SAVE THE SOUND.
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Track Star: A machine that can get your music under complete control and into audiophile shape.
Technology is supposed to make life easier and more fun. But lately even the most obsessive gadget freak- and I think I fit comfortably into that category- can lose his way among the bits and pixels that now control our lives. TiVo and iPod have become verbs, and to purchase a simple television it seems as if you need one doctorate in physics and another in acronyms: For starters there is HD and plasma and DLP and LCD. There is also something called Blu-ray, and it's not even a fish.
Listening to music has become even more complex. By now you have converted you 1,000 or compact discs into digits, right? Of course you have. But are they AAC, WMA, or FLAC files? Perhaps you would like to listen to those Free Lossless Audio Codex files on a high-end stereo in your living room while your daughter listens on another floor through her computer speakers, in her bedroom. She might even want to hear different music. Give up yet? I don't blame you, but there is hope in the form of a little metal box called the Olive Musica.
The Musica is a piece of high-end stereo equipment for a computer-based home; it records CDs into its 160GB hard drive and can play as many as 20 songs at the same time. (The Musica converts the equivalent of about 400 CDs into the highest-quality digital music and stores them, and will hold more than 1,000 discs recorded at CD-Quality.) It comes with a database of about 2 million tracks and knows the names of most of your songs, when they were recorded, and by whom. If it can't find your favorite Romanian folk songs, it will search for them online.
Yes, online. The Musica is the missing link between your stereo and computer system. Turn it on and it will recognize and join your wireless network. (You can also plug your computer or router into its four-port Ethernet connection or one of its USB ports.) The Musica will also let you listen to internet radio from anywhere in the world. I heard a debate about democracy from Moscow and choral music sung by a boys' choir in Melbourne. In each case, the sound that filtered through my Classe amplifier and Snell speakers was robust.
My own music sounded even better. It was genuinely difficult to hear the difference between the liquid intensity of Natalie Dessay singing Lucia di Lammermoor on CD and the digital version beamed to my speakers through the Musica. The same was true for any number of Bob Dylan tracks. The Musica is amazingly easy to setup, unless, like me, you are an early adopter and a fool. I long ago converted my CDs into high-quality lossless digital music. But being in the cult of Apple, I chose to use its proprietary formula, called Apple Lossless, which will not play on the Musica or most other devices. You are far better off sticking to universal formats-- until Mr. Jobs out there in Cupertino realizes that even he can't control digital music forever. (If, however, you have already done the wrong thing, go to Google and search for a program to convert Apple Lossess music to FLAC.) Weirdly, Apple's iTunes is the easiest way to control the Musica, but licensing hassles have made that temporarily impossible. For the moment you can rely on the remote- or even a BlackBerry.
The Musica is not perfect; the interface takes some getting used to; the directions seem as if they were written in Japanese and translated into German and then into English; the hard drive, believe it or not, is not big enough; and it's not yet able to stream video. But these are quibbles. If you want to retain your high-fidelity sound while joining the much more convenient digital age, the Musica cannot be beat. I can't think of another single piece of machinery- except perhaps a lawn mower- that will permit my daughter to listen to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs while making certain that I don't have to hear a note of it.