Sony NAS-50HDE Gigajuke HiFi

[kino170878]

Taken from http://stuff.tv/news/id-6165/default.aspx

"The jukebox returns, looking a lot smaller and with fewer air bubbles. Still, we say 40,000 tunes on an 80GB hard disk is an improvement

Sony's spooned the guts from a mini-system, added a colour screen and hard disk then crammed all the CD and DAB goodness back in to bring us the Giga Juke – the 21st century answer to the jukebox.

Sony reckons it's the fastest way to rip tunes from your archaic CD collection with a 16x speed CD drive whipping the contents from your albums at a rate of nearly an hour's worth every minute.

As well as converting your music collection to MP3, lossless linear PCM or, for Walkman and MiniDisc fans, ATRAC, it'll take them straight from your PC, MP3 player or even turntable, adding any missing artist, song or album tags along the way.

But the piece de resistance is its inner DJ, which automatically sorts tracks into one of 23 'mood' playlists ensuring relaxation, romance or all-night party ambience is just seconds away. We're loading it with Class A pulling tracks as we speak."

A more in depth article here http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/06/21/re...50hde_gigajuke/

Pictures here http://www.engadget.com/photos/sonys-giga-...r-music/197158/

Seems like it is only being released here in Europe. What an amazing piece of kit, is anybody thinking of buying one?

[Ishiyoshi]

We have covered this last year when it was first announced for the Japanese domestic market. You can read more about it in this old entry by the blog.

[kino170878]

Some more questions if you could....if you record a cd onto the unit's hard disc in say ATRAC 256 and then transfer or back up the hard disc content to a folder on your PC, can those oma files then be transferred to other ATRAC devices through Sonicstage and also conversion to WAV? I am thinking about my Hi-md player which can play the ATRAC files. Or does the copy protection get added to the oma files as soon as you copy the cd the first time? Will Mp3 be more free of restrictions in that case? Thanks

Edited June 30, 2007 by kino170878

[kino170878]

Found out some more interesting stuff. On paper, the deck version (NAC-HD1E) looks incredible. It's a 250gb deck! With digital in and out!

Imagine my joy, but then the sad realization that it was too good to be true. On page 80 of the manual, it states:

"Use the optional digital coaxial cable when connecting to the DIGITAL COAXIAL IN and OUT jacks, and use the optional digital optical cable when connecting to the DIGITAL OPTICAL IN and OUT connectors.

The DIGITAL (COAXIAL/OPTICAL) OUT jack/connector is designed for monitoring sound through the connected digital amplifier or other device. It is therefore not possible to make a digital recording from the signal on a connected digital recording device, regardless of the type of material (source) recorded on this unit."

Is this Sony being paranoid again over digital recordings?

And get this. The unit recognizes every single atrac device that was ever connected to it. It keeps a record of how many times you have transferred material over. Incredible.

And there's more: You have to go online in order to restore the data from the PC from the previous time you backed the contents. The backed up folder on your PC can only be recognized and restored to the original unit (the NAC-HD1E) and not to any other device. And although I don't understand what it means, the manual says you can get a warning when you try and restore the contents more than 4 times.

I don't know, I thought this was the answer to Sonicstage but I think I will be staying away from it to be honest. Unless some of you experts out there can give some more insights and ways around these hazards.

Edited July 4, 2007 by kino170878