Watch out Sonos! Here's the second coming of Yamaha MusicCast

Ever had a great idea but not everyone seemed to think so? That was pretty much what happened to Yamaha when it first launched MusicCast back in 2003. A CD-ripping music server with wireless client speakers and Ethernet too, if needed. What a great idea. Yamaha MusicCast A cast of thousands... not quite but Yamaha's …

[clanger9]

Looks nice, couple of questions...

These multi-home streamers tend to have a few underlying niggles which they may have kept quiet about the the demo.

1. Will it handle gapless playback? This is just about possible with uPnP (but not always). Linn added some (proprietary but open) extentions to produce OpenHome (http://www.openhome.org/wiki/Oh:Overview), but only Linn seem to use it.

2. I presume it does multi-room synchronous playback? This is hard to do reliably over wireless, especially if you also deal with issue #3. Sinos has this pretty well covered.

3. What is the buffering delay/lag like? AirPlay has huge delay, which means it's not much use for directly connected video. Linn get around this issue by reducing the delay (at the expense of reliability) for video sources.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Looks nice, couple of questions...

Airplay is crap, why? it uses the existing Wifi network instead of forming its own. So yes, that means Sonos has to be plugged into your router via ethernet, but that just means a small cheap box plugged into the router.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good luck to Yamaha with this

NS10's were pretty crap, they just became trendy because some high profile producers happened to use them.

DX7 was good in ways with "realistic sounds", but had a very thin sound. But it was impressive for the time, but very quickly superseded, but like the NS10's because the people on top of the pops had them EVERYONE had to have one, depite often being used for totally the wrong thing (bass lines spring to mind)

Pianos are pretty good, can't comment on flutes, drums and sax's, but their recorders are crap.

And as for motorbikes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good luck to Yamaha with this

Reference speakers aren't really supposed to sound good or bad. Just be dependable and their limitations well known.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good luck to Yamaha with this

Very thin sound?!?!?!

The FM sub bass is legendary, plus nearly every song in the 90s seemed to be using DX bass sound.

[Deryk Barker]

Re: Good luck to Yamaha with this

"plus nearly every song in the 90s seemed to be using DX bass sound."

And that's a good thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good luck to Yamaha with this

Plus they gave Dave Smith the Sequential name back.

[Toastan Buttar]

Re: Good luck to Yamaha with this

You mention the DX-7 and ignore the classic CS-80?

[freemansteve]

What old junk this is!

Why not look at Entotem's Plato system which is far more useful.

[Anonymous Coward]

And at £2500 a lot more bleeding expensive......

And from their site:

"Plato can store DVDs/film formats (converted on a PC first and then transferred by USB to Plato)"

How quaint.

[freemansteve]

Fair point, but it depends if you like music or prefer copying your treasured Die Hard movies from DVD's, if people still like using those.

[Frenchie Lad]

Dreams

Look at Entotem's site and you'll understand why Plato has a long way to go before matching a Squeezebox let alone a Yamaha or Sonos system.

[Deryk Barker]

Re: Dreams

I would say Sonos still has a way to go before it matches the - alas discontinued - Squeezeboxes, which can play 24/96 audio, which Sonos cannot.

[breakfast]

Deep time

"Eternity was mentioned frequently, and you can’t get more life-enhancing than that, surely."

They are onto a winner here. What could be more life-enhancing than the fact that from the perspective of any sufficiently long timescale our lives are no more than the tiniest flicker, of no possible impact or value, just a momentary sputter of energy in the endless river of meaningless dust.

Thanks Yamaha, my life feels a lot enhanced.

[deive]

Did they mention bringing any of this to any of their older models? I've only faily recently got a RX-V675!

[earl grey]

NS1000's all the way

Now, get off my lawn!

[captain semtex]

So near yet so far...

23 products... yet they still missed the equivalent of the Sonos Connect: AMP... otherwise I would have been interested (note: receivers are not the same thing).

This allows you to use your own speakers (e.g. in-ceiling speakers). However, the Sonos Connect: AMP is also a costly solution and doesn't support hi-res audio... so I'm exploring a Raspberry Pi with Hifiberry or IQaudio solution instead.

[long-in-tooth]

I'll wait, thankyou

Those prices look painful.

I'll wait until the leftovers are on sale in B&M at under £25.

My £200 bluetooth speaker cost me under £20