Does it exist?

[Neil]

Other bits

[tkr001]

Nice stuff Neil. Could the Harbeths do with a little more room to breathe?

[sirAndy]

Excellent looking system, Michael. I mean Neil.

Thanks for the pics!

[Neil]

Hahaha! That was hilarious!
Nah the Harbeths are fine where they are. Its a fallacy that you need a big room to get good sound...
Its certainly sounding good anyway...

[Neil]

Not bad for a cartridge that is nearly as old as me!

[sirAndy]

Nice!

[tkr001]

Not bad for a cartridge that is nearly as old as me!

and just as ugly Hope it sounds good.

[Neil]

Haha!fair call. It does sound nice actually, although it doesn't seem to track as well as the Benz or the Lyra, could be because the suspension is a bit soft...

[Neil]

Well, Mark from Antipodes Audio has been kind enough to lend me one of his music servers to evaluate. I have to say it is a pretty special beast. The one I have is a 3TB Reference model with an internal optical disc drive to enable direct rips to the unit. Set up was ridiculously easy and if anyone has 'The Fear' when it comes to setting up any sort of network interface they can check it at the door with this.
I hooked it up to my MHDT Labs Havana via USB (which is the only output), downloaded MPaD to control it from my iPad and away I went. There was a fair bit of music on the unit already, so I could listen to some pretty familiar tracks straight away. Nice big sound stage, great imaging (if you're into that sort of thing) and a very good sense of realism. I ripped a couple of cds straight to the unit (painlessly I might add) to listen to some of my more obscure test tracks and was suitably impressed. I copied across all of my digital music from the computer via the network, which was also very easy to do (even thought it took 5 hours) and have been enjoying it since.
In operation the unit is near silent and probably could be made completely silent with a SSD drive.
Mark has spent a lot of time developing these servers and if my ears aren't failing me he is on to a winner.
Highly recommended for those who want to take the next step from an Airport Express or Olive to a more purist product.

[tkr001]

In operation the unit is near silent and probably could be made completely silent with a SSD drive.

Will if you want a SSD you can't have much music cos you won't get one big enough, apart from the expense. It can't be much louder than an Olive or any of the others with onboard HDD and soundproofing material in the case may well make it almost silent. I get my files across the network from a NAS. Some say this sounds worse but I really can't tell any difference and I have tried eSATA, USB and onboard SATA without really noticing any difference. Crappy ears have a benefit.