Is there a player which can read from a media library contained in an portable storage device over a USB interface. ? It would need to understand the FAT file structure, and ideally have high quality D/A output. and be fanless. My PC is quite good at ripping my CD collection and creating a large library of tracks on attached storage. but it has a pedestrian sound card, is in another room from the hi-fi, and is not always switched on .
Basically your soundcard is irrelevent if you use any of these solutions since where they use a database on your computer, they use the data only and not the D/A Conversion on the soundcard. The Oppo will just take data on a USB drive or USB key. On the Slimdevices website. the Duet is the most popular solution; it sets up quickly and can run from either a file of music on the computer or a NAS drive on your wireless network. I haven't used the Harmon unit but it's just won an EISA award. I think the Linn players are pretty close to what you want but it's almost £1k for the cheapest. This is quite a fast developing market so good, up to date solutions are still a little thin on the ground. There's a Sony music server and some Philips kit but I can't remember the links. There's a Cambridge 640h network player which hasn't been well received. I have no idea what the Maplin unit sounds like. The Wadia looks like a good solution though you'd need an Ipod classic rather than a USB drive.
