Escient FireBall SE-80
ESCIENT FIREBALL SE-80 MUSIC SERVER REVIEW - Fire Up your Digital Music
June 2006 By ––Grant Clauser
CDs are so old school, yet you don’t want to hook up a puny iPod or portable MP3 player to your multi-platinum sound system. You like the ease and access of digital music files; you just want them to sound better in your house. The FireBall SE-80 from Escient allows easy access and browsing of your enormous music collection plus internet radio, but in an audiophile-grade presentation.
The FireBall SE-80, the most affordable music server from Escient, is networkable via an Ethernet port, and features both analog and digital audio outputs from an 80GB hard drive. It has a CD drive, so you can use it as a CD player or to rip tracks directly from CDs. Ripping is set at a default of 192 kbps, though you can bump the bit rate up or down depending on how you prefer to trade off sound quality for library capacity. For myself and my moderate-sized music collection, the default rate worked just fine, but for finer detailed jazz, I encoded at a higher rate.
Setting up the system myself was no more difficult than setting up a wireless router or figuring out a DVD recorder. The back panel includes both analog and digital audio outputs to a receiver or pre-amp. The video signal can be routed through composite, S-video or component.
After hooking it up to your sound system, you need to connect it to a network via the Ethernet jack. The unit automatically detected my network and locked onto it quickly. You can also network several FireBalls together if your music collection goes beyond the capacity of one system.
You fill the FireBall in two ways. First, you can simply insert each CD, one at a time, and let the FireBall automatically copy the contents to the hard drive. It then uses the network connection to search the Gracenote CDDB library for the track info and album art, which will be displayed in the music browser. An easier way, if you already have a digital music collection, is to transfer the files from your PC to the FireBall’s hard drive via the network. This just involves entering the unit’s IP address into your PC, then dragging and dropping all your music files into the import folder on the unit. Copying my 6,000 track collection took several hours, but it’s easier than doing it one CD at a time. FireBall then scans them for track and album art, then goes to the network to collect any missing info.
Once populated, browsing the FireBall for artist, track or genre is a lot like browsing a TV program guide. When you find what you want, just press “play.” You can also browse Internet radio stations the same way, though the tenuous nature of Internet radio means not all stations will be available when you want to hear them. I enjoyed listening to college music from San Francisco, jazz from Denmark and Japanese pop music.
The FireBall has a few other tricks. The CD drive is also a CD burner, so you can create mixed CDs or copy whole albums to take with you. You can access and control the unit from a web-connected PC or PDA and even playback FireBall content over a networked PC.
What sets the FireBall apart most from less expensive music servers, Wi-Fi bridges and iPod connectors is the sound quality. While MP3 files are technically inferior to their CD counterparts, the FireBall doesn’t treat them like some mere data file—it treats them like music. In nearly every instance, music sounded nearly as rich and colorful from the FireBall as from the CD, and significantly superior to playing the same tracks directly from my MP3 player into my A/V receiver. And since it is a hard drive server, you don’t get any signal drops or hiccups associated with Wi-Fi bridges. Owners of large music collections, who insist of higher-quality sound, will appreciate what a FireBall can do. yy
The FireBall SE-80, the most affordable music server from Escient, is networkable via an Ethernet port, and features both analog and digital audio outputs from an 80GB hard drive. It has a CD drive, so you can use it as a CD player or to rip tracks directly from CDs. Ripping is set at a default of 192 kbps, though you can bump the bit rate up or down depending on how you prefer to trade off sound quality for library capacity. For myself and my moderate-sized music collection, the default rate worked just fine, but for finer detailed jazz, I encoded at a higher rate.
Setting up the system myself was no more difficult than setting up a wireless router or figuring out a DVD recorder. The back panel includes both analog and digital audio outputs to a receiver or pre-amp. The video signal can be routed through composite, S-video or component.
After hooking it up to your sound system, you need to connect it to a network via the Ethernet jack. The unit automatically detected my network and locked onto it quickly. You can also network several FireBalls together if your music collection goes beyond the capacity of one system.
You fill the FireBall in two ways. First, you can simply insert each CD, one at a time, and let the FireBall automatically copy the contents to the hard drive. It then uses the network connection to search the Gracenote CDDB library for the track info and album art, which will be displayed in the music browser. An easier way, if you already have a digital music collection, is to transfer the files from your PC to the FireBall’s hard drive via the network. This just involves entering the unit’s IP address into your PC, then dragging and dropping all your music files into the import folder on the unit. Copying my 6,000 track collection took several hours, but it’s easier than doing it one CD at a time. FireBall then scans them for track and album art, then goes to the network to collect any missing info.
Once populated, browsing the FireBall for artist, track or genre is a lot like browsing a TV program guide. When you find what you want, just press “play.” You can also browse Internet radio stations the same way, though the tenuous nature of Internet radio means not all stations will be available when you want to hear them. I enjoyed listening to college music from San Francisco, jazz from Denmark and Japanese pop music.
The FireBall has a few other tricks. The CD drive is also a CD burner, so you can create mixed CDs or copy whole albums to take with you. You can access and control the unit from a web-connected PC or PDA and even playback FireBall content over a networked PC.
What sets the FireBall apart most from less expensive music servers, Wi-Fi bridges and iPod connectors is the sound quality. While MP3 files are technically inferior to their CD counterparts, the FireBall doesn’t treat them like some mere data file—it treats them like music. In nearly every instance, music sounded nearly as rich and colorful from the FireBall as from the CD, and significantly superior to playing the same tracks directly from my MP3 player into my A/V receiver. And since it is a hard drive server, you don’t get any signal drops or hiccups associated with Wi-Fi bridges. Owners of large music collections, who insist of higher-quality sound, will appreciate what a FireBall can do. yy
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