Even before Apple’s iPod changed the way we listen to music on the go, audio hard-disk recorders — also called music servers — were altering how we store and listen to music at home. When ReQuest Multimedia christened the category with its ARQ1 some five years ago, the promise of putting away all your CDs and having any song accessible by the push of a button seemed too good to be true. And in a way, it was. Over the years, these components grew in capability and cost to where they’ve been sold almost exclusively through custom installers for elaborate whole-house audio systems.

What We Think

Easy installation and a simple interface make this latest FireBall a great reason to mothball all your CDs.

Escient, another early pioneer, went that route and nursed an elaborate multizone system through several generations, culminating in its FireBall E2 digital music manager, priced at $2,000 and up. Now the company is going the other way, stripping off a few high-end features to offer the best parts of the E2 in a server that can be bought off the shelf at half the cost and installed by just about anyone. Sound & Vision got an exclusive first round with this new model, the FireBall SE-80.

At first glance, the $999 SE-80 strikes the pose of a fancy CD player. The prominent disc drawer is used for playback and for ripping CDs to the 80-gigabyte (GB) hard drive as well as for recording custom CDs from your stored music library. Around back, an Ethernet port connects the server to a home network to facilitate downloading music from your PC and automatic collection of CD information and cover art from the Web. The info is loaded into a graphic interface that lets you manage your collection from your TV, computer, or wireless PDA. Completing the package is a universal remote that lets you operate up to four FireBall devices.

SETUP The SE-80 comes with an Ethernet cable for the network hookup and a composite-video/stereo cable for connection to a TV and sound system. You’ll need your own cables to take advantage of the S-video, component-video, or optical digital audio outputs. The network connection can be wired, like mine, or via Wi-Fi. If you want to go wireless, Escient recommends using a Wi-Fi bridge adapter. As soon as I made these simple connections and powered up, a red LED on the front panel started flashing, and a message on the TV screen said “preparing to authenticate.” In less than 5 minutes, the SE-80 had found my network, connected to the Internet, installed 84 Internet radio stations, and put up a congratulations message! I was ready to rip CDs, stream radio, and transfer music from my PC.

OPERATION Ripping CDs was easy. You can set the SE-80 to automatically record a disc when you slip it into the tray or just play it. The title, artist, and song list are automatically downloaded from the Gracenote Web service, and cover art comes from the All Media Guide (AMG). Songs are saved by default as MP3 files at 192 kilobits per second (kbps). At that rate, the 80-GB drive stores 894 hours of music, or about 900 to 1,000 CDs — you can also choose 128, 160, or 320 kbps for as much as 1,340 hours or as little as 536 hours.

If you run out of space, you can’t attach another hard drive directly, which could be a limitation down the road for some users. But beginning early next year, Escient expects to provide a firmware upgrade to let you access tunes stored on your networked computers without having to first transfer them to the SE-80. Though the SE-80 can’t record WMA files, it can play them. Not supported at all are WAV and AAC files or songs you’ve downloaded to your computer from pay sites like iTunes or Napster that are wrapped with digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

The system initially loads in all the Internet radio stations offered via the free Escient iRadio Tuning Service. You can add stations coming in as MP3 or WMA streams and group them according to a genre. As usual with music servers, streaming radio can’t be recorded.

Controlling the FireBall from my networked PC or transferring music from PC to FireBall was a snap. You connect to the FireBall’s internal Web server using your PC’s own Web browser. (Alternatively, you can also use a Wi-Fi-enabled PDA via its browser.) You can then control the SE-80 from another room via computer or wireless PDA. The PDA interface (right), which can also be called up as a compact window on the PC, lets you select a CD, view its song list, start playing it from the beginning, or skip to the next song. There’s a certain thrill in hearing “Take It to the Limit” by the Eagles spilling out of another room (or your whole-house audio system) when you just tapped the title on a remote screen.

You can import compatible music files from any PC or Mac on the network simply by dragging them into a folder on your computer screen. Then, you can tap into the SE-80’s music library for playback on a networked computer in another room. Escient says that about five streams can be tapped simultaneously around the house; the number depends on the bit rate of the tunes and available bandwidth on your network. As an alternative, you can stream to media receivers that are compliant with the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard. And if that’s not enough, you can also play music stored on your FireBall at any broadband-linked computer in the world.

The Short Form

www.escient.com / 800-372-4368 / $999 / 17 3/8 x 4 5/8 x 11 7/8 IN

Plus

•Extremely easy installation. •Simple to use, glitch-free interface. •Controllable from networked computer or wireless PDA. •Streams audio to any networked computer or to any computer in the world via broadband.

Minus

•Can’t record analog audio sources. •No front-panel display. •Not compatible with some online music services

Key Features

•Plays CDs or rips them to 80-GB hard drive •Access music via IR remote or menus on TV screen, networked computer, or Wi-Fi-capable PDA •Downloads album and track information from Gracenote and cover art from AMG •Streams MP3 or WMA radio stations •Imports MP3 or WMA music from networked computer •Serves up to five different music streams to computers in other rooms •Can create mix discs on CD-R/RWs

PERFORMANCE After I inserted Grammy Nominees 2005, the SE-80 took 10 seconds to identify the CD and download its cover art via my DSL connection and 51/2 minutes to rip the 21 tracks. The cover became a flighty screen saver on a black background when I left the music playing. The sound was almost as good as the original CD at the 192-kbps default setting, about what I’ve come to expect from this level of compression. Because the artist was different for each song, the SE-80 simply listed “Various Artists.” Pressing buttons on the remote multiple times, I was able to edit the title “Vertigo” to include the suffix “U2.”

Hoping to leverage the keyboard on a networked computer, I tried to append the other songs with their artist names by renaming the files but was thwarted by a “network error” message. An Escient spokesman said this was a known bug that should be fixed by the time you read this. From the computer, I successfully imported a Santana album into the SE-80 that had been previously ripped on the PC. The SE-80 automatically downloaded the cover art for its database. You can also import Podcasts downloaded to your computer as long as they’re in MP3 or WMA format.

Most of the streaming radio stations installed automatically on the SE-80 either weren’t available or were transmitting at a scratchy bit rate of 20 kbps. I did find a jazz station coming in at 130 kbps that sounded better than FM. Adding stations required a lot of button pushing.

As for recording over-the-air radio from a receiver, using a microphone, or converting LPs and cassettes, forget it. The SE-80 doesn’t have any audio inputs. If the music isn’t already on CD or a networked computer, the SE-80’s drawbridge is up.

BOTTOM LINE In the new landscape of giant, inexpensive hard drives, low-cost home computers, and unpretentious media receivers that can stream music to your TV and stereo system, it was inevitable that companies like Escient would lower prices on this type of dedicated audio component. Though $999 may still seem pricey for what amounts to a modest hard drive and the software to control it, the SE-80 is an elegant all-in-one music player, manager, and storage device that’s easy to install and operate — especially for less technical users — and it integrates seamlessly with your home network. With its glitch-free operation, friendly TV screen interface, and automatic software upgrades, music lovers and computer geeks alike should give it a listen.