Sciacca Blog Post

[jmdls]

Hi, everyone! Haven't been here around for a bit (since the M-class players were launched actually). As some of you may know, I wear a few different Kaleidescape hats; I write about it for Sound + Vision and Residential Systems; I'm a dealer in my showroom in Myrtle Beach; and I'm a general all-around fan of the system.

I just put up a new blog post on my personal site, and I'd love to get some K'scape owners comments -- if you're so inclined -- about what it is that you *love* about your systems and what validates the system price for you.

Also, I found out that I'll be one of the very first (I think there are 5 in total) people to get the new modular disc vault, so I'll be posting my thoughts on that in mid-November...

Here's the blog and thanks for the time and (hopefully) comments.
http://johnsciacca.webs.com/apps/blog/entries/show/5181629-thinking-outside-of-my-own-wallet-

Regards,
John Sciacca

 

[JerryL]

John,
I read your blog and the one selling point Id add is the system works out to be a good value for someone with a large collection. It becomes difficult to know where all your movies are and it's also easy to forget about some of the movies. The K system can liberate a collection.

 

[cinelife]

Agree with Jerry, nice to have real access to my collection.

(I'll be reciving the MDV as well, actually two, to run them from both M-class players I'm currently using.)


Jim

 

[JDS]

One selling point that I have not seen mentioned is how compact and discrete a K system is when space is at a premium.

Last year I viewed a system in a city centre studio apartment. A 1U server and player integrated into a custom made cabinet. All completely out of sight.

 

[jmdls]

One selling point that I have not seen mentioned is how compact and discrete a K system is when space is at a premium.

Last year I viewed a system in a city centre studio apartment. A 1U server and player integrated into a custom made cabinet. All completely out of sight.

Great point, JDS. That is definitely one of the reasons why Kaleidescape *owns* the yacht and jet market. When you can have a library of hundreds of movies and CDs available to multiple people simultaneously with nothing more than a single 1U device at the head-end and discrete mini-players (even tucked out of site) at the TVs, that is pretty powerful. I can actually see the "child's" remote being a perfect "guest" remote; for $39, create a "guest collection" where guest's can easily access and use the system with 0 instruction. Pretty sweet.
John

 

[jmdls]

Thought you guys might enjoy this post.... I've "pushed" it along to Cheena and Michael and asked if they might comment. They have often been incredibly generous with their time and info sharing in the past, so maybe. Interesting food for thought none-the-less...

Starts out with a Sooloos walking up to a Kaleidescape system in a bar...
http://johnsciacca.webs.com/apps/blog/show/5374972

John

 

[rbienstock]

Thought you guys might enjoy this post.... I've "pushed" it along to Cheena and Michael and asked if they might comment. They have often been incredibly generous with their time and info sharing in the past, so maybe. Interesting food for thought none-the-less...

Starts out with a Sooloos walking up to a Kaleidescape system in a bar...
http://johnsciacca.webs.com/apps/blog/show/5374972

John,

As someone who owns both a Kaleidescape system and a Sooloos, I'm not sure I agree with your analysis completely. If you are in the income bracket that can afford this stuff and you care about music Sooloos really is the way to go. I think that Kaleidescape is so movie oriented that using music on their system seems to be an afterthought. And doesn't sound great (not to mention that it can't play high-resolution audio even from DVD-Video disks with high resolution soundtracks). I tried doing music on the Kaleidescape and decided that it was a waste of time and got an AudioRequest server instead, which I later replaced with the Sooloos. Don't get me wrong, I love the Kaleidescape, but for DVD movies only. I don't even use my Kaleidescape for Blu-ray (I have Sony 400 disk changers controlled by a custom interface) because the K can't decode the lossless soundtracks. It seems to me that Kaleidescape needs to give the audio side the same level of care and attention that they give to the video side.

 

[jmdls]

John,

As someone who owns both a Kaleidescape system and a Sooloos, I'm not sure I agree with your analysis completely. If you are in the income bracket that can afford this stuff and you care about music Sooloos really is the way to go. I think that Kaleidescape is so movie oriented that using music on their system seems to be an afterthought. And doesn't sound great (not to mention that it can't play high-resolution audio even from DVD-Video disks with high resolution soundtracks). I tried doing music on the Kaleidescape and decided that it was a waste of time and got an AudioRequest server instead, which I later replaced with the Sooloos. Don't get me wrong, I love the Kaleidescape, but for DVD movies only. I don't even use my Kaleidescape for Blu-ray (I have Sony 400 disk changers controlled by a custom interface) because the K can't decode the lossless soundtracks. It seems to me that Kaleidescape needs to give the audio side the same level of care and attention that they give to the video side.

Hey, Rbienstock! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I totally don't disagree that owning both is the ultimate way to go. With both in my house right now, I have put a single CD on my Kaleidescape system. And for music, the Sooloos (especially the new Meridian version) is the killer choice. (Though I'm going to be reviewing the new Qsonix server shortly; a piece that has always excited me.) But if you couldn't own both, the Kaleidescape seems the obvious choice because of its ability to do movies. Now with the new Cinema One at $5000, it is compelling even as just a music server, especially coupled with the Remotescape iPad app and the 10-foot interface that Sooloos doesn't offer. I would disagree that music seems "an afterthought." The album reviews, and artist bios and genre descriptions... Those definitely don't seem like "afterthought" stuff. However, I DO agree that their music side should be fleshed out. Some kind of smart playlist creation and the ability to handle high-res FLAC files are highest on my list.
Best,
John

 

[rbienstock]

especially coupled with the Remotescape iPad app and the 10-foot interface that Sooloos doesn't offer.

