Meridian Alfred Dunhill AD88 (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I own both the F80 and the AD88. Guess I like them! Actually I love them both but they are different. The F80 is presently on sale because Ferrari did not want to renew their contract deal with Meridian and wanted their name or logo off the player. So right now the F80 is the one to get at nearly half price if you really look. I have the Ipod dock on both with an upgraded Kimber cable for the ipod dock and an upgraded power cable both available from the UK.
So what is the difference? The AD88 has a beautiful wooden cabinet with a metal structure and is better as a radio playing very close to you,on your bedside table or desk it will capture every note very tighly and is wonderful at playing beautifully even at very low volume settings. Plus you Ipod never sounded like this before. It has less dispersion than the F80 and is easier for your ear to locate in the room but it, like the F80, has adjustments for height of sound and width of sound projection so you can tailor it to your taste.It plays very delicately but with soul, precise like a lynn product while the sound is lush and beautiful.
If I had to get only one price notwithstanding, I would get the F80, it is simply the same with more dispersion , more spectular sounding, harder to tell where it is playing from and seems to play louder; it fills the room quite easily. I never regretted purchasing the F80. Do however remember that like any high end product it needs to be broken in , at least 150 hours of play and 200 is better before either one of these players will do what it is supposed to do.
How qualified am I? 30 years od owning Wilson speakers, Krell, Cello, Lynn, etc. I used to have pricey high end systems and now they are gone and I own these and I play them more and enjoy my music more, CD or Ipod. I simply will buy more of the F80 for other rooms.It took me a while to buy the first one because I kept listening to store displays with no break-in time; they do open up with time. The Ad88 has two very separate speakers while the F80 sounds as if it has one speaker. If you have uneven hearing the F80 is the one to buy, it is sold on Amazon.
I gave them 5 stars because I have not heard anything similar that played this well when smaller than those huge one room sound systems for audiophiles.

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Meridian F80 (Ferrari White) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I own both the F80 and the AD88. Guess I like them! Actually I love them both but they are different. The F80 is presently on sale because Ferrari did not want to renew their contract deal with Meridian and wanted their name or logo off the player. So right now the F80 is the one to get at nearly half price if you really look. I have the Ipod dock on both with an upgraded Kimber cable for the ipod dock and an upgraded power cable both available from the UK.
So what is the difference? The AD88 has a beautiful wooden cabinet with a metal structure and is better as a radio playing very close to you,on your bedside table or desk it will capture every note very tighly and is wonderful at playing beautifully even at very low volume settings. Plus you Ipod never sounded like this before. It has less dispersion than the F80 and is easier for your ear to locate in the room but it, like the F80, has adjustments for height of sound and width of sound projection so you can tailor it to your taste.It plays very delicately but with soul, precise like a lynn product while the sound is lush and beautiful.
If I had to get only one price notwithstanding, I would get the F80, it is simply the same with more dispersion , more spectular sounding, harder to tell where it is playing from and seems to play louder; it fills the room quite easily. I never regretted purchasing the F80. Do however remember that like any high end product it needs to be broken in , at least 150 hours of play and 200 is better before either one of these players will do what it is supposed to do.
How qualified am I? 30 years of owning Wilson speakers, Krell, Cello, Lynn, etc. I used to have pricey high end systems and now they are gone and I own these and I play them more and enjoy my music more, CD or Ipod. I simply will buy more of the F80 for other rooms.It took me a while to buy the first one because I kept listening to store displays with no break-in time; they do open up with time. The AD88 has two very separate speakers while the F80 sounds as if it has one speaker. If you have uneven hearing the F80 is the one to buy and is sold on Amazon.
I gave them 5 stars because I have not heard anything similar that played this well.

