Onkyo, has an interesting new product with an 80GB hard drive, ethernet, USB, vga out, ablity to rip cds, as well as put mp3s on directly, and best of all it runs linux. Im not sure if anyone has posted it or not, i ran a search and found nothing. Check it out

http://www.integrahometheater.com/model.cfm?class=nettune&m=NAS-2.3&p=i

It looks like MSRP is $2000. How does it compare on features with the Rio Central?

-Biscuits

There is also a client, the NAC 2.3 that costs about $500.

This looks very (99.99%) like a re-badged Imerge Soundserver 2000 www.imerge.co.uk.

I have one. It works well. I bought it instead of a Central because it supports multi-room outputs.

Regards

Mark

How does it work for you? I was considering getting one of those as well...

Any ideas if this client will work with other servers? I'm still looking for a good solution for my large linux server mp3 collection...

The client [and probably the server too] runs the "Net-Tune" protocol which is Onkyo specific.

I haven't found much about that protocol, but it runs on Ethernet so shouldn't be too hard to deduce with a Ethernet sniffer and a client to play with.

There is even the possibility that you could make your Empeg and/or Rio Receiver work as a Net-Tune client to save having to stump up for a Client device, which is pretty clunky looking I think.

Of course the reverse of getting your Rio Central to work like a Net Tune server could be good as well.

In fact I have the previous version, the S1000. It's about a year old. I have some very specific and odd requirements, which outweigh some of the normal selection criteria. I needed something multi-voltage (I move a lot), and something that would integrate with my Linn multi-room audio system. That narrowed the field to two units - the Linn Kivor (at USD 20,000, just a tad out of my budget) and the Imerge.

I went with the Imerge. Good points:
- does exactly what it says on the box, and does it well. No operating problems at all in first year
- sound quality is fine, but I haven't done any true A/B tests against my CD player. Also you can choose to store uncompressed.
- outstanding service and support. Had lots of walk through help with a setup problem (turned out to be an intermittent fault on my Ethernet hub)
- Multi-room stuff works well with my Linn system
- rip and compress is all background, so I get a new CD, I put it in,it auto-rips and compresses it, all while I'm playing something else. Very easy to use.
- PC control software is effective

Bad points:
- UI on machine and PC software is very clunky. It has a real v1.0 feel. It's stable, and it works, but it's not very function-rich. eg, there's no search facility. I believe the new S2000 model is a big improvement.
- no VBR support (again I think fixed on the S2000)
- no backup / obvious hackability (though someone competent could presumably sniff out a way onto the machine). So if my hard disk goes up in flames I have to start all over again.

So overall a succesful purchase, and I would recommend it.

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

Regards

Mark

Actually, Imerge have a back-up tool but as you can expect, it requires an equally large storage as the size of your music collection. Note that a full back-up takes a considerable amount of time, as S1000 came in 40 and 80G flavours. The back-up utility is command-line driven, so not the most user-friendly in the world.

In order not to run into problems with copyrights, the back-up is encoded. Contact Imerge for more info.

S2000 does indeed support VBR; choose from 128, 320, PCM or VBR with 192kb/s as average target.

As with S1000 there's no dedicated search funtion on S2000, but by selecting e.g. artist and using numeric keypad for first letter (in similar way as with Empeg), searches are pretyy easy and straightforward.

Cas.

Any ideas if this client will work with other servers?

It doesn't. The Imerge client (NP200) and the Onkyo equivalent (NC500) will support servers running the latest incarnation of XiVA software.

Onkyo have a Windows utility to stream from a standard winows box too.

Both can access Intern radio stations directly via a router.

Differences between NP200 and NC500:
NP200 has optical digital out (with SCMS protection, unfortunately); RDS for FM radio.

NC500 has TV output for UI (not capable of streaming video, though).

Indeed, protocol it runs is Onkyo's proprietry "Nettune" over standard TCP/IP

Cas.