Naim HDX Hard Disk Player With Onboard Ripper Functionality

[ May 8th, 2008 @ 12:06 am ] ... [ C. S. Magor ]

Naim HDX Hard Disk Player With Onboard Ripper Functionality

For the latest info on the coolest gadgets, emerging technology and wired madness, subscribe to our full news feed or have it delivered to your inbox. Always free. Always unique. Thanks for visiting!

The Naim HDX Hard Disk Player is a high-end multi-format player with a whole lot going for it. It sports two 400GB HDDs, plays a whole bunch of formats, rips straight from CD and automatically displays track information and album art. While there are other HDD players on the market, they tend to be targeted at the MP3 crowd. There have been countless times that I have found myself asking, “Why don’t they support FLAC.” It is, after all, the key to high-definition sound with an acceptable storage space footprint. The Naim HDX supports WAV, MP3, AAC (m4a only), WMA and the all important FLAC, which puts it steps ahead of most of the competition.

Given that higher-definition formats take up a lot more space than MP3, the 400GB of space will only get you about 600 albums. For most people this would be plenty, but more demanding users might find it a little testing. Naim works around this by providing two USB ports that can be attached to USB drives. USB drives will give you the full range of format support. If you still need more, it can playback WAV and MP3 on any network connected drives.

What really sets the Naim HDX apart is the ripping and storage system. The ripping process is explained in detail below:

At the heart of the HDX is a fully integrated CD ripping and data storage system, engineered by Naim – both hardware and software - from the ground up to optimize audio quality. When a CD is inserted in the HDX drawer it is mounted on a specially selected audio grade transport mechanism and each of its data sectors read multiple times at varying rotational speeds to ensure that the subsequently stored data is “bit perfect”. Unique Naim firmware effectively handles copy protected CDs that in most other hard disk music players are likely to be ripped with compromised audio quality. The same firmware also overcomes the track start and end errors that occur in most other hard disk players and ensures that artists’ intended track lead in and out times are preserved – again, in contrast to most other players. The bit-perfect data is stored on two 400GB disk drives – one primary and one back up.

Any music on the HDX is cataloged, making retrieval as simple as typing in the song or artist name. It can be controlled via its built-in touch screen or any larger display that you have connected it to. It also functions as a network player, with up to six streams of audio going throughout the home. It does just about everything you need and plenty of things that you do not need but that you would like it to do; the trouble, unfortunately, is that it has a price tag to match.

Price: Approximately $9,000 [Naim via What HiFi? via Audio Junkies]