Panasonic unveils HDD / SD-equipped boomboxes

Not that CDs are beginning to show their age or anything, but Panasonic knows that we'd still prefer to keep our tunes on one big hard drive rather than fish through dozens of plastic enclosures. That said, the firm's 160GB SX850 and 80GB SX450 enable users to rip tracks from the built-in optical drive to the internal HDD at 12x, and even gives folks the ability to transfer tracks to SD cards at 16x. Furthermore, the units tout 30-watts of power, an AM / FM tuner, MP3 / AAC / WMA support, and play nice with your iPod or SV-SD800N / SV-SD400V D-snaps with the requisite adapters. No word on pricing just yet, but those dwelling in Japan can pick either of these units up starting in early September.

[Via FarEastGizmos]

[Rob @ Aug 30th 2007 10:08AM]

That's exactly what companies need to start concentrating on, putting hdd in their systems. People don't want to mess around with cd's because they take a lot of space and could get damaged. However, when you have an hdd in your stereo, you'd have your entire music library available without having to use your pc or anything else. Very nice.

[Robert Abramson @ Aug 30th 2007 10:54AM]

Until it has lossless format support (FLAC, AIFF, etc), I'm not interested. Say what you want, but CDs sound noticeably better than most reasonably sized MP3s. The only reason to carry lossy-compressed music on an ipod is that carrying CDs is a pain. It's much less of a problem when they're on a bookshelf next to the stereo.

[Rob @ Aug 30th 2007 11:30AM]

@Robert:
I'm with you completely. I prefer cd's over any other format. Yes, mp3 is not the greatest audio file format out there. But, you have to keep in mind the stereo system we're talking about here. This is a top shelf compact stereo. You can't expect the greatest sound out of this. I'm almost certain that most of the cost went into marketing and the main box. Very little was spent on speakers.

Any real audio enthusiast knows that you need a combination of excellence all along; amp, cables, speakers, cd's or lp's, and adjust it to the acoustics of your room.

[Dante @ Aug 30th 2007 10:26AM]

ummmm what about those copyrights cd?
Is the unit still able to rip them?

[Pym @ Aug 30th 2007 11:05AM]

I haven't encountered a CD that it couldn't rip, but could try specific albums that are known to be difficult to test. I have the Japanese model, so not sure if it differs, in that respect, to the coming US one.

[Pym @ Aug 30th 2007 11:04AM]

I have one of these in the Japanese versions, and language difficulties aside, they're nice units. It'll rip a CD in about 2 minutes, nice menu organization (even without understanding the Japanese, it's a lot of simple icons) for finding albums, songs, artists, different favorites compilations. It contains a Gracenote database built in that can be updated via an ethernet port on the back. Speakers are excellent for what is the size of a heavy bookcase unit.

Now that they're coming out in English, I'll be able to get an English manual!

[Pym @ Aug 30th 2007 11:23AM]

Manual of unit in Japanese, still possible to gleen data from it though: http://panasonic.jp/support/audio/manual/main_1.html

[Tavis Veighey @ Aug 30th 2007 11:51AM]

Give me an Ethernet/WiFi/USB port for bulk dumping to it!

I have 80gig of music sitting on an NAS. Why would I want to transfer it at 2gig or 4gig at a time! That would be 40 or 80 trips with an SD Card! Ouch!!!

[Pym @ Aug 30th 2007 1:48PM]

It has 100 ethernet, and you can set it to login to a windows machine. What this actually means is... I'm not sure, the manual is entirely in Japanese. :D But it may do the loverly thing you suggest.

[Tavis Veighey @ Aug 30th 2007 3:57PM]

Oh fantastic!!! If it has a LAN port, then I can have my NAS system sync my current music archive to it automatically.

Would be great for my workshop then.

[Carlos @ Aug 30th 2007 12:06PM]

How much does it cost? The unit looks very nice, but would you be able to do the same with old laptop or desktop + self-powered speakers at a fraction of the price?

[Pym @ Aug 30th 2007 1:47PM]

I paid around USD$300 for mine in May in Roppongi. It's the 450, white.