You think of you are at the peak of technological prowess, you have networked your home wirelessly, you stream Mp3's from your central music server (which has an amusing name like "Homer") to your laptop, in fact friends think you've just about lost it but then it happens!

You meet someone who's gone one step further, a networking god, he stands in his garden at a BBQ and controls the music from his PDA, his MP3 collection is available through the main HiFi and yes he's still married how does he manage it, then you discover he hasn't built an acoustic cupboard to reduce the fan noise of the Living room PC he's using a SliMP3 player.

So what is it and why will you want one, the SliMP3 player is a network enabled MP3 replay device it connects via CAT-5 Ethernet to your network and can work with DHCP, it then connects via RCA outputs to your home HiFi and best of all it looks the doggies!

Ok so what steps do you follow to install SliMP3 on your network, firstly you need to install the server software, this is the database engine that the SliMP3 player connects to and needs to be installed on the machine that holds the music collection, it cannot work with distributed storage so beware. Running on Windows (Win2k or XP) SliMP3 needs to use Pearl and the install disk loads this onto your system the application itself then runs in a popup widow which needs to remain open in order to serve music to the device, it can be minimised however, if you use Linux the SliMP3 server application can just run in background as a service.

The next stage is to configure the supplied remote control to work with the SliMP3 player once done you can then configure the IP settings which are relatively straight forward, within a few minutes you will be streaming MP3's to your device and listening on your HiFi.

The Slim server software works well and holds the catalogue of your collection, allowing it be browsed on multiple machines and SliMP3 players on the network, in practise the player unit works very much like explorer with a hierarchical style which you intuitively drill trough to get to your chosen album / artist or track. The whole system supports ID3 tags which enables you to use online databases to fully populate info about your MP3 collection.

The only feature we found to be missing is a musical search of FWD / RWD but given the streaming nature of the product it would probably be difficult to implement, but for many reading this the key question will be sound quality.

Its a given that any HiFi purists should not be using MP3 its a highly compressed format and as such throws away much audio data, having said that the SliMP3 delivered quite remarkable results, compared even to our £400 Ipod the player had a better SNR and it was easily a good match for the £500 Denon Amplifier it was mated too. Its difficult to gauge exactly how much buffering is used but we really had to upset the server before any clicking or pauses could be heard, of course you must bear in mind that an inherent fault with the MP3 format will leave a pause between each track.

Added bonuses are the total lack of fan noise  and cool running (it consumes only 4 watts during normal operation) the display is beautifully crisp and the SliMP3 website talks about how they would not compromise on the quality of display and we are so glad they didn't.

Of course with an investment of this kind the big thing is not the cash spent but the decision to cut a wall and cable the home! So we must look to future proofing and upgradeability, the player can have its firmware upgraded via the network and regular releases are made for both the server and client side. As the SliMP3 is also sold through OEM's there is an emerging market of add on applications which should further extend the life of this quite unique must have gadget.

More Reviews

[ Squeezebox 3 ] [ Sony MZ-NHF800 Mini Disc ] [ Sony MZ-NH700 ] [ Roku M2000 ] [ Linksys Wireless B Music System ] [ Linksys Wireless Media Adapter ] [ Creative Labs Jukebox 3 20gb MP3 Player ] [ Netgear MP101 Review ] [ Pinnacle Soundbridge Review ] [ Roku WiFi Radio Review ] [ Belkin Tunestage ] [ Acoustic Energy Internet WiFi Radio ] [ Philips SLA5520 ] [ Logitech Wireless Music System Review ] [ Pure DRX 701ES DAB Digital Radio ] [ SliMP3 MP3 Network Player ] [ Rio Volt MP3 CD Player ]