19-Mar-2015, 11:21
Ok - my impressions. Fascinating day and many thanks to Guillaume for providing the excellent facilities and the ever-affable and energetic Fraser from Kog and Alan for providing all the technical information on the Melco units and the back-story of how it came around and the design philosophy around it. Absolutely riveting stuff.
First off the background of the Melco units. Streaming as we know it today has progressed differently in different regions. For instance in Europe we tend to utilise our (existing in many cases) home networks and the actual hi-fi devices work in tandem with computing devices - switches, NASes which we often already have. The UPnP protocol is fairly ideal for such scenarios as it's a great way of connecting disparate pieces of equipment together. The problem with this approach is it also assumes a fairly high level of tech savviness to iron out the kinks and get things working optimally, something we seem to have been prepared to accept but perhaps is getting rather tiresome and rather repellent to prospective streaming customers.
The US took a different route and traditionally high-end hifi used Crestron or AMX systems to provide high-end multi-room systems, with professional installers to lay the miles of dedicated cable necessary. They seem to have moved from such dedicated systems straight to the simplicity and usability (and easy installation) of Sonos. Buy it from Walmart, plug it in, it works.
The Japanese market however is somewhat different again. contrary to expectations, the typical prospective customer there is not necessarily so tech-savvy or prepared to put a lot of effort into creating the home infrastructure necessary for a good reliable-ish streaming system. As a result streaming has not taken off in quite the way it has in Europe, USA and elsewhere.
Step forward Melco, which is a brand of Buffalo, Japan's largest computing equipment supplier by quite some margin I believe. The boss of Buffalo is a long-time hi-fi enthusiast (indeed some may remember Melco's hi-fi products from the 70s including turntables). Frustrated at the lack of streaming hi-fi equipment that would be attractive to the Japanese market he tasked a team to design a 'plug and play' streaming 'appliance'. And the Melco N1A and N1Z are the fruits of that labour.
The approach Melco have taken is to provide a device which combines storage (SSD in the N1Z, traditional spinny hard disks in the N1A), network, and the software necessary to import and maintain the music library. Recent changes have added UPnP streaming ability direct to a hi-fi renderer device by either USB or UPnP over ethernet (not Devialet AIR, so we're limited to USB only currently). Their ethos was to make this as simple as possible both from a usability and reliability point of view. For instance the device does not even provide a web page to configure. It doesn't need it - everything is as 'hands-off' as possible and controllability where needed is simply from the few front buttons (or remote? - which I have to admit I don't recall seeing! There may well not be one as it's probably not necessary). The front display tells you what's going on in a very concise and easily-understable way and also provides playback info, track playing etc.
Taking this single-device approach led Melco to be able to innovate some really interesting solutions which is what makes the device stand out.
first off from a networking point of view the device acts as a network bridge. It has two ethernet sockets, one for the hi-fi device/network, one for the local/internet-facing side (the 'dirty' side!). The Melco filters out the unwanted local area network traffic by means of packet filtering/firewall so only the actual necessary audio network traffic (if any) reaches the hi-fi renderer/player. The Melco also runs a DHCP server internally providing IP addresses to devices on it's hi-fi network side. This will be automatically overridden by a home network DHCP server if detected to avoid a 'split brain' scenario of IP address provision.
Taking things further, the network traffic from the Melco to the hi-fi device is also optimised. TCP traffic is ordered as closely as possible to lessen the amount of work needed by the player.
The networking bridging design makes it possible to have a really simple audio network by using a simple wi-fi access point dongle. Plug that into the Melco 'dirty' NIC, plug the Melco into the Devialet. Connect your phone/tablet to the wi-fi access point and play music.
