Congratulations & Questions

[Kim K.]

Congratulations on the new venture! Given the plenitude of posts on drive selection and integration, this step makes sense.

Questions
1- What channels of distribution will you use? Consider marketing through high end stereo stores to better access the market segment that focus on accuracy and differentiate yourself from competitors going through big box stores. You will also have more pricing flexibility. (I'm not a store owner)
2- Do you think the SP1 patch for Windows Home Server has resolved the corruption bug?
3- Who is assembling these?
4- Can one use it as a player with itunes or foobar loaded on it?
5- Will there be a discount for reference 13 users?
6- Will there be options for a high end audio card and processors?

[Spoon]

I will answer the points I am able to now.

>2- Do you think the SP1 patch for Windows Home Server has resolved the corruption bug?

Yes

>3- Who is assembling these?

It is expected to be an aquaintance who has been in the system building business for over 10 years.

>4- Can one use it as a player with itunes or foobar loaded on it?

It would be possible, our design end goals are to create 'whole house' audio devices based off this starting device.

>6- Will there be options for a high end audio card and processors?

As per 4, when moving to the next stage for sure the highest quality card possible will be used, including HDMI audio.

[chileboy]

My two cents:

This looks great, anxiously looking forward to actual release.

Three things:

1) I'd like to see in some future incarnation the ability to rip to lossless formats of choice other than MP3 (e.g., mpc, which is what I use)

2) Rather than a model with high-end audio processing, PLEASE consider offering a model that has a single digital coax output that will simply read the .flac and output the datastream as PCM so I can feed it to my preamp/processor - my biggest gripe with most (if not all) of the high-end systems out there is that they have total overkill in the audio department. I don't need or want 24-bit Burr-Brown processing (or whatever) in my music server, I already paid several $K for that in my processor.

3) Will it come in black?

Good luck with this, Spoon!

- Mark

[Spoon]

It will rip to all lossless formats that dBpoweramp supports.

[chileboy]

Any thoughts on my other points? ;)

- Mark

[Spoon]

Yes in black.

[chileboy]

Yes in black.

Awesome!:thumbup:

Sounds dumb maybe, but one reason (although there were others) I never went for the Sonos was because it only comes in "Apple White" - and all of my components are black. It would stick out like a sore thumb.

- Mark

[MikeInCT]

Will their be an option for HD expansion?

[Spoon]

3 models:

320gb 640gb and 1TB

Expandable with USB2 drives.

[Teknojnky]

I have a couple 1tb and 2tb WD (dual drive) usb/firewire drives. I assume there will be no limitations on drive sizes or number of drives (ie with usb hub or daisy chained firewire).

I'm looking forward to seeing the final result.

I do think you are short changing your customers by denying 'secure' ripping in the value edition tho.

[Spoon]

I do think you are short changing your customers by denying 'secure' ripping in the value edition tho.

A secure system would have a specific drive (selected on the basis of quality, I am testing every slot loading drive right now - there are 6 drives, each drive will have 1000 discs put through, 1 week of work...), preconfigured to the right offset. There is much work which goes on behind the scenes which people are not aware of.

[Teknojnky]

Ah, I see. I think.

I can understand testing the available drives, to determine the functionality is confirmed..

but I am not sure how or why this would affect pricing other choosing a higher 'quality/price' drive for the premium device vs a cheaper, yet still still functional drive for the value device.

in other words..

if users can get 'secure' rips from most any currently available drive (via accuraterip/r12/r13/eac), I don't understand how or why the same would not be applicable to whatever the drive would be in the value line.

If you want to make a better difference between value and premium, I would suggest you base it on rip speed/noise level, vs weakening the value edition by denying secure ripping.

That said, I also understand that there other things behind the scenes that affect your decisions as well.

If the secure/in-secure is set in stone, what does the value edition bring that any other WHS/NAS device + a PC ripper does not already provide?

[Spoon]

The position of the models will be clarified shortly.

