 1 Nanosecond of jitter (that is tons and tons -- and that's why people are saying that transports are better in sound quality (see another thread here) and then that you have to slave a DAC to this Master Digital source for "best sound quality" is simply naive. It is not anywhere near best sound quality and I take issue with such a formulation. It is actually worse in a Jitter sense. It is only better in the DAC schematic sense, so there is a trade-off and to use the term "better quality" is, for me, another way of saying "more gear, different sound, somewhat better, but by far not as good as it could be".

I'm trying to think of a proper analogy to clarify my point. I guess it it would be like going up to a 55 year old established concert pianist and, straight to his face, say: "I have this excellent sounding Steinway. It doesn't have a soundboard, though, and the body is made out of cardboard, but it achieves the best possible sound quality nonetheless." The pianist would look at you and walk away, without even playing the piano.

There are some things which need not be heard in order to be understood right off the bat.

I am up against common Jitter marketing which is quickly taking over the minds of many audiophiles. It may sound improbable when someone says they can tell "how a unit sounds" without having heard it. I don't know how it sounds, but I know what that kind of Jitter sounds like. Sounds like computer audio.

Liudas

So from a theoretical perspective, how would you fix this? Is a clock link absolutly necessary, as to make the D/A the master and the Sooloos unit the slave? How easy (hard?), is something like this to fix/modify? Can it even be done?

BTW, you have some good looking gear, I wish the US dollar was a little stronger.

When I was in the Sooloos room I overheard a conversation between two people, one was totally buzzed by the looks, convenience and "modern" approach of the Sooloos system.

I was speaking with another gentleman and commented that the price seemed way out of line for the performance level it provided. I suggested an Apple iMac and rack of outboard HD's and wait a year or two for touch screens to appear at Micro Center or Best Buy.

He agreed and said that was exactly what he had purchased for his own home.

The guy that was buzzed about the Sooloos looked shocked and walked away. I found out that he had recently purchased one from a dealer and waiting for delivery.

I felt bad, it was not my intention to rain on his parade but at least two of us in the room were thinking the same thing and the guy I was discussing this with was part of the demo.

Yetis, when dealing with computer audio, it might be more difficult (or impossible) to simply slave the machine to a DAC with master clock. The reason is that the Master Clock needs to give the frequency for the data to follow, and computer audio is often associated with many different sampling rates. I won't get too technical here, but the answer is that the clock link is not absolutely necessary at all, only if you are in it for the quality. But if you really wanted quality, you'd think twice about including PLL's to derive the sampling rates, which is what computer audio does, since a separate clock would otherwise be needed for every sampling rate, and that costs money to build. I am speaking from an engineering perspective here. From a user perspective, I would not get into it, because you have to drill holes in the sooloos and experiment and it may or may not work, something might break, and then sooloos will not give you any money for trying to raise the quality of their device.

All this wonderful user interface make-up is nice stuff. But still it make you feel you are on Amazon looking for a CD.