Moving onto storage, Melco have made some interesting innovations here too. Recognising that audio-only disk usage (a high number of reads compared to writes, frequent access of favourite albums) is pretty unlike the average usage necessary from a domestic NAS (as high speed as possible, potentially lots of writes) this has given them the opportunity to apply this in particular to the SSD-based N1Z. Interestingly usage of SSD doesn't necessarily mean greater benefits to audiophiles. For instance the software required to provide durability to SSD is rather incompatible with audiophile needs. Simply swapping SSD for hard disks can in many instances make things sound worse. Due to the vastly reduced number of writes with audio usage, this has enabled Melco to remove some of the disk controller software necessary to provide the kind of durability needed by a typical NAS which gives audio benefits. The SSDs are optimised for audio usage in other ways too. I'm unaware of the optimisations provided for the hard disk-based N1A but am taking a guess that the power usage and caching may well differ from a typical computer hard disk. Buffalo manufacture these disks specifically for Melco. They are not off-the-shelf disks used by other manufacturers.
Thought has also gone into data integrity - for instance what happens with a power cut? Basically a UPS is not needed - both N1A & N1Z protect against power outages by being able to shutdown and flush the disks in an orderly fashion.
To get music onto the device, stick it on a USB stick/hard disk, or the Melco also provides a network share that you can copy music onto from a computer. The music is ingested onto the device and organised. Various backup methods are provided, and initiated simply from a front panel button press.
Software. Melco use UPnP. They don't provide a control point (yet) and you will have to use one of the many available. The Melcos are Openhome compatible so you can use Linn Kazoo/Kinsky, the Lumin controller point (which is rather flashy), the usual suspects of Plugplayer, BubbleUPNP/DS etc.
The Melco devices provide a UPnP server which is also visible on the 'home network' side of things if needed. A choice of UPnP server is provided - Minimserver has recently been ported for instance. which is rather lovely in my opinion.
The software side is possibly the weakest point of the Melco devices at present, but by making things as simple as possible to avoid the pratfalls of introducing a myriad of potential issues, and also having a pretty rapid level of feature introduction (streaming for instance) I can see this becoming less of a disadvantage pretty rapidly. Possibly the major omission at the moment is lack of ability to stream direct from internet streaming services, although the device does provide clever integration with some of the high-res download providers. The usual UPnP problem of fast forward/reverse is also avoided by simply not providing the facility! (I quite like that approach - streaming ff/rewind is sadly an unpleasant experience whatever protocol is used).
I've probably missed a bunch of stuff in my rambling but will continue onto what it acually sounds like...
First off the background of the Melco units. Streaming as we know it today has progressed differently in different regions. For instance in Europe we tend to utilise our (existing in many cases) home networks and the actual hi-fi devices work in tandem with computing devices - switches, NASes which we often already have. The UPnP protocol is fairly ideal for such scenarios as it's a great way of connecting disparate pieces of equipment together. The problem with this approach is it also assumes a fairly high level of tech savviness to iron out the kinks and get things working optimally, something we seem to have been prepared to accept but perhaps is getting rather tiresome and rather repellent to prospective streaming customers.
The US took a different route and traditionally high-end hifi used Crestron or AMX systems to provide high-end multi-room systems, with professional installers to lay the miles of dedicated cable necessary. They seem to have moved from such dedicated systems straight to the simplicity and usability (and easy installation) of Sonos. Buy it from Walmart, plug it in, it works.
The Japanese market however is somewhat different again. contrary to expectations, the typical prospective customer there is not necessarily so tech-savvy or prepared to put a lot of effort into creating the home infrastructure necessary for a good reliable-ish streaming system. As a result streaming has not taken off in quite the way it has in Europe, USA and elsewhere.
Step forward Melco, which is a brand of Buffalo, Japan's largest computing equipment supplier by quite some margin I believe. The boss of Buffalo is a long-time hi-fi enthusiast (indeed some may remember Melco's hi-fi products from the 70s including turntables). Frustrated at the lack of streaming hi-fi equipment that would be attractive to the Japanese market he tasked a team to design a 'plug and play' streaming 'appliance'. And the Melco N1A and N1Z are the fruits of that labour.
