Sooloos music server: Anyone hear, anyone a dealer

Don_s, the Exemplars were in FIM and LSA suites. The Blue Smoke was in the Rockport suite at THE Show.

Swampwalker, What I saw and heard was very real, but the principles said that it would be several months before it would be in production.

You can call Exemplar at 425 334-4733. The Blue Smoke is another matter. They gave me a preliminary sheet but there is no telephone number on it. Andy Payor at Rockport must know how to get in touch with them.

Both system are multiple units with the possibility of bigger hard-drives and different control computers. Both will allow other dacs. In fact Blue Smoke used two other manufacturer's dacs. The Exemplar uses AES/EBU connections so any dac with a parallel input would work. I think I recall that the Blue Smoke also did not use USB, but I am now uncertain.

Again, I basically went by what I heard comparing the FIM K2 sampler played as a disc and as I remembered it on my system to what I heard on the server.

Tbg,

I think that you are focusing on sound quality, which I normally do to, but in the case of the Sooloos, it's all about the interface and software being head and shoulders better than anything else.

All of the typical music server GUI's show you lists of text that make picking through your music collection a very different experience than thumbing though your CD or LP collection. The Sooloos makes you connect with your collection in a way that the others don't

When Henryhk says that his friends come over and get into picking albums and get lost in the fun of it, that's how I felt using the Sooloos at the show.

I have a computer that is set up as a server at home and have tried every GUI possible (if I'm missing a winner let me know). They are mostly text based, and the ones that give you album covers to pick from are amateurish by comparison.

BTW, I am not a dealer for Sooloos. I'd like to see the GUI software made available for everyone to put on their computer. At that point, you'd still be lacking the incredible touchscreen, but it would be a move in the right direction.

Davemitchell, the sound is the only thing that is important to me, but convenience is next most important.

VRS and the Memory Player both have the same capabilities as the Sooloos. You can easily add them to the Exemplar although they do not recommend doing so, or at least turning it off when playing music.

re sound Tbg...I think its a matter of DAC in this case, though the Memory player make claims otherwise....I don't think though it offers terabyte capacity and its mainly supposed to be CD player that uses cache memory? In any case, the main difference shld be the DAC. Adding an external DAC is the way to go...indeed I think as music servers or PC based audio more popular, the external dac with multiple inputs will make a comeback. The only real drawback agst Sooloos is price IMO, but for me its worth it.

Henryhk, I don't think the Memory Player is intended to just be a cd player, but I don't know whether it will allow larger than the .5 terabyte drives they originally offered. I suspect you are right about using an external dac for noise reasons. The Memory Player is to have an external dac. I am not convinced that the Sooloos is as good as either the Exemplar or Blue Smoke. I certainly did not hear otherwise at CES.