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SonicBlue Rio Digital Audio Receiver
helloRockview writes: "I've recently purchased a SonicBlue Rio Receiver digital audio receiver, the poor-mans's version of the Turtle Beach Audiotron. It's an interesting piece of hardware and works quite well. I've put together a review of the little silver box and have included some info on its architecture and the communication protocols it uses."
but if you want to play your mp3's through a stereo there are cheaper ways to do it... using Linux of course.
Last year, when I wanted to play music in my computer room, I took an old 486/DX120, installed a SoundBlaster 16 card in it, put an old 3com 3c503 NIC into it, found a cheap 20gb HD, scrounged an old 36X CD player, installed SuSE Linux, and sat it in the corner. Then I trotted down to Goodwill and found a nice Kenwood 75 watt-per-channel stereo amplifier for $29.95 and a pair of bookshelf speakers for $7.95. I then drove over to the Radio Shack store and bought an adapter that allows the audio out from the SB16 to go to the L/R inputs of the amp.
So, for about $120 I have a complete Linux system with 20gb of music on it. I run it from an rlogin session running mp3blaster but, because it also runs Apache, I can set it up to broadcast music to every computer in the house. And the price INCLUDES the amplifier and speakers!!!
But wait, it gets better. For that same $120 I can also export an X11 session to listen to internet radio and control it on any X/box. Plus I can set up SMB and NFS shares to allow the machine to be used as a file server AND music server!!!
Want more? Okay... I can also export a Gnutella and/or Napster client and download music from the 'net. Or do it via a news client and the usenet.
As a bonus, I can ssh into my firewall, rlogin to the mp3 box, and wake my kids up in time for school from 1,000 miles away!! (I recommend rap for this.)
The only thing I haven't done yet is make it into a CD burner; I do that on my wife's machine (under, I'm afraid, Windoze). But still, with a little bit of scrounging almost any Linux geek can come up with the same (or better) system for the same (or lower) money.
The best part is that I'm the first guy on my block to have my kids yell at me, "Dad, will you turn that damn music down?"
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Except this devices is hand-made in a garage in lots of a couple hundred each. This isn't meant to disparage the quality, but as such it might not be available when you want it where you live.
In fact the website says "The SliMP3 is not yet ready for sale. If you would like to receive an e-mail when our first units become available, please submit the form below." so I guess right now it isn't available at all.
Plus it's about $70 more expensive even though it contains less hardware (price of hand assembly).
However, both the SliMP3 and SonicBlue suffer from the same fatal flaw...lack of digital output. What is the point in streaming full quality 256Kbps digitally across my house only to lose that quality in the last few feet due to a cheap-as-you-can-mass-produce DAC? I don't care if you use Monster cable, analog just isn't digital and if I'm spending $200+ bucks then shouldn't I get the full solution?
I think both these devices should be updated to include a TOSlink/coaxial output (preferably both). Most people just run speaker wire across their house so these devices both seem to target power users/audiophiles.
I'd also like to point out there is a HUGE market for a similar device that can play video files, not just audio files. No one wants to put a computer in their home theater because it is too bulky and noisy. Wouldn't it be awesome to keep all your movies on a server in the computer room and then stream them to some small little elegant and quiet device just like these audio players?
I'd certainly pay for something like that.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing