If you're going to take the time to listen to classical music, you might as well do it right, and there doesn't seem to be much of a better way than with Fortuna's new Maestro Classical Music Player. The unit is basically a
Hush fanless PC running an iTunes-like interface which can be displayed on your TV or computer monitor via DVI, VGA or Component outputs. The interface is specially designed to sort through your collection by composer, conductor, artist, ensemble, genre and period, and also has jazz and pop modes for when you're not feeling in a classical mood. The system can rip your CDs into lossless WMA or lossy MP3 files onto its 400GB HDD, and syncs to Fortuna servers for digital booklets and other album information as long as you pay $10 a month for the privilege. Of course, it all comes down to the audio output, and the Maestro doesn't disappoint with analog, S/PDIF coax and S/PDIF optical outs. Sadly, none of this comes cheap, this glorified CD player goes for a whopping $5000, but at least that includes professional preloading of your music collection, and the peace of mind in knowing that yes, you are an audio snob.
[Thanks, Ross]
posted May 25th 2006 8:30AM
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wot, no lp input?
looks like a rebranded Hush...
$5K is a lot to pay for a unit like this given the wealth of options out there. I mean, Olive started out with a product that was geared towards classical fans with additional ID3 tag fields specific to the classical genre. However, their top end Opus product with 400GB drive is 2 grand less. Now they don't have an on-screen interface but they do have an included ripping service.
The one interesting thing about this product is the option to get one with 5000 classical pieces preloaded instead of one with CD loading service included. They claim a value of almost $14K for the music collection alone that they will "throw in" for the $5K purchase price of the hardware. I'm not a big classical guy so I don't know how good the collection is or whether it is a real bargain or not. But at least the idea is a little different.
Jeff
hooray...my $300 squeezebox does almost everything that does except empty my wallet!
Seriously...audiophiles have a need to pay a lot to feel like they have a high-quality product. Cheap stuff, no matter how good, simply doesn't enter their calculations.
Also, as for pre-loaded music. Classical music is really cheap (Naxos records charges
I cannot imagine a reason for a classical mode, jazz mode, or pop mode. If a transport is doing its job correctly it just outputs the same bits that were on the disk. Unless it is doing EQ or such, but then, it's not really an audiophile solution, IMO.
All anyone needs for great quality is a decent sized hard drive, decent cd burner, lossless formatted music, and a nice audio card with optical or coax output. Then you can add whatever fancy speakers and amp on top of it. It would probably cost much less than 5 large.
If I was this much of a snob, I doubt this would even go with my furniture. And what is completely ridiculous is, for all this money there isn't even a native screen to browse your music files. You have to turn on your TV just to play your music!
Ridiculous. I even tried to look up the technical specs but there's little info about the physical hardware (such as the audio card).
For this much money, you should build a quiet PC and have a few wireless receivers (that use remote controls) that are dedicated to media playback.
I don't think it's doing any EQ. The site refers to them as different interfaces (http://www.fortunaclassical.com/5-3-06/additional_pages/faq.cfm?id=30#30), so I'd guess they're just different skins for the iTunes-type player when playing Jazz or Pop as you probably wouldn't have Conductors listed in the id3 tags for those types of music
Apple's still missing the boat by not making some sort of box like this that has a built-in iPod dock. I can name a handful of people that have no interest in getting a computer (really, I can hardly believe it myself) but would still love an iPod.
Good players and taggers like Music match can add enough "classical" fields like composer, orchestra, movement, pace and style to satisfy any classical librarian. Other than that, any HTPC can output a SPDIF signal to a DAC Pre-amp / amp combination. My HTPC has a 400Gb drive, 3,500 songs, is also a DVR and it cost me $1,500.
What do you have against Audiophiles, Paul Miller?
I'm getting a bit tired of the word audiophile being banded about because something is expensive. This is just a glorified PC with a nice sound card in it. For $5000 you could get a far better CD transport and DAC combo because you wouldn't be paying for the 400gb harddrive, the professional ripping and pointless ID3 tag sorting and premium for the R&D. This is for people who want to be fashionable not audiophiles. Many of the audiophiles I know still use turntables from the 70s because they still sound as good as most equipment these days.
I'll be forward and admit that I work for Fortuna Classical. I hope that it is not inappropriate for me to respond to some of the comments briefly.
One thing that makes Maestro so different and well worth its price is the preloading of your CD collection. We tag your music with accurate, consistent, and complete information about each album, work and track in your collection. You simply can't navigate a large library of classical music without it. Plus you get full digital scans of your entire liner notes that you can browse through our interface, which no other player provides.
Also, the Pop, Jazz, and Classical modes determine what fields are used to navigate the music, they don't determine any sound settings. All audio output is bit-perfect.
I appreciate everyones comments (good and bad). Contact us if you want to find out more. I could go on for a lot longer.
Rio Central
Oh right, Rio didn't have a marketing department, so noone knew what it was.
http://gear.ign.com/articles/359/359110p1.html seems to be a decent overview with pictures. The internals and software were a spinoff off the empeg-car/Rio-Car that could rip CDs to the hard drive, then play them back to speakers, or stream it out to Rio Receivers. It also let you sync MP3s to a portable player. Basicially a perfect device for someone who wanted to have digital music without a computer. Slap the Rio Central into a metal looking box, and you have the product above.
I whish I we could post pictures directly to Engadget. That way I would show off my AUDIOPHILE system that KICKS ASS! Not some cheap PC in Audiophile clothing!
I can't wait to abandon my custom built entertainment system for a 5K lossless codec PC. !!YEAAA!!
http://news.digitaltrends.com/article10525.html
These guys posted this story first. Hooya!!!
I don't want to knock a product without having tried it, but Olive's website does a much better job of convincing me to buy an Opus than Fortuna's does with their Maestro. Can I trust a music player that professes to be a giant "heat sync"? All their screenshots seem to be of ugly barebones Windows applications. Likewise, the utilitarian onscreen TV display was not what I had in mind when I thought of CD cover browsing.
Olive has the right idea of catering to their $3000-to-spare target audience by engineering a product (and publicity materials) with some class. The ir machines are more beautiful, the proprietary software is snobbishly Mac OSX only, and they talk about precision audio-technical components that don't produce heat, in contrast to a machine that says it does everything it can to counter the waves of heat that it MUST produce because it's essentially a PC. I could probably build my own PC and put it in a different room where I can't hear it, but I can't build my own Olive.
That said I haven't tried either product, but at this point I don't feel compelled to give the Maestro a chance.
The most important question is...
How does losslessly encoded audio sound using the Maestro when compared to an audiophile cd player (e.g. Musical Fidelity A5 etc)?
I'd say that I have audiophile tendencies, and to my knowledge, no hard-drive based music server/device has ever come close to a top-end, reference class, dedicated CD player. Please see all independent reviews by audiophile magazines such as the 'Bestenliste' by Audio Magazin (a German audio magazine).
It's the sound processing that really counts here, and I'm not convinced that the RME PCI audio card cuts the mustard.
However, I am hopeful, and I look forward to the day when I can have all my CDs encoded losslessly and played back at the same quality as my A5 cd player.