We were priveleged to be one of the first in the country to get a hands-on play with the impressive Meridian Sooloos music player (which sounds like a Star Wars planet) today, described to us as an "iPod on steroids" by one of the products salespeople.
While most of us will have to be content with our humble iPods, for those lucky enough to find the spare $11,000 needed to enjoy the Meridian Sooloos, you'll be experiencing an impressive music experience indeed.
The Meridian Sooloos is rather like a modernist juke-box for the luxury crowd, parading all your favourite CD albums in an easy to use pictorial format, ala-iTunes.
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The music selection touchscreen
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The gathered media in attendance today failed to see how the same type of music setup couldn't be created with a cheap media server (or iPod), and iTunes-style menu and a half-decent touchscreen. Of course, considering most journalist salaries, we would look for a cheaper way to build a home music setup.
If this is an iPod on steroids, then it's likely to be the most expensive horse steroids used since big Arnie won Mr Universe back in the 70s. Carrying 1TB of data, good for at least 3000 of your parents favourite ABBA hits; the machine is also backed up by a second 1TB drive, so you won't need eleven thousand reasons to explain to your insurance provider why your very expensive music investment has been compromised if one of the drives suddenly fails.
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| Tom Johnston loses his focus in this shot |
The music player relies on a large amount of meta-data. Version 2 of the software is currently running and we're told most of the older bugs have now been ironed out in this release.
Music can be searched by genres, sub-genres and ‘Moods'. A ‘relaxed' mood brought up ACDC's Back in Black album, probably the one album not designed for chilled out ambience.
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| Do you really feel that bad? Your moods are easily changed on the Sooloos player |
Other moods you can select include cathartic, brooding and sentimental (just like the next Miley Cyrus film) - although we could of definitely used a few songs from the envy and jealously playlist after we spent five minutes with this musical beast.
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| Side view of the Meridian Soolos |
Meta-data is provided by US based AMG, so the chances of your mood matching up to the correct type of track is more like a musical lottery than an exact science.
Still, if you've got the money and want an all-in-one music product with the highest quality sound and extensive album data for elaborate cross-searching, it's hard not to admire the Sooloos music player.