Linn have positioned themselves well for this move, they have been promoting their range of DS (Digital Streaming) products for some years now, and maintain that sales of their DS products are far exceeding those of their CD players.

And while I believe that their move may be a little early, they have picked a growing swell of consumers who are expressing interest in the higher performance (and the convenience) available from hard-drive based music solutions.

Earlier today I saw the press release from US based company Olive Media who has announced the introduction of their first HD Hi-Fi Music Server. This is a 2 terabyte server designed to handle 24bit/192kHz music files. It can access any digitised music library, and has a built in CD mechanism for recording discs directly to its own drive. It even comes with 12 HD tracks from high-end record label Chesky Records. We do not know when this unit will be available in Australia, but we do know that it will sell in the US for US$2,000.

There is no doubt that these are only instances of what is going to be a huge swing back to performance listening of music. There will be more companies taking the lead from people like Linn and Olive next year. We are still playing around with a Hush computer we recently bought in from Germany, we are expecting a Lynx audio card (to handle the 24/196 information) from the US next week, plus we have been listening to the amazing Berkeley Alpha DAC for some time now.

It may still be early days for this format, but it promises to be fun.

Peachtree Nova Hybrid Amplifier.

The release of the Peachtree Nova amplifier heralds a new era of high fidelity in Australia. MP3, iPod, digital downloads, etc. has been a phenomenal world-wide success, embraced by all walks of life. Except, it appears, by one group – the specialist Hi-Fi industry. Most Hi-Fi dealer principles have been in the industry for a long time, and as you would expect judge the value of any component on its ability to accurately recreate the original performance. Despite the convenience of the digital music format, performance has not been one of its strong points.

This has been slowly changing over the last couple of years with FLAC, WAV and other lossless codecs becoming more popular, and with the cost of storage plummeting.

All of a sudden digital music has become fashionable in the world of Hi-Fi. One of the early converts was high-end Scottish manufacturer Linn who surprised many in the Hi-Fi fraternity by claiming that their DS (Digital Stream) players were as good as, or better than their very best (and very expensive) CD players. Suddenly everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, and with very good reason, it is – as Linn pointed out – possible to extract a very high performance level from digital music – theoretically at least better than CD.

This is something that we are researching in depth at the moment. The stimulus was the release of Reference Recordings HRx audio discs. These discs are recorded on DVD-R discs in WAV format, with a resolution of 24bit, 176.4kHz. They cannot be played on a CD, SACD or DVD player but must be downloaded onto a hard-drive. This is where the fun starts – your sound card must be able to handle this resolution, and you will need a very high quality DAC to convert the files. Storage space is also a premium – each disc requires up to 4.7GB.

It is still early days for us with this format. We have done considerable research on suitable DAC’s and the universal recommendation is the Berkeley Alpha DAC from the US. We have ordered a small shipment of these for evaluation. We are also researching storage devices, and have placed an order for a Hush Technologies computer (specially configured for our requirements) from Germany. We will be using the Lynx Studio Technology sound card, and are still battling with a suitable interface. Another option is that a company in the US has modified the Sonos ZP90 to pass through this level of resolution. Does it work? We don’t know but we are waiting on a sample to find out. It is also feasible to use the new MusicM8 server from XIVA ($1,499) in place of the Hush.

As much as I love the tactile presence of a CD there is no doubt that the future of recorded music will be on-line. The stumbling block of performance is now being resolved. Better broadband speeds and offerings make access more available. Convenience is the key, and once we have the combination of convenience and performance we will have ready access to a previously unimagined quantity and quality of music.

How does this relate to the Peachtree Nova? To the best of my knowledge The Peachtree is the first release of an integrated amplifier designed to access both analogue and digital sources. It is a very fine amplifier in its own right, with a valve pre-amplifier stage and an 80 watt/channel mos-fet power amp. What really sets it apart is the inclusion of a high quality DAC for your digital music sources (it even has a slot in the back to house a Sonos ZP90 for all those Sonos devotees.) At $1,799 it is an inexpensive and very versatile means of getting the best from those thousands of files that you already have sitting on your hard-drive.

There are not many terms that audiophiles fear more than the term ‘MP3’, no matter how it’s used and in what context it tends to turn people off very quickly.

So why is this I hear you ask, what is the issue?

Let me take you back to the 1970’s and 80’s for the answer.

What do you think of when you read the word Hoover?

I’m betting the picture in your mind is a generic vacuum cleaner and not a specific brand. When I grew up we tended to Hoover the carpet no matter what brand of vacuum cleaner we had.

