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Dell To Make MP3 Home Stereo Component
ytsejam-ppc writes "C|Net has this story on a new MP3 player that will be part of your home stereo system, but use a connection to your PC to get MP3 files." $199 if bought with a PC configured with home networking capabilities and $249 if bought separately. Not bad, although I'm not seeing how much disk space, or what sort of UI you get.
...A 20-foot stereo patch cord.
My computer is in my living room. My stereo is in my living room. For those who are still starving students, substitute "bedroom" for "livingroom" above.
Most of us who are geeky enough to use MP3s are geeky enough to either a) have our computer in the room in which we spend the most time - which probably also has our stereo, or b) have a spare computer kicking around which may already be in the stereo room.
I question whether a storage-less MP3-to-stereo device is aiming for a market that exists.
I'm seeing a lot of "Why not just run a cable from your computer?" posts.
A few points:
-- The average sound card in a computer is crap. Complete and utter garbage when it comes to the fidelity of the audio outputs and the quality of the DACs.
-- You can buy high-end sound cards with much better DACs and outputs, but they're going to cost much more than $199, because of all the extra foo that usually goes into such a card, wavetable synths, PCI chipsets, etc etc.
-- The inside of your computer is one of the electrically noisiest places you have access to (apart from about a foot from your car's distributor...). Your sound card picks up modifications to the signal from this, sometimes as overt as audible noise, sometimes just as subtle changes to the frequency response.
-- Moving the decoder and DACs offboard allows them to be shielded from the above noise, as well as keeps your analog run to the shortest possible. Unless your stereo amp is 12" from your computer, you're running cables that are too long for the best possible sound. You're also probably running some $1.99 Radio Shack 1/8"<->RCA cable, instead of a short run of something good like Monster Cable. Keeping the signal digital as long as possible minimizes analog loss. (Product idea: a PCI card that renders MP3 to standard S/PDIF or optical that can be run directly into the back of your digital-enabled receiver....)
-- You can offload the cycles from your CPU with an outboard box. Nobody's running into CPU crunches with current decoders, it's true, but, hey, that's more distributed.net keys for Team Slashdot, right?
Of course, in case you can't tell, I'm all into extreme fidelity, so I don't understand AT ALL why anyone would want to listen to MP3's as their primary source of music. (*shudder) But I'm just elitist that way, don't mind me....
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