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When you see the F80, you'll smile. When you hear it, you'll want one. The F80's design is bold and unique - its sculptured curves and deep gloss lacquered finish immediately tell you that this is something different and special. Inside the elegant cabinet lies the most advanced transportable entertainment system ever made. To design the Meridian F80, engineers with an award-winning pedigree in audio, electronics and radio were set a clear challenge: to apply their knowledge and expertise to a compact and unique design, and to create a system that offers astonishing performance. Don't let the small size deceive you - the Meridian F80's sound is big and immediately engaging. From the bedroom to the boardroom, in the kitchen or the conservatory, its unique digital active loudspeaker technology fills any room with clear and captivating sound. The Meridian F80 is a multi-talented performer, at home wherever you plug it in. It can fill a large living room party with superb quality CD sound or, when connected to a display device, play your DVDs. Equally, with a dual function alarm, it's the perfect bedside companion and can wake you in the morning with gentle chimes, a preset radio station or your favourite CD. Use it in the study as a music system or as a high performance computer speaker. Hook up your Airport Express digitally. Connect your iPod and enjoy your stored music library. Catch the news on your local FM, AM or DAB Digital radio station as you lunch in the kitchen. Take it to your holiday retreat and enjoy complete home entertainment away from home. Regardless of application, the Meridian F80 is neat, complete and everything you need. All F80 systems come complete with: Remote; Power Cord; Antenna; Owners Manual

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VortexBox 1TB Automatic CD ripping NAS Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this gadget after a considerable amount of frustration with a Netgear ReadyNAs I had expected to use as a server for my Logitech Squeezebox Duet. The ReadyNAS supposedly performs this function but with a large collection of files it is simply too slow to keep up with indexing and searching etc. Plus ripping my 2,000+ CDs was a real chore. I read about this product and jumped on it.
Well, within a week of getting my Vortexbox appliance, all my CDs are in my mini storage, my Levinson 31.5 transport sold on eBay, and my entire CD collection is now available to me throughout my home without the slightest issues, disappointments or problems.
I initially corresponded with the manufacturer a few times with questions about configuring this device to suit my particular needs I got immediate, understanding an useful help. I cannot speak more highly of the builder. In fact, I sent a modest voluntary donation to them as I felt the help I got was above-and-beyond. Since I became familiar with this gadget, I have had zero issues, it has been up and running for over sixty days without a reboot, issue, glitch etc. You just pop a CD in the slot and it will rip it to flac and/or any almost any other format you care to have.
Useful tip: if you are ripping a large collection disable the creation of MP3 copies (the system rips to both flac and mp3 by default). This will speed up the tedious job of ripping enormously and you can go back later on and create MP3 versions of any or all of your stuff as a background task when you're done transcribing your collection. Info on how this is done is on the manufacturer's simple but very useful web site.
Anyway, this is a great product from nice people and if anything happened to it I'd buy another in a flash.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I purchased my Squeezebox Touch directly from Logitech, and have enjoyed it enough over the first few days of ownership to write a quick review.
To understand where I'm coming from, it may help to know I enjoy classical music, especially when its reproduced by a traditional stereo system with high quality discrete components. I own a British designed and built integrated amplifier and some tall floor-standing speakers from a Canadian manufacturer. Sound quality matters a whole lot to my enjoyment of music, and that shows in the care with which I select the components in my audio system.
I have owned a number of Logitech's previous Squeezebox WiFi streamers, including the Squeezebox Classic and some Duet receivers, so I am not new to the Squeezebox ecosystem. I keep my music collection as a large library of FLAC-encoded files, so as to avoid any potential losses due to codec compression artifacts.
On receiving my new Squeezebox Touch, I swapped out an existing "Slimdevices" branded classic Squeezebox in my main HiFi system for the new device. The Squeezebox Touch first discovered MySqueezebox.com as its source of music and asked me to provide login credentials, which caused it to upgrade its firmware from that site. After that, it rebooted and was able to connect to my local Squeezebox Server that I have running to serve music around the house. After that, I was able to browse my music collection and navigate to internet radio stations either using the touch interface or by using the supplied remote control.
I noticed that the interface automatically uses bigger fonts if you are controlling it from the IR remote and smaller ones if it finds you are controlling it via the touchscreen, which obviously makes sense when you are within an arm's length of the display.
As a first test, I played back a 96kHz, 24-bit high resolution copy of Marianne Thorsen on violin with the TrondheimSolistene playing Mozart's D-major Violin Concerto. At first I played the tracks via a Benchmark DAC1, which is a studio-quality monitoring DAC for use by mixing engineers. The sound was detailed, rich with a deep stereo image and musically involving. Next, I removed the Benchmark DAC from the signal path and tried again. Once again the sound was clearly better than a CD could provide and very close to that rendered through the Benchmark DAC. There has clearly been an improvement to the quality of the analog stereo outputs compared to previous Squeezebox versions, which was already pretty good.
I then went on to listen to Emanuel Ax, Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma playing some Mendelssohn Piano Trios. This recording was "only" in 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality audio, nevertheless I was soon captivated by the musicality of the performance, and could find no significant short comings of the quality as rendered by the built-in DACs compared to the external, studio quality Benchmark DAC1.
Someone starting to use this system without prior experience of Squeezebox Servers or software might face something of a learning curve to begin with. I can't speak to that, but I appreciate that I was able to drop this new device into an existing system and, within a few minutes, start to enjoy some very high quality reproduction of my music library.
The advantages over the previous Squeezebox Classic are:
* Color, touch-controlled user interface and display
* Ability to play back high resolution music without loss of quality
* Excellent audio quality from the analog outputs; significantly better than previous versions.
Another possible advantage is to use the Squeezebox Touch as a music server as well as a client, by attaching a USB hard drive to the supplied USB port. I have not tested this functionality, so I can't comment on how well it works. This review was mainly focussed on sound quality.
Based on my short experience, I recommend this device highly. I think it is a worthy successor to the Squeezebox Classic, as it provides significantly more in terms user interface and sound quality for the same retail price as the older player.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch. The color touch-screen Wi-Fi music player that lets you discover a world of music—all through your stereo.