Do you see what I am getting at; do you see how easy it is to blanket a product with a term that just sticks in your mind forever?

How does this relate to MP3? Well let’s just say that MP3 suffers from the same problem, people tend use this term to cover all forms of digital music no matter what’s its origin.

My goal is to set the record straight, MP3 describes one form of compressed music that in reality sounds pretty average. It came about in the early 90’s as people started to push what computers could do in terms of the playback of music.MP3 allowed an average of 200 songs to be compressed onto a standard CD.

Back then space was a premium and the goal was to compress as much as possible to dazzle people with high numbers of sounds ready to play. Remember that people appear to see better than they can hear so big claims from the likes of portable MP3 player manufactures were warmly greeted.

All this was going on much to the scorn of Audiophiles whom dismissed the concept of digital music completely.

So over the years what has happened to bring about change?

Well the main thing is that hard drive storage now virtually costs nothing which in turn has meant more development in this field. Literally MP3 evolved and became FLAC.

Free Lossless Audio Codec is a system that can turn a CD into about half its normal size with no audible degradation. This means that if we were to encode FLAC onto a CD we would get maybe 25 songs give or take, not really that impressive in terms of an ad campaign. Can you imagine the launch of every ones favorite MP3 player telling the world it could store 140 songs in total!!!.

 Sooloos aims to re-educate everyone safe in the knowledge that what they have produced is the best sounding hard drive solution in the world using FLAC as their encoder.

The aim of Sooloos was simple, design a system that gives audiophile results with hard drive convenience.

 So once Sooloos worked out that encoding music onto a hard drive with this new lossless codec worked very well they had to figure out how the end result could be managed in a normal listening environment with no computer in sight.

i.e. we have a hard drive source that we connect to our normal amplifier like we would a CD player but how can we control and select what we cannot see?

One of the biggest gripes from the detractors has been this point, staring at a small hand held remote or worse still watching a scrolling text based device telling us what we had in our library was not that attractive.  They wanted something tangible, they wanted to be able to read the liner notes and learn about what they heard. The best of both worlds I hear you say!!.

 Of course the clever people at Sooloos took this into account and have provided their systems with a stunning 20” LCD touch screen that not only displays your complete library in glorious colour but also allows you read all about the artists and even gives you reviews if needed at the touch of a finger. You can create play lists based on type of genre or to the extreme of selecting particular musician’s performances on multiple albums.

How about a night of movie soundtracks or maybe even blues pre 1970? It’s all here ready to go with the greatest of ease.

This truly is a very rich experience and one that I ask everyone to come and take a look and listen to. Don’t fear we are not trying to convert the masses here; we’ll leave that decision to you.

What we are trying to do is let you have a glimpse of how exciting music can be again.

 Items like the B&W Zeppelin IPOD dock ,the Focal Grande Utopias and the Sooloos music server system were being talked about many months before they actually arrived on these shores.

 So when I heard that TIVO was coming to Australia late last year I along with many others felt a little buzz of excitement.

  You see this is so far from just being a stock standard hard drive recorder that it has successfully entered into the psyche of America.

 People don’t video TV shows anymore nor do they tape  they don’t even record anything, they TIVO them !!.

 Now it takes a great product to do this, and I have to say TIVO is a great product.

 So what is all the fuss about, let’s look at the basics first and then we will get to the fun part.

 TIVO is a twin tuner high definition hard drive recorder that allows the user to record up to two television shows whilst watching a recording simultaneously.

TIVOs trump card is the fact that within a few minutes of set up you will be using it as if it has been part of the family for years, something that is essential nowadays.

The wonderfully easy to user interface will navigate you through its menu structure with a few simple keystrokes.

 From the main page one can watch live television, access recorded shows, stream your photos and music via your network from your PC and as of a few weeks ago actually transfer video from your computer to the TIVO and vice versa.

 So all in all it can become a very solid media centre that actually works !!.

The other great benefit of this product is the fact that is has an upgrade path in terms of what it can do now and more importantly what it has the potential to do in the future.

 Currently in ‘beta’ form is the ability to order a movie and have it download to your hard drive ready to view for a predetermined time.

This is the first of many online ‘Internet TV’ like features that will become the norm as TIVO progresses over the years.

 As they write new features your box will be flashed with new firmware and you will be as up to date as the person buying a brand new box, now if only all products that we bought were like that.

 I believe that in a few years time we will wonder how we ever lived without our TIVO.

* Active internet connecting is needed for TIVO to function.