NETWORK MUSIC PLAYER DELIVERS TUNES IN ANY ROOM
Buying music downloaded from music services like iTunes, ripping songs from your CD collection and putting all of it into your personal computer seems to be the key to the future of the music industry and how its products will be delivered to the masses. The computer, once used for balancing a checkbook in the past century is fast becoming the music player of choice in this new millennium.
I remember vinyl records, 8-tracks and cassettes and how each of those mediums onto which music was recorded was heralded at the time of their inception as being the ultimate device to deliver music into the hands of consumers. I wonder if those inventors ever imagined that the ultimate device to transport music from one location to another wasn't going to be a physical device at all. Did they imagine that music would one day be delivered as some form of ethereal digital data stream made up of ones and zeros? As millions of songs are bought and sold over the Internet these days, the containers that store the invisible music streams we pay our hard-earned money for resides on computer hard drives, mp3 players that use more hard drives or flash memory, and optical media like CDs and DVDs. The latter still lets us transport our music on physical media but maybe one day it will all be just streams of music being sent to devices that play everything.
 One such new device that is designed to play your computer's digital data stream comes from a company called Roku. The SoundBridge Network Music Player lets you play your digital music stored on a computer anywhere in your home. The M1000 and M2000 are functionally identical, their difference being only their size. The M1000 is 10 inches wide and uses a 5.5 inch display. The M2000 is 17 inches wide and uses a 12 inch display. Both of these players are futuristically styled cylindrical devices that sport a high-tech bluish vacuum florescent display. They can either sit on a desktop in a provided stand or be mounted onto the wall with the included hardware. You connect your powered speakers or stereo system to the network player. The computer is connected to the SoundBridge via the player's wired Ethernet port or an optional wireless WiFi connection ($49.95).
The song information that is kept within the playing music file is displayed on the player and includes a song's title and performing artist, track number, elapsed or total time of the song and an animated graphical display that indicates the distributed volume across the equalized frequencies. This is one good-looking player. Supported music file standards include MP3, AAC, WMA, AIFF, WAV, FLAC and Ogg-Vorbis. According to Roku, Apple's wildly popular iTunes playlists and songs are completely supported with the exception of the streaming of secured AAC files purchased from the Apple Music Store. Currently, the iPod is the only device that will support this feature. However Roku says that the SoundBridge is upgradeable and if Apple ever allows other players to function with its protected iTunes format, their player is fully adaptable. Other formats supported will be Internet radio audio streams.
Finally, the SoundBridge features an alarm clock which begins playing your selected songs or playlists at any time you specify. And yes, it even displays the time when it's not being used.
Both SoundBridge models work on Windows or Macintosh platforms, The M1000 and M2000 will sell for around $300 and $500 respectively.
www.rokulabs.com |