You said it about the interface. If you don't have a Control 10 or 15, the Sooloos is essentially useless. I initially bought an Ensemble thinking that I could just use the computer interface, but all the goodies are on the Control unit, not to mention the fact that the Ensemble won't do high-resolution (it reduces the resolution to 48/16). Within two days of getting my Ensemble, I bought the Control 10. I have suggested to Meridian that since the Control 10 is a Windows PC under the hood that they should allow you to access it from a computer with a VNC like utility, but they told me that that wouldn't work, but if they did that it would be the way to get that gorgeous interface up on the big screen via an HTPC.

I would disagree that music seems "an afterthought." The album reviews, and artist bios and genre descriptions... Those definitely don't seem like "afterthought" stuff.

I think that Kaleidescape and Sooloos are both licensing the same data services from AMG.

the ability to handle high-res FLAC files are highest on my list.

I currently have 68 albums in high-res FLAC files (purchased from HD Tracks or extracted from DVD-Audio or DVD-Video disks). My current fave is the recent reissue of "All Things Must Pass" which now sounds better than ever before. Do you know of any other legal sources for high-res FLAC files?

Regards,
Robert

 

[jmdls]

Hey, Robert. Yes, they both use AMG. Sooloos goes deeper into metatagging (with almost every person credited on the album) and K'scape gives better biographical notes (on the artist and genre details). I don't think that anyone would argue that Sooloos is the better music-only platform, especially the Control15 which I love. Here's a blog I wrote on my experiences with 96/24 listening you might enjoy:

http://johnsciacca.webs.com/apps/blog/show/4731135-jaes-i-don-t-care-what-you-say-i-say-it-s-better-

http://johnsciacca.webs.com/apps/blog/show/3517386-more-bits-more-resolution-more-music-more-love-

I don't really know if the K-hardware could handle FLAC files. It seems like it should be able to at least hand them off in the digital domain for decoding by a capable processor, but.....? I think they have been so focused on nailing the whole Blu-ray side of their system, that they haven't pursued other developments. Perhaps once the Integrated Disc Vault arrives, we'll see some cool new add-ons....

 

[rbienstock]

I don't really know if the K-hardware could handle FLAC files. It seems like it should be able to at least hand them off in the digital domain for decoding by a capable processor, but.....? I think they have been so focused on nailing the whole Blu-ray side of their system, that they haven't pursued other developments. Perhaps once the Integrated Disc Vault arrives, we'll see some cool new add-ons....

Unless they're doing something different in the M-Series player, they can't handle it. You can sort of test it for yourself. Just get any DAD, i.e., a DVD-Video disk with a high-resolution audio track (Neil Young's Greatest Hits is one that many people own) and import it to the Kaleidescape. Because the K makes a bit-identical copy of the disk, it should play back in 96/24 from the optical output of the player, but it is internally down-resed to 48/16. I have been complaining about this for years. At first the people at Kaleidescape told me that it was beyond the capabilities of the player and then, once they made a player that had 96/24 in its specs, they changed their tune and told me that their license prohibited them from outputting 96/24. I don't know if that is true, but I do know that 96/24 is part of the standard specs for DVD-Video and that nearly all modern players can output it (even if it isn't their default setting). At that point, I simply gave up and looked elsewhere.

 

[rbienstock]

Here's a blog I wrote on my experiences with 96/24 listening you might enjoy:

http://johnsciacca.webs.com/apps/blog/show/4731135-jaes-i-don-t-care-what-you-say-i-say-it-s-better-

I just posted the following comment to that blog post: "I am a huge fan of high-resolution music and I really do think that it makes a difference, but I also somewhat agree with your conclusions. IMO, I really do believe that for nearly every kind of music, a 44.1kHz sampling rate is sufficient provided that both the record and playback side are actually giving you that resolution. But I feel very differently about the word length (bit depth). Even though bit depth corresponds to dynamic range in the analog domain, I think that it is a mistake to thin that the effect on music of increasing the bit depth does nothing more than increase the dynamic range. This is particularly true with most recorded music that has a rather limited dynamic range. What increasing the bit depth does is to allow the softest possible sounds to be swallowed up by the ambient noise in the listening environment before they get swallowed up by the noise floor in the medium. Thus when I listen to music that has a higher bit depth, the only real difference I hear, subjectively, is that the reverb tails seem longer and all sounds appear to decay naturally, as opposed to decaying to a certain level and then abruptly disappearing entirely. And it doesn't take a lot of bits to make this difference. I think that even a change from 16 bits to 18 bits helps."

 

[jmdls]

Thanks for the comments (and for joining! Anyone else? There's always room for another Kscape Owner....), Robert. Ultimately, who cares WHY it sounds better? The higher bit depth, the longer word resolution, because the engineer was really on his game, because the microphone was plated in Unobtanium... What does it matter WHY it is better, as long as the files consistently sound better. Which, if you've ever experienced high-res audio (and obviously you have) you'll know they do. I'd invite any one to go over to hdtracks.com and download Chesky's free sampler. If you can play back FLAC files, it will be an ear opener....
Cheers,
John