| Audio Emporium
Newsletter Slim Line
Devices Transporter, $2000, Now Here! Anybody who knows me knows I’m not a computer
geek. I’d rather spend my time on music, either playing the piano, or when I want to
hear somebody good, listen to the hifi. While
people are in love with their IPODs, I’m not interested in compressed music. It isn’t
that tough to get your tush off the couch and slap on a CD or LP. Rumor has it a little
exercise is even good for us. We’ve
been besieged over the years by companies selling servers. They’re pretty cute but
they’re expensive and usually problem prone. They’re getting better but, no
thanks. What
is different and exciting about The Transporter is, it isn’t a server. You can store your CDs in the
home computer you ALREADY HAVE as non compressed wave files. So far you haven’t spent
any money- just time dumping your music into your computer. Next, connect a wireless
router to you computer. Most of us already have them. If not, they’re typically under
$200. Now
you’re ready to place The Transporter along with your hifi gear. The signal is
transmitted wirelessly to the Transporter, which in turn connects to your preamp or
receiver with wires, and you’re ready to play music. But that alone isn’t the
exciting thing. Other products do this task inexpensively. But how do THEY sound? They
sound like a generic $200 CD player. What about The Transporter? The
Transporter has been designed for died in the wool hifi nuts like us! The DACs on board
are AKM AK4396 “Miracle DAC” multi-bit/Sigma-Deltas. It is built with a rugged
chassis made of aircraft grade aluminum. Output connections are RCA or AES/EBU (or
digital: coax, toslink, BNC S/PDIF & AES/EBU) to your preamp. Hence the audio
transmission to your fancy hifi is commensurate with the best of preamps available! The
Transporter has a large two part display which you can configure in a myriad of options.
There’s also a nice, macho control knob that you can use (or use the remote) to
scroll through your music and select what you want to hear. As an old line audio guy that
like the FEEL of a weighted volume control, this tactile function adds to the FUN of using
the Transporter. So,
what’s the real purpose of The Transporter?
For openers, for just about $2k you have access to your music virtually instantly. That’s
not bad. But that alone won’t cut it for me. What sells me on it is that The
Transporter has sound quality competitive with the best CD players our industry has to
offer. If you just buy a high end DAC from a high profile manufacturer, you’ll spend
well over $2k for it alone. The Transporter gives you that level of performance WITH the
music access and wireless distribution to boot! Slim Devices can make this unit for
THOUSANDS less than a high end audio company because of the scope of its business and
economies of scale. By
now you can infer what is logical about The Transporter. Let’s add to the fun.
Suppose you’re nuts and have ten (OK, more like 20) versions of Chopin’s
ballades and you’d like to compare them. By the time you pull all your CDs out of the
cases and jump up and down putting discs in, out and messing with it all, you tend to
forget what’s what! With The Transporter, the comparisons are instantaneous! The
practical benefit is, you’ll listen to music you otherwise would have left on the
shelf! There
is a little computereze necessary to set it up. If you’re computer savvy it’s a
snap. If you’re not, you can hire us to set it up for you. If
you visit our Latest section on our home page you can click on a review of the Transporter
that goes into much more detail than I have here. Or you can come in to check it out in
person! Marantz
BD-8002 Blu-ray Disc Player, $2000: Due in June! Now
that Blu-ray has won the war, some of the higher end companies are diving in. If you have
a higher end system you’ll want to set your sites on the new Marantz as opposed to
one of the “bargain” players out there. The
reason we want to give you a heads up on the BD-8002 is that we now have a projected
delivery date. The first thing to consider in getting a Blu-ray player is the same thing
you would consider in getting any other AV unit. How is it built? What is the warranty? On
cutting edge technology- do I trust the manufacturer to produce the unit without bugs? If
there are issues where do I go to deal with them? The
answer to all of these questions is Marantz and Audio Emporium. If you buy a promo brand
Blu-ray you’ll find you won’t get local service. You’ll have to ship it to
some repair center for a very large company. You’ll have to hassle with it and you’ll
find, it’s very difficult to even get a phone number much less a human being to
answer it and do something for you. If you buy from us, you’ll just deal with us! BD-8002
will upsample regular DVDs to 1080p via the new 10bit Silicon Optix Realta Chipset. It
will have an on board 297/12bit Video DAC (ADV7340). It will have HDMI 1.3a & fancy
audio decoding. If you’re about to plunge, it should be worth the wait! We’ll
hold off formal endorsement till we get it and run it through its paces. But we fully
expect it to blow away the $500 ish units available now! Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony What’s “the best” symphony ever written? Personally, I don’t think it’s important to determine if any single composition is the “best.” But any short list of great symphonies has to include Tchaikovsky’s 6th. Tchaikovsky died shortly after its premier (Hemlock cocktail?!). The symphony is worth buying for the 4th movement alone- perhaps the most beautiful in all of music. We have a special offering on a fabulous DDD recording with Leonard Berntstein & the NY Philharmonic on DG. Classical Organ Jane Parker-Smith has a new earth shaking (literally) CD featuring works by 7 composers. Want to dust off your speaker cones?! |