[Teknojnky]

Nice change I think, dropping of the value edition. I agree and appreciate the quality driven decision.

Now the question becomes: what or how, software-wise, will be different between the 'essentials' features and the standard ripnas... is 'secure' rip included? will it work much like accuraterip configuration of existing rippers?

Also, assuming a user builds/built their own WHS system, it would not matter to ripnas essentials if they were usb connected, or directly connected via sata/ide?

[Spoon]

We will only enable the secure if we supply the drive and can verify it is secure able (c2 etc). The reason being, in WHS the ripper runs as a service, so there can be no user interactions to find the offset, c2 test, cache test. If we supply a drive then these can all be hard coded.

[Teknojnky]

Hmm, well I don't know much about WHS services, but normal windows services can certainly have auxilary user interfaces to handle configuration and such. Windows firewall, VNC, anti-virus software, and many other examples use services but also have such UI's.

Without secure functionality, I am not sure I see any point to it.

Are you saying your going to sell the drives + ripnas essentials in some kind of package (to allow for secure), or where you referring to the normal ripnas unit?

[Spoon]

We will sell:

RipNAS Essentials

Software (not secure)
Software + USB Drive
Software + USB Drive (secure)

RipNAS
RipNAS (secure)

[Kim K.]

1- Is the Teac 224 still the current winner from your drive tests?
2- Which variant did you use? (I found several: 224e, 224es...)
3- I cannot find the 224 at any 'mainline' stores (e.g., newegg, best buy, amazon). Any suggestions for a good source?
4- What driver did you use?
5- Is the 224 the same as the IBM 33P3231?

[Spoon]

The Teac was the winner. It is quite difficult to get hold of, we have to have it manufactured to order, and it is more expensive than the cheapy drives (Sony, Panasonic). We only tested the slimline slot loading drive.

[bhoar]

The Teac was the winner. It is quite difficult to get hold of, we have to have it manufactured to order, and it is more expensive than the cheapy drives (Sony, Panasonic). We only tested the slimline slot loading drive.

I suspect (but cannot confirm, so understand you're experimenting) that you could always go with the non slot-loader version (IDE DW-224E or SATA DW-224S vs. the slot loading DW-224SL) and get the same rip quality.

http://www.teac.com/data_storage/combo_drives/

There are system pull versions of the tray loading IDE version available for very cheap. Of course, you lose the convenience factor, but you can keep the target form factor.

-brendan

[Kim K.]

Wow - sounds like you really uncovered every stone!

I see from the cut & paste from dbpoweramp that the drive is identified as a "TEAC -DW 224SL-R".

1- Is this the drive [http://dspd.teac.de/index.php?id=1374&L=1]?
2- What driver did you use?
3- Would you consider selling just the drive? (I'd be willing to pay $70 given the odd lot price from China is $45 and plextor 230 is $110 at esaitech).
4- Do you have a 2nd and 3rd choice that would be available from a 'mainline' store?

Thank You

[Spoon]

China has zero stock, lke I said these drives have to be made to order right now.

Which driver? straight to IDE and SCSI. We will be retailling the drive with the RipNAS essentials software shortly.

[EliC]

If you are not stuck with slot loaders or are considering custom order, I would suggest at least evaluating the samsung line and see how it compares. The SH-S203B I have is by far the best drive I have every used or tested. Its crushing the Plextor 230a, as well as all of my real plextors - I have 8 different plextor models + the 230 and quite a few other drives to compare to.

[Spoon]

SH-S203B could not be used because it is 5.25", it has to be laptop size.

[EliC]

oops, no problem. To bad, this drive is amazing. I'm seriously considering giving up my fixation on plextors because of this drive.

[mbone@kiva.net]

I, too would be interested in buying just the TEAC USB drive with secure abilities from you, assuming it would give better ripping results with Ripper R13 than my Plextor PX-760A. Any chance of that happening?

[Spoon]

I would say the Teac drive and PX-760A would be quite close on abilities, so personally I would not swap for that reason.