Guest Blog - Me & My Melco

Me & My Melco

Jason Kennedy - Editor, The Ear.net

I reviewed the N1A shortly after it was launched and was so impressed that I decided to keep it. Since then, it has become a reference point for all the servers that have followed, including new models from Melco themselves. 
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In the four years that it has been in my system, it has proved to be entirely reliable and trouble-free. The introduction of the Melco Music HD control App has been a real boon: in the early days, I used various third-party Apps that worked with varying degrees of success when using the Melco as a USB source for a large range of DACs.

I use my N1A as an archive for my vast digital music collection which consists of FLAC, WAV and AIFF files with a few examples in DSD and a smattering of MP3s of material that can’t be had in other forms. I find that the Melco approach both sounds better than most CD players but more obviously, makes accessing my music quick and easy; there’s no need to hunt for discs, of course, and very little reason to leave the sofa, or there wouldn’t be if I had remote volume control, the life of a purist is never easy!

I like the Melco build quality and reliability, and the ease with which you can put music onto them is a major bonus: the software enables you to add music via the front panel interface, too. 
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I generally prefer the sound via a streamer of some kind and have had fabulous results with devices from Naim, Auralic, Lindemann and Aurender, among others. That said, I have had some pretty spectacular results with USB-connected DACs as well and it’s safe to say that the Melco has decent USB output.

I like the fact that the N1A has a dedicated ethernet output which provides a degree of isolation for the connected streamer and means that you don’t really need a network switch in normal system set up. This is doubly beneficial because it eliminates a noisy power supply from the system as well, and noise is the enemy of digital audio. I have to say that I am a convert to streaming audio and rarely use CD for serious listening; Melco is a big part of my musical picture.