OTHER TECH

Like many hard disk-based A/V components, the Vibe Audio Server includes a loud fan and should be located away from listening areas. Beyond loading discs via the server's 40X CD drive, music can be transferred from your existing PCs to the server through the vNet network using Colorado vNet's Director software, which is also used to create playlists. The server's broadband network connection lets it look up album information that's not recognized by the onboard AMG database.

Interestingly, the Audio Server supports only uncompressed WAV files. While this may be great for sound quality if you're ripping straight to the server, it's not so great for all of those compressed songs already on your hard drive. Fortunately, the Audio Server converts MP3, WMA, AAC, and AIFF files to WAV upon transfer to make them compatible for playback. Although this takes up more storage space on the server and won't raise sound quality back to that of the uncompressed original, it won't degrade sound quality, either.

Given that this is a system built around network distribution, I was surprised - and disappointed - that you can't control any components from Web-enabled devices. Once you've tried controlling a system from a remote room with a laptop, wireless PDA, or cellphone, it's hard to go back.

Audible delay (sound arriving at different rooms at slightly different times) is a hurdle that IP-based systems have had to overcome. If you're playing the same tunes in different zones simultaneously - during a party, for example - the ear can detect even small differences. Although there wasn't any noticeable delay between zones when using Vibe components, there was about a half-second delay from "live" programming when using the Vibe Audio Encoder. That was enough to make it unusable when trying to sync my cable box output to the picture in a remote room. This could also be a problem if you're trying to play an audio source - such as a CD - on a sound system and running the same source through an Encoder for playback in remote rooms.