Olive's super-sleek new Opus No. 4 music server

Olive made waves—well, strong ripples—when it debuted its Opus No. 5 music server a few years ago. The No. 5 was built for serious listeners in a day when most music servers seemed targeted at fans of mainstream artists like Springsteen and Spears. Today the company announced its Opus No. 4 server, which despite its inferior designation appears to be a more advanced and elegant product.

Like the No. 5, Olive built the No. 4 for those who'd rather not fuss with a computer in order to listen to music. The No. 4 suits those who want to listen on a serious hi-fi system rather than on a crummy pair of plastic computer junkspeakers. You can rip CDs directly into the No. 4 through the slot on the front, and Olive says the fan-less unit runs quietly enough to please even the most demanding audiophiles. A high-end digital-to-analog converter is built in, and the system is designed for use with the FLAC lossless codec for true CD-quality sound.

Sooloos Ensemble System: MP3 Player on Crack

You think your 120GB iPod is hot stuff, right? Think again. Sooloos, maker of high-end home networking and entertainment systems, just announced a lower-cost digital music management / storage / playback system with a terabyte of storage. Lower-cost if you consider $7,900.00 a bargain.

The Sooloos Ensemble System can store compressed and FLAC (lossless) files or both. You can rip about 2,400 albums in both formats, so you have high-quality files for listening at home, and MP3 files for on the go.

But, the Ensemble is more than just storage . . .

Serving up Blu-ray

With complex processing, Tera-sized storage and slick user interfaces to pull all your movies and music together, movie servers are among the rarest and coolest breed of A/V gear.

While you’ve likely heard of Kaleidescape (latest review here), you might not know about another player in the field: Fusion Research. While a full review of their new 1080p Genesis system will run in the October issue of Sound & Vision, Fusion just released some additional news that we’ll break here.

Two words. Well, uh, one word, but hyphenated: Blu-ray.

Finally! Something Worth Talking About

Sure, iPods, Kaleidescapes and other media servers are great if you’ve got lots of extra energy for all that button pushing. But if your fingers are busy doing other important things or you just really want to veg out and lie around doing nothing more strenuous then breathing, control systems have left you pretty much out in the cold.

If you’re tired of button pushing or have just been holding off on buying a server until there was one you could yell at to do your bidding, then look no further than Avoca Semiconductor’s new solution. Avoca is a leading designer of voice-enabled user interface solutions, and their new VIP Music Edition gives you full control over your music collections with a unique touch-and-talk interface!

Inteset Adds Blu-ray to Movie Collection Module

If you've been using Inteset's Movie Collection to rip and organize your movie collection, today's your lucky day.  Well, lucky if you're adding Blu-ray Discs to your collection. Simply insert a Blu-ray (or DVD) and the application will scan the disc and grab information from Inteset's database. Information can also be retrieved by entering UPC code and movie title. How much will the upgrade to Blu-ray cost?

Media-Go-Round

Anyone heading to Japan anytime soon? If so, could you pick up one of these for me? Sony's released two versions of this new VAIO media server, with a whopping 1TB or 1.5TB of storage. Looks kinda like a whopper too. The 1TB model, VGF-HS1 will retail (for now, only in Japan) for $570, and the 1.5TB VGF-HS1S streets for $760. That's plenty of room to store HD videos to display on your Sony (or any other) HDTV. The distinctive shape is designed to match the VAIO TP1 home theater system. Behind that sleek facade lies inputs for all sorts of formats.  Wanna see what they play?

Ripserver Lets Your CD drive R.I.P.

At first glance, Belfast, Ireland-based Ripfactory's just-released Ripserver looks like nothing more than a $1,400 1-terabyte hard drive. For those not keeping track of digital storage prices, that's about five times too expensive.

But for audiophiles committed to streaming their entire music collections from a PC to high-end speaker system, the Ripserver looks like a time-saver.