This product was attractive to me as I had a large number of CD's to rip and liked the idea of an integrated approach to storing my music digitally. So I went ahead and purchased a Vault 2. I later discovered that the integration is however also its weakness: if something fails, the unit becomes an expensive paperweight.
The good:
- Ripping a large CD collection works well with the Vault. Some of your more obscure discs may not be found, but that is rare.
- Storage provided is adequate for most needs.
- Sound quality when paired with an appropriate amplifier and speakers is always excellent.
The bad:
- Ripping takes time, and is not as accurate as other PC based ripping sofware
This Vault is essentially a Bluesound node cobbled with a CD reader (only CD's BTW, and not DTS or other HiRes music discs), and 2TB of storage. Very expensive when you consider what the three separate functions would cost.
- Meta tags from ripping, album art etc. must all be carefully checked if you have a large library.
- Failures: the achilles heal of the vault is reliability of the storage. And when it fails, it fails hard: your library is no longer accessible by any other devices. Yes you can back up your Vault, but no real way to restore your music to anything other than a vault. Which leads you to:
- Poor warranty. At only one year for hardware, you are left high and dry by Bluesound to deal with the failure. Nor anyway to get your music back.
In short:
- Poor value relative to the functionality provided
- Poor warranty, and you should count on an eventual failure of your storage and plan accordingly
Don't purchase a Vault from Bluesound. Your are far better off with a Node and using professional quality storage, and ripping your CD's with a computer.
The good:
- Ripping a large CD collection works well with the Vault. Some of your more obscure discs may not be found, but that is rare.
- Storage provided is adequate for most needs.
- Sound quality when paired with an appropriate amplifier and speakers is always excellent.
The bad:
- Ripping takes time, and is not as accurate as other PC based ripping sofware
This Vault is essentially a Bluesound node cobbled with a CD reader (only CD's BTW, and not DTS or other HiRes music discs), and 2TB of storage. Very expensive when you consider what the three separate functions would cost.
- Meta tags from ripping, album art etc. must all be carefully checked if you have a large library.
- Failures: the achilles heal of the vault is reliability of the storage. And when it fails, it fails hard: your library is no longer accessible by any other devices. Yes you can back up your Vault, but no real way to restore your music to anything other than a vault. Which leads you to:
- Poor warranty. At only one year for hardware, you are left high and dry by Bluesound to deal with the failure. Nor anyway to get your music back.
In short:
- Poor value relative to the functionality provided
- Poor warranty, and you should count on an eventual failure of your storage and plan accordingly
Don't purchase a Vault from Bluesound. Your are far better off with a Node and using professional quality storage, and ripping your CD's with a computer.