New Melco Products. Opinions?

Audio Systems
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Melco have released two new and relatively expensive products.;N1 and N5. Broadly speaking they are similar with both incorporating two major new improvements, a revised chassis and motherboard. Although the N5 is reported to have some attributes missing compared with N5 otherwise it is as previous generations, the most costly using SSDs and the less expensive HDDs.

Melcos can be used in two modes, as full streamers or as NAS. I think most users over here use them as NAS. To me I anticipate the improvements as likely to bear fruit more in the streamer role but I could be mistaken.

In the past if you read various interviews with Melco they seemed to prefer the way HDDs treat data, interesting as they are part of the Japanese computer peripherals manufacturer Buffalo. However passing time may have changed this view though the use of SDDs for the top model might be a marketing issue rather than technical.

So , has anyone experience of either of these new products ? If so it would be helpful if the mode of use is stated. Use with a Melco network switch such as S100 would also be interesting.

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I had a chat with Melco here, the N1 could be equipped with HDD as well (5TB, I asked because their SSD size has not enough capacity for me…), it has more USB ports, SFP, external clock and they would improve GUI for streaming in future. Roon core is not an option for them (CPU utilization is against their design principle).
I‘ll try to get one in future.

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Pete, not a direct answer to your question exactly, but in my system I actually have 2 Melcos from the original series; the N1A and the higher-end N1Z, which are quite different in physical construction, both used in standard NAS form over their respective Ethernet ports… There’s absolutely no difference in sound quality.

I expect the same with the new N1/N5, with perhaps the only exception being the potential benefit of the SFP port, for those who don’t already enjoy optical isolation in their system.

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