I'm not really sure what I want to ask I'm at an intersection and not real sure which way to go. I'll try to explain where am at and what I'd like, sorta.
I have a two channel rig in my home's great room. There is no TV, and never will be. This area of the house is for entertaining guests and those rare moments in a hectic life when I just want to plop my but down in front of my speakers and relax with stiff drink. I listen to two things - CD music and cable music channels that is ran via coax R/L cables from a different room of the house where a cable box is located. I have a separate HT for movies and TV.
For CD, I use an Integra universal six disk changer and two 400 disk Sony mega changers (455's). I use the Integra for convenience when I don't feel like screwing with the changers and / or get a new box of shiny disks from Amazon and want to listen to them for a while before loading them into the mega changers. The Cable music is just for background music when I don't care much about SQ.
I use a Rotel RB 1070 / 1080 combination. The 1070 pre amp does not have any digital inputs.
Here's my frustration and reason for posting.
Both mega changers are full and I either need to buy a third mega changer, or go with a media server and copy all the CD's to a hard drive. It took me ten years to fill up the first two changers, so I think three will serve me well for another few years, maybe. I absolutely hate the user interface of the changers. I either hit all play random, or pick one of the categories I have programmed and walk away. I'd love to control these things with a library interface like Window Media Player or similar. That desire lead me to the use of a laptop and two different private software programs. Neither program worked out very well and I gave up on them with a few more grey hairs. Plus, the laptop wasn't very convenient either. Waiting for it to boot up whenever I wanted to use it sucked.
I then heard about the Olive Opus and thought that was the perfect solution. I could put all my CD's onto its hard drive uncompressed or FLAC and it uses some great DACs, and looks good too. Then I found out how much it cost. Four grand is just more than I can bring myself to spend. Plus, I'm not sure I want to take the time to load 800 + CD's onto a hard drive to begin with, and then what happens if it crashes. I think I'd rather give up one of my toes then have to go through all that twice.
A couple days ago, Google lead me to the Escient web sight and at first glance, the DVDM-100 looks as if it just might be the answer for my situation. I'm not real sure what its street price is, but I did find one on-line dealer sells refurbished units for about half of MSRP, or roughly one grand. This is much more palatable than four grand. It looks as if all I'd need is a small monitor and I could use the remote to control the DVDM-100. Or, I could spring for their touch screen monitor for a way cool' factor.
Before I buy the DVDM-100 and a third mega changer, I figured I'd ask around and see what else may be available to accomplish what I'm looking to do.
I am not interested in wireless gadgets like the Squeeze Box or Sonos. I hate the sound of compressed audio too, so that's not an option (I realize that both can rip to FLAC).
I do have a hard wired home network throughout the house and can plug whatever I want into the network as needed.
Thanks for reading my ramblings and providing any insight / ideas you wish to share.
..mike
I have a two channel rig in my home's great room. There is no TV, and never will be. This area of the house is for entertaining guests and those rare moments in a hectic life when I just want to plop my but down in front of my speakers and relax with stiff drink. I listen to two things - CD music and cable music channels that is ran via coax R/L cables from a different room of the house where a cable box is located. I have a separate HT for movies and TV.
For CD, I use an Integra universal six disk changer and two 400 disk Sony mega changers (455's). I use the Integra for convenience when I don't feel like screwing with the changers and / or get a new box of shiny disks from Amazon and want to listen to them for a while before loading them into the mega changers. The Cable music is just for background music when I don't care much about SQ.
I use a Rotel RB 1070 / 1080 combination. The 1070 pre amp does not have any digital inputs.
Here's my frustration and reason for posting.
Both mega changers are full and I either need to buy a third mega changer, or go with a media server and copy all the CD's to a hard drive. It took me ten years to fill up the first two changers, so I think three will serve me well for another few years, maybe. I absolutely hate the user interface of the changers. I either hit all play random, or pick one of the categories I have programmed and walk away. I'd love to control these things with a library interface like Window Media Player or similar. That desire lead me to the use of a laptop and two different private software programs. Neither program worked out very well and I gave up on them with a few more grey hairs. Plus, the laptop wasn't very convenient either. Waiting for it to boot up whenever I wanted to use it sucked.
I then heard about the Olive Opus and thought that was the perfect solution. I could put all my CD's onto its hard drive uncompressed or FLAC and it uses some great DACs, and looks good too. Then I found out how much it cost. Four grand is just more than I can bring myself to spend. Plus, I'm not sure I want to take the time to load 800 + CD's onto a hard drive to begin with, and then what happens if it crashes. I think I'd rather give up one of my toes then have to go through all that twice.
A couple days ago, Google lead me to the Escient web sight and at first glance, the DVDM-100 looks as if it just might be the answer for my situation. I'm not real sure what its street price is, but I did find one on-line dealer sells refurbished units for about half of MSRP, or roughly one grand. This is much more palatable than four grand. It looks as if all I'd need is a small monitor and I could use the remote to control the DVDM-100. Or, I could spring for their touch screen monitor for a way cool' factor.
Before I buy the DVDM-100 and a third mega changer, I figured I'd ask around and see what else may be available to accomplish what I'm looking to do.
I am not interested in wireless gadgets like the Squeeze Box or Sonos. I hate the sound of compressed audio too, so that's not an option (I realize that both can rip to FLAC).
I do have a hard wired home network throughout the house and can plug whatever I want into the network as needed.
Thanks for reading my ramblings and providing any insight / ideas you wish to share.
..mike