SAVE THE SOUND.
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By Mike Goldfein / Belo Capital Bureau
Jazz up your home stereo
Story
At last count, more than 45 million iPods have been sold. That's a lot of people walking around with headphones. But what if you want to sit at home and really feel the music? We review an MP3 system for your stereo.
Here's Mike Goldfein:
In the old days, the only way to listen to your music collection was on your hi-fi system. Now, of course, your music collection is totally portable. But there is a trend, small but growing, to get music back into the living room. Among the latest entries is this: the $1,100 Olive Musica. It's essentially a computer, but think of it as an iPod for your stereo. The device has a 160-gig hard drive, capable of holding 40,000 songs or about 2,500 CDs. The device copies or rips your music to its hard drive, and then sorts everything by category and title. You can choose the encoding quality. But the higher you go, the less the Musica will hold, and the longer it takes to rip the music. The Musica can connect to your wireless network, so it can also stream music from your PC, and bring in Internet radio. All in all, it's a great device. Easy to use. Large, viewable menu system. And the sound was excellent. About the only drawbacks are the price. It's clearly a big-ticket item. And it takes its time ripping music: about 5 minutes per CD. So, be patient.
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