Meridian sooloos, Olive 6HD, ??

Hi I have been following this thread with great interest. I am looking at getting a media server also, I don't care about the color, I care about the sound, what about the music vault media servers, how do they stack up againts the big company media servers

I have the greater storage option of the "High End Set-Up" of the Meridian Sooloos system above.

MD600 - 2 TB RAID back-up storage/system core
MS600 - audio endpoint/dac
Simaudio 650D dac/transport
Simaudio P-8/W-8
Revel Studio 2

I can say that the dac in the MS600 is on par with the very well reviewed Simaudio 650D dac. Slightly different "flavours" of sound, but the difference is subtle at best. I can't wait for Meridian to offer their high end ID41 card (the one in the Meridian 818) in a Sooloos endpoint option without the pre-amp, which I don't need, at a more realistic price!

I tried the Simaudio 180 MInD streamer as well using Access as a library management software tool. Although the Sim streamer sounded very good, the Sooloos software is still lightyears ahead, and I stuck with Sooloos because of that.

You owe it to yourself to check out the Music Vault servers made by Neal van Berg. I have the Music Vault Emerald and have been thrilled with it for years. I don't doubt that the Olive and Sooloos are good products, but they do not come with the unrivaled personal support that Neal provides.

Kedoades, the best systems split the audio streamer endpoint part from the noisy "server" part.

Now several manufacturers try to shoehorn this all into one box (server/streamer/storage/DAC) but this will be less versatile and less flexible.

This is why I like the Meridian Streaming System because you can invest and adapt your system as you grow. Need more storage, then add storage. Need a reference media source to your main listening room or just a casual audio endpoint to dining hall or gym, then add just that. No reason to buy full servers everywhere and manage them separately, just add the corresponding function for the job and manage them as a seamless Meridian audiostreaming system.

I've been quite pleased with my LaCie 5Big NAS and Oppo BDP-103. With 5 removable drive bays, up to 15T storage, twonky, 2 LAN's for faster downloads, remote access, etc. the LaCie is a very capable NAS. Twonky Beam or Bubble UPnP allows use of android or iOS devices as a media controller and the Oppo makes a first class media renderer that can playback virtually any audio or video source. A LaCie 2big NAS with two 3T hard drives and Oppo BDP-103 can probably be had for less than $1000. Use the android or i-device that you already own as a media controller and viola', you have a very capable UPnP network solution to manage your media.