When you talk about a server it sounds like you are talking about a computer in the listening room that you interact directly with which either has an internal soundcard or USB DAC or equivalent to send audio to a stereo system.
In SB land there can also be a server, but you don't have to interact with it directly, it can sit in some other room, the basement etc. The Touch allows you to have a server in the player, but you don't have to run it that way, it still works very well with an external server. There are several advantages to using a Touch: the audio quality is very good, not quite as good as the best audiophile DACs, but quite a bit better than anything I have heard in its price range. Its going to be better than almost any soundcard you can put in your computer, including ones that cost many times as much. There are a couple out there which cost 3-4 times as much which when used with a highly optimized computer are about on par. The Touch is that good. Footprint in listening room. The Touch is small and very electrically quiet. Even specially designed fanless computers usually put out quite a lot crud into the air and onto the AC lines which can get picked up by the other components in a stereo system, which can subtly degrade the sound quality. The Touch is extremely low in this regard. Flexibility in control. There are MANY ways to control the Touch. Use its own touch screen, IR remote that comes with it, use a SB controler, use iPeng on iPod Touch or iPhone, apps that run on many other smart phones. Dedicated apps for anything windows, Mac or linux. If you use an external server with the touch you can control it from anything that has a web browser. Multiple playback locations. The SB server (either separate or the one in the Touch) can serve music to many players throughout your house. You can also have virtual players on any computers you have. For example in my house there are 4 physical players and virtual players on every computer. So I can be listening to music as I type this on the office computer while my wife is listening to music in her sewing room. She can listen over her laptop when out reading on the patio while I'm in the listening room with the "big rig". I personally think the best flexibility is to have a separate server somewhere in the house feeding the players (hardware or virtual types). It doesn't have to be a big expensive computer. These days I recommend either the Vortexbox or a sheeva plug. The Vortexbox comes with disk and CD drive to rip CDs and all the software preinstalled, its the easiest thing in the known universe to use. With the sheeva plug you need to attach your own USB drives, but it only takes a couple watts, BUT you do have to load the software your self. If it were me I would get a Vortexbox and a Touch and add players as desired. Once you start with the SB system they tend to proliferate! John S. -- JohnSwenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76721 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
