Yamaha MCX-1000 MusicCAST Digital Audio Server Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought one of the MusicCast systems as soon as it was available (after drooling over it at a couple of trade shows). The first thing I did was upgrade the harddrive to 200GB. Required a trip by my dealer to my house, but it gave me much more capacity. The interface is very intuitive. It's very fast at copying from cd to the internal disk. In the background, it converts from PCM to whatever MP3 compression level you've set for default (I always use 320KB). You can remove the PCM version to save space (I keep it for critical listening stuff, but my wife doesn't care, so her PCM's are deleted immediately :-) I have a couple of the MCX-A10 terminals scattered around the house. I've had them connect through ethernet and wireless and seems to work fine for both. Yamaha just released a software update that allows access to the MusicCast database through a web browser. This makes it very easy to fix titles, artists, etc. (You can plug a keyboard into the MusicCast, but it requires powering down which is too much trouble for me). I have to say that the most annoying thing about the MusicCast is the GraceNote CDDB database. Yamaha's implementation is great. The CDDB database is a mess. Album titles are inconistent, misspelled, etc. That's why having the browser editing is such a big deal to me. The best endorsement I can give is that my wife really likes the MusicCast. She was sceptical, but after seeing how it works and being able to browse her music, she's sold. Highly recommended for anyone who just wants to be able to enjoy their music without having to deal with PC's.

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The YAMAHA MCX-1000 Digital Audio Server stores and broadcasts music content wirelessly via 802.11b and CAT-5 Ethernet to any location within your home. Separately sold MCX-A10 MusicCAST clients retrieve and play back audio stored on the MCX-1000. Copies CD to hard drive in Linear PCM formatRecords external sources at 1X via Analog or Digital inputsAnalog level control on front panelCreates CDs at up to 8X using built-in CD-Recorder from hard drive PCM filesPS/2 port for connecting optional PC keyboardHeadphone jack w/ level controlIR remote controlDimensions -4-3/4H x 17-1/8W x 15-5/8D; weighs 24.2 pounds

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