Rolls-Royce cars now sport Lexicon sound systems.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)I went to the New York International Auto Show to listen. Weird yes, but I'm the audio guy, and nowadays high-end cars all have high-end audio systems. These cars go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I was hoping to hear some decent sound. That didn't happen.
Naim's car audio system for Bentley didn't wow us.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)The nice folks at the Bentley Motors display put me in a spectacular Flying Spur Speed ($252,000). The car has a 6-liter W-12 engine with twin turbochargers, 6-speed automatic transmission, and a claimed top speed of 200 mph. The interior was lavish beyond belief, with truly gorgeous wood and leather that puts your average Mercedes to shame. Rock stars and sports heroes know how to live!
The sound? I'm sure the engine sounds fabulous, but they wouldn't allow me the honor of blipping the throttle. Ah, there was a Naim audio system in the car, and I'm a fan of Nain's home gear, but the Bentley's sound system was nothing to get jazzed about.
The $6,900 Naim audio system sports 15 speakers, including dual subwoofers. Just don't kid yourself, it's not remotely on par with a credible home system. I thought the in-dash display was sort of tacky. Naim would never put such a thing in its home systems.
The Mini Cooper sound system was one of the best per dollar, that's for sure.
(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)Next, Rolls-Royce cars, like this awesome Phantom Coupe pictured at the top of this blog ($437,000), now have Lexicon audio systems. Too bad I didn't get to hear it. (Maybe the Bentley guys told them about me, just kidding.)
The Mini Cooper people were a lot friendlier, so I checked out the sound in their 10 speaker MINI Hi-Fi Sound System. Considering it adds just $500 to the car's bottom line, it was pretty good.
... Read moreHard disks with 80GB capacity are good only for old people and the terminally decrepit. When used inside central music jukeboxes, that is.
It's a pathetic amount of memory to stick inside something the size of a hi-fi. We've seen them in heaps of music centers from the likes of Sony, Philips, and newcomers Brennan. Always 80GB. Would a 160GB drive break the bank? No. Would 250GB? No. And these larger disks would also mean you could store CDs in lossless format.
(Credit:
Crave UK)
How pleased were we to see that at least one company gets it. British manufacturer Naim has put not one but two 400GB drives in its new HDX audiophile music center--one primary disk for use in the day, and one that backs up the primary disk at night. But at 4,500 pounds (about $8,923) you may have to start your own e-mail scam to afford one.
It's not just about storage, of course. The HDX uses a double-pass technique to ensure a bit-for-bit copy of a CD, then stores it in uncompressed WAV format to retain absolute sonic accuracy. Together this will let you store about 600 CDs inside the system. With so much music, it'll need to be easy to navigate--a colour LCD touch-sensitive screen should be just the ticket, or you can hook up a keyboard and monitor for more complex editing.
The HDX can also stream music from any network-attached storage devices or PCs you have lying around, or from USB sticks and iPods. An automatic AMG-powered online system will label your CDs with artist and album info, along with cover art.
For even more passionate audiophiles, Naim's jukebox powerhouse supports DRM-free 24-bit 96KHz and 24-bit 88KHz files for better-than-CD audio reproduction. Music in this format will be available for download from Naim's digital music store later this year. Yes, it will play MP3, WMA, AAC and good ol' FLAC files, should you want to, though we don't yet know whether it'll rip into these formats.
We'll do our best to bring you a slick hands-on report with the HDX in the near future, so watch this space. You can expect to pick up an HDX from June.
(Source: Crave UK)
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