I have an Audiotron digital music player which was made by Turtle Beach. It's a great product, but Turtle Beach discontinued it sometime last year. There is a rabid set of Audiotron followers that are dismayed that TB stopped making it, and there isn't really a comparable product on the market, though the Roku Soundbridge and the Squeezebox come close.

I think Outlaw should contact Turtle Beach about "acquiring" or "licensing" the Audiotron from them. With some updates, it could turn into a very Outlaw-like product.

that looks like a slick unit but i,myself just use the spdif output from my 'puter,when not listening to sirius on dish

The Audiotron is the granddaddy of the media server - and Turtle Beach did a great job of adding features to it through software updates (it originally didn't do streaming Internet radio stations, for example). It is quite a few years old now, though, and the market has gotten absolutley congested with products from a wide range of manufacturers, each somewhat different from its competitors. There's the PRISMIQ , the Squeezebox , and the Roku , as well as products from D-Link , Linksys , and plenty of others. Some provide access to audio files and streaming audio like the Audiotron, but others add support for images and video. Licensing the Audiotron, even if it was possible, would mean bringing a product to market when it was alraedy close to four years old.

A smarter idea would be to take the Audiotron's best aspects (convenient access to large collections of audio files, easy software upgradability) along with some other popular features (built-in wireless connectivity, support for video) in a completely original product. Think of it as an homage to the Audiotron.

Gonk,

Agreed. It needs updating, but the great things about the Audiotron are:

1. Front panel controls and display
2. No need to connect to your TV to "navigate" and play music
3. Used regular shared filesystem access, so doesn't need software running on a PC to "serve" it. It can access files on any file share on the network, include NAS devices. (I have all my music on a NAS and the Audiotron plays it from there. No computer necessary to play, though one is necessary to rip/encode/organize music)
4. It just works.

It has gotten a bit long in the tooth, but it also hasn't had a firmware update for about a year since TB dumped it. The Audiotron forums are *full* of great ideas to improve it and make it competitive.

Just a thought. Seemed like something right down Outlaw's alley...

I want to bring this thread back to the surface. I have had an Audiotron since the beginning and absolutely love it. My father wants to get one now, but they don't offer it! So, what is he to do? No other product does everything this one does.

What suggestion do I have? It goes beyond the Audiotron-ish unit from this thread.

I love the Audiotron because I can control music over a web page. The Audiotron comes with a web server built in.

I suggest that whatever you do for your 990 replacement, you should build in a web server so all controls can be controlled over TCP/IP.

Why is this important? It makes your audio equipment easier to control. It makes your equipment more accessible to those with disabilities. My wife is visuall impaired. She still hasn't figured out how to do much on my 950. If she could go to a web page to change volume or switch sources, her screen reader would help navigate her through the options.

This is one great feature the Audiotron has.

I would love to see an outlaw product to replace the audiotron, but more important, I want to see all your products with a web server built in.

In doing this, you would put yourself out in front of most (all?) of the competition by removing the need to have a complex/expensive Crestron-like solution for controlling the system.

$0.02

It's a potentially interesting idea, but the cost penalty associated with adding a web interface to every product is probably a bit prohibitive (the Audiotron did it because there was already a PC interface in place due to the nature of the product). Perhaps a different solution would be a standalone control package similar in concept to Crestron - the 990 has an RS-232 interface already in place to facilitate two-way communication (display active input and volume, for example), and you could also have IR output to allow control of other devices (TV, DVD player, cable/satellite receiver, ...) that lack an RS-232 interface. This sort of control has historically been limited to the big-dollar setups that are typically associated with Crestron, but if you already had a PC/web interface of some sort available for the user control then the rest would potentially be fairly straightforward to assemble.

Incidently, have you checked out the SqueezeBox from SlimDevices? It has a computer interface via a proprietary program (SlimServer) that might suit your dad's needs.

SqueezeBox looks like an interesting option. Too bad it requires a PC in the mix. This isn't ideal, but you are right. I think this is the closest to the Audiotron I've seen yet. I have my Audiotron pointing to a network attached storage device, which has been very nice. I like not requiring a computer in the mix.

Thanks