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Logitech Squeezebox Boom All-in-One Network Music Player / Wi-Fi Internet Radio Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I am a radio nut (going back to the tube days)and the Squeezebox Boom is my third internet radio. I have a Roku Soundbridge R1000 and Sangean WFR-20 as well. All have their strengths, but the Squeezebox Boom is without a doubt a significant step up; it sets a new high standard in performance, capabilities, and ease of operation.
For wireless streaming of your music collection from a PC or Mac, the Boom is best. It can handle more formats (nearly anything except DRM protected iTunes files) and works well without crashes or delays. In this the Roku is #2, and the Sangean ranks 3rd(crashes and stutters a lot).
For internet radio, they all work well. The Sangean is the only one that natively handles RealAudio Streams (like BBC) but has problems with clear channel stations. All of them pick up the stations I want without problems, so I rate this a tie.
If you want to interface with online music services like Rhapsody/Pandora/ MP3Locker etc, the Boom works great, with far more capacity than the other two. The Slimdevices/Squeezebox folks also update and improve their software far more frequently than the other two, so I expect it to remain in the lead in features and available services.
In sound quality, the Roku and Boom are both outstanding, with the Sangean good, but clearly a step lower. The Roku's subwoofer seems to go a bit deeper in my room, but the Boom is perhaps a bit more smooth and musical. The Boom uses the same woofers and tweeters as the highly rated Logitech Z-10, but with better bass (because of a larger cabinet and new amp/equalizer circuitry). They both sound absolutely great and play quite loud.
Ease of initial setup: If you are starting from scratch, I think the Sangean is the easiest to set up, if you do NOT want to stream audio from your PC...that is a real hassle. Both the Boom and Roku require a bit more work.
Ease of Use AFTER set up: Boom is best BY FAR. Not only do the menus make real sense, but the illuminated controls make it the only radio you can use easily without turning on the lights. The big control knob and back lit function buttons get you through all of the functions fast.
As a Clock Radio, the Boom has more options than the others, and the display has a huge adjustment range so it will not disturb light sleepers.
All of these radios are a lot of fun. The Boom does most, and does it best.

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Logitech Squeezebox Boom all-in-one network music player with integrated speakers. Plug it in. Turn it on. Rock the house! The all-in-one network music player that combines award-winning squeezebox functionality with an integrated amplifier and speakers to deliver your digital music to any room in your home. Enjoy the music and content you love, with crystal clear sound.

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