Is the formally known as Meridian Sooloos THAT much better than Apple iTunes?
 

The $5000 Question.

iMac + iPad + TimeMachine + Airport Express

Versus

Meridian Digital Media System [ Control 15 + MediaDrive 600 ] + Remote

I think it comes down to the cataloging & the ability to playback with almost no requirement to the Listener.

Feature face off!

Genius vs Swim

Smart Playlists vs Focus

Gracenote vs AMG

Airplay vs SpeakerLink

Thoughts?

That would be the first view of things.

HOW the music comes thru would be the litmus.

Been there and done that. While Apple Lossless is great (costs etc, ...), Sooloos, or today better known as "Meridian Digital Media System" played thru a Meridian music chain will definitely sound better, way better .....

Of course, Apple way is the more cost effective solution. It all depend on one's demand and satisfaction out of ripped music.

Thats my experience. Others can choose to differ.

Cheers!

The GUI is better on the Sooloos than itunes and if you have a meridian system is the way to go . Since I have a Mcintosh stereo system and not much shelf space left for more components I went another way. I am using a macmini as my music server running pure music software ontop of itunes for upscaling and HD music playback. The music leaves the macmini via usb out to a halide bridge which goes to the dac input on my mcd500 using the coax input. I control my macmini using software called chicken of the vnc which puts a remote desktop on my laptop ie a wireless computer interface. I also sometimes use the remote software app which is free from apple to control the macmini. The macmini set up the way I just described is a powerful music server which is easily hidden away. Getting music into the macmini is also no sweat. I put the cd into my laptop and the music is wirelessly streamed into the itunes library of my macmini, ie in both my laptop and macmini so I always have a back up of my itunes library.

The Sooloos GUI is light years beyond iTunes. iTunes is efficient at storing tracks and playing them back. If that was all the Sooloos did there wouldn't be much point spending the extra coin. The one previous caveat was the sound quality was no better than 'computer/sound card' quality. Meridian has finally gotten the fidelity up to a high standard.

Ultimately, the Sooloos allows the user to data-mine their library in multiple ways. And although a user can just about replicate all of this functionality in iTunes, you're never more that a touch or two away from any sort on the Sooloos. Whether it's any 'credited' artist, label, genre, release date, or custom tags, all paint the screen in an instant. The user can pivot on any field and include or exclude other fields to further refine his or her search.

I listen to a lot of classical and Meridian has added categories for 'Form' and 'Instrumentation' that dramatically help in organizing works. It is quite easy to digest my modest library (~5,300 albums/66,000 tracks).

Reg

iTunes is junk - plain and simple. Sorry to burst all you Apple-junkie's bubbles, but it is (and yes, I use it, but strictly for Podcast playback).

The Meridian/SoolooS GUI, as I've stated numerous times, destroys every UI that is out there for music playback. It is a shame that Meridian is destroying that, too, though, by not marketing and developing (read: making a fortune on) that UI for mass deployment. Instead, they want to control the loss-leader hardware side, too.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for and how you are going to use it.
-The user interface of Itunes is pretty poor while one of the big selling features of SooLoos is it touchscreen interface. I have little desire for a touch interface and wouldn't use the SooLos version any more than I do on my Olive unit.
-With the Mac you can burn discs, you can't with the SooLoos


Jim

Question: does Pure Music add to the iTunes GUI functionality? Or just to the ability to go high def?

Edit: Sorry. This is off topic. I retract my Q

Pure music software strictly is for playing HD music and upscaling redbook. Do a google search and go to the website for more information. Itunes is still the GUI.

Well, After much investigation. The Sooloos Control Mac Software will solve any sort of exporting/importing of one's music.

So +1 for Sooloos again.

There is another..

Qsonix

Qsonic is good competition for Sooloos. Their GUI is more 'Windows-like' in its presentation. The one difference is that Qsonic allows you to rip CDs from your library without crippling the metadata. I like that.

The downside is that they don't currently have a scalable solution for large libraries (2Tb limit). I wouldn't be able to store my entire library on it. I have not heard it for myself, so I won't comment on its sound quality.

Reg