Olive Musica anyone?

[rov]

Been looking at music servers, and wondered if anyone has experience with Olive Symphony or Musica? Seems pretty cool, wireless music server with add-on wireless receivers that you can put in another room. Like Sonos or Squeezebox I think, but doesn't require a PC to operate, b/c it basically IS a computer. It's a Linux box w/ PowerPC cpu.

I was going for the Turtle Beach Audiotron, but I think it is no longer. The Musica is more of interest, as it has more space (160 GB drive). Plus, they will even load the drive with your music for free (up to 200 discs on the Musica).

So, any opinions on this gear?

Thanks,
rov

 

[MUDSHARK]

What reviews I have seen from users of the Musica appear to be pretty mixed. Many have complained of static electricity locking the unit while others have reported other bugs.

It also seems that an 80 hdd is only half of what it should be. For about $200 more, cambridge has a unit with a 160HDD. This product type is still in its infancy and though very interested I think I will wait a year before pursuing.

 

[sts9fan]

do you want a noisy hd in you listening room?? what happens if the drive crashes? How would you have it backed up? I guess it would not be a big deal with 200 disks. I already have 600 disks going to my Sqeezebox and backed up to an external drive.

 

[MUDSHARK]

Are the harddrives in these units louder than the harddrives in dvd recorders?

We have a JVC DVD recorder that is quite silent.

 

[ZoFo]

HDD don't have to be noisy

The new Serial ATA HDD's are VERY quiet. You can also get HDD's with fluid bearings that run much quieter, and you can replace your Case Fans with double ball bearing fans which run quieter; most PC's come with sleved fans that make much more noise.

As far as the HDD's crashing, you can "Mirror" the drives which will give you more performance AND redundancy; if one disk fails the other takes over without missing a beat, unless the PC has to be rebooted after the HDD failure like some RAID controllers require. You can also put a DVD burner or tape backup unit to backup all of your files.

Although I don't have one yet I think lossless PC Media Servers are going to be very big in the future and I plan to make my own "Silent" PC to use for this purpose; I built a very quiet PC in the past because I had it running 24/7 in my bedroom and did not want the associated noise.