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Is there a home stereo solution that takes a USB hard drive?
Just wondering. Something with a little display so you can skim through a big fat external drive and play MP3s, OGGs, WAVs, M4As, ACCs, etc. off it, that will allow you to plug in whatever speakers and shit you like to it?
yes...
http://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=CAMB-640H-BLK
I hope you're rich!
surely theres no reason
for that to cost that much.
only audio nerds would buy it
they're rich.
give it a year or two and they'll cost what DVRs and DVD Recorders and plasma TVs cost now.
this is less impressive
http://www.redferret.net/?p=7424
Neither of these are what I mean, though
I want something that you just plug a USB drive into the back of and it reads it. Something like the Squeezebox (?) but that runs over the network, which is a bit of a pain.
Maybe I'll look into a router that can run a USB HDD as a network drive directly and work from there.
the cambridge audio thing does do all the things you want...
.... it just does a lot of other things too
Okay maybe. It looked more like it could transfer stuff off USB devices
but not play it directly from them.
£600 isn't a massive amount of money if it's a good quality device, though. Expensive, but probably not unbelievably so given what hi-fi equipment is like.
surely you cant just play music straight from usb?
it'd have to be uploaded or whatever first?
a normal mp3 player with a big storage capacity and a headphone to stereo jack thingy would work best, no?
No
By 'uploaded' I mean that it sounded like you had to copy from your (say) 750GB external hard drive to the CA's internal 160GB hard drive and then play from the CA's drive.
It could be played direct from the USB drive, though.
A portable player isn't going to have a great MP3 decoder and then you're talking about using the headphone socket or the line-out. Add to that you then have to plug your portable into the computer when you're doing other things.
I have all my music on an external drive. I was just musing that it would be cool if I my stereo had an amplifier with a brilliant hardware MP3/OGG/etc. decoder that I could just plug the external drive into and let it run without having to turn on my PC.
I guess you'd have to look up exactly what it does
but you'd definitely get good sound quality out of it, if you already needed a new CD player for a separates hi-fi then it's not crazily expensive to buy either.
PM me when you figure out your final solution.
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You can get things like this: http://www.3ga.org.uk/shop, which have hard drives in them but they are quite expensive and space is limited.
You can get micro systems with USB ports, such as this one http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/534177/art/lg/fa-162-mp3-usb-mini-hifi.html, but it is unlikely they'll support all external hard drives, dependent on brand and size.
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http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/index~modelcode~DEN-SCM73~dept~hifisystems~subdept~HIFISYSTEM~brand~denon.htm
http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/index~modelcode~JVC-UXEP25~dept~hifisystems~subdept~HIFISYSTEM~brand~jvc.htm
http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/index~modelcode~JVC-UXG37~dept~hifisystems~subdept~HIFISYSTEM~brand~jvc.htm
Any use?
Get a amplfier
then plug it into what ever jack it wants to take.
My ipod is in a 850w Bravia system thanks to the jack to jack lead :) The is no need for a stand alone system