The approach Melco have taken is to provide a device which combines storage (SSD in the N1Z, traditional spinny hard disks in the N1A), network, and the software necessary to import and maintain the music library. Recent changes have added UPnP streaming ability direct to a hi-fi renderer device by either USB or UPnP over ethernet (not Devialet AIR, so we're limited to USB only currently). Their ethos was to make this as simple as possible both from a usability and reliability point of view. For instance the device does not even provide a web page to configure. It doesn't need it - everything is as 'hands-off' as possible and controllability where needed is simply from the few front buttons (or remote? - which I have to admit I don't recall seeing! There may well not be one as it's probably not necessary). The front display tells you what's going on in a very concise and easily-understable way and also provides playback info, track playing etc.
Taking this single-device approach led Melco to be able to innovate some really interesting solutions which is what makes the device stand out.
first off from a networking point of view the device acts as a network bridge. It has two ethernet sockets, one for the hi-fi device/network, one for the local/internet-facing side (the 'dirty' side!). The Melco filters out the unwanted local area network traffic by means of packet filtering/firewall so only the actual necessary audio network traffic (if any) reaches the hi-fi renderer/player. The Melco also runs a DHCP server internally providing IP addresses to devices on it's hi-fi network side. This will be automatically overridden by a home network DHCP server if detected to avoid a 'split brain' scenario of IP address provision.
Taking things further, the network traffic from the Melco to the hi-fi device is also optimised. TCP traffic is ordered as closely as possible to lessen the amount of work needed by the player.
The networking bridging design makes it possible to have a really simple audio network by using a simple wi-fi access point dongle. Plug that into the Melco 'dirty' NIC, plug the Melco into the Devialet. Connect your phone/tablet to the wi-fi access point and play music.
Moving onto storage, Melco have made some interesting innovations here too. Recognising that audio-only disk usage (a high number of reads compared to writes, frequent access of favourite albums) is pretty unlike the average usage necessary from a domestic NAS (as high speed as possible, potentially lots of writes) this has given them the opportunity to apply this in particular to the SSD-based N1Z. Interestingly usage of SSD doesn't necessarily mean greater benefits to audiophiles. For instance the software required to provide durability to SSD is rather incompatible with audiophile needs. Simply swapping SSD for hard disks can in many instances make things sound worse. Due to the vastly reduced number of writes with audio usage, this has enabled Melco to remove some of the disk controller software necessary to provide the kind of durability needed by a typical NAS which gives audio benefits. The SSDs are optimised for audio usage in other ways too. I'm unaware of the optimisations provided for the hard disk-based N1A but am taking a guess that the power usage and caching may well differ from a typical computer hard disk. Buffalo manufacture these disks specifically for Melco. They are not off-the-shelf disks used by other manufacturers.
Thought has also gone into data integrity - for instance what happens with a power cut? Basically a UPS is not needed - both N1A & N1Z protect against power outages by being able to shutdown and flush the disks in an orderly fashion.
To get music onto the device, stick it on a USB stick/hard disk, or the Melco also provides a network share that you can copy music onto from a computer. The music is ingested onto the device and organised. Various backup methods are provided, and initiated simply from a front panel button press.
Software. Melco use UPnP. They don't provide a control point (yet) and you will have to use one of the many available. The Melcos are Openhome compatible so you can use Linn Kazoo/Kinsky, the Lumin controller point (which is rather flashy), the usual suspects of Plugplayer, BubbleUPNP/DS etc.
The Melco devices provide a UPnP server which is also visible on the 'home network' side of things if needed. A choice of UPnP server is provided - Minimserver has recently been ported for instance. which is rather lovely in my opinion.
The software side is possibly the weakest point of the Melco devices at present, but by making things as simple as possible to avoid the pratfalls of introducing a myriad of potential issues, and also having a pretty rapid level of feature introduction (streaming for instance) I can see this becoming less of a disadvantage pretty rapidly. Possibly the major omission at the moment is lack of ability to stream direct from internet streaming services, although the device does provide clever integration with some of the high-res download providers. The usual UPnP problem of fast forward/reverse is also avoided by simply not providing the facility! (I quite like that approach - streaming ff/rewind is sadly an unpleasant experience whatever protocol is used).
I've probably missed a bunch of stuff in my rambling but will continue onto what it acually sounds like...
