sleepdoctor

I have been out of town for a month but wish to update my Melco experience. Just after I wrote the above post, I ended up having many conversations with various Melco representatives and they were all very attentive, especially David Carr who is also very knowledgeable. It was determined the unit was defective and they replaced it in a timely manner. I just now got the new unit up and running and it sounds great in my high end system. I decided to use it as a network player per David's suggestion. It synced up quickly and plays well. As much as I like the unit, it is much more finicky than my other music servers. When a CD is uploaded directly, everything works well. The main issue I am having is that some files that actually function fine in JRiver and Audirvana don't end up correctly categorized in the Melco. The meta data doesn't always register, so the files end up without any tags and get "lost" in the directory. Also if I transfer layered files, they don't always register. For instance if I transfer Neil Young with all his various albums in sub-files via my network, or using a flash drive, the results may get scrambled. But if I transfer an individual Neil Young album, it usually works fine. This is opposed to the other servers I have used. Also I am still trying to find the best control point software. I have tried all the well know ones with variable success. In summery after a brief hiccough, The Melco people and Sunny Audio took great care of me. The sound quality HA N1Z is awesome and the 4 TB of data storage wonderful. In return for the sound quality however, one has to be able to endure some glitches. I suspect however, that many of the bugs will be worked out in the near term. If sound quality is a priority, this is a great unit.

On July 28th I purchased a Melco HA-N1z from Sunny Audio, a local Southern dealer. The only one in stock was a demo which had been running for 2 weeks so I bought that one. It was already boxed, but the dealer assured me it had been working well. When I got home I plugged the unit in and upgraded it to the newest version v3.1. I connected my Arcam D33 DAC but could not get it to communicate with the server. I called the dealer who didn't know why it was not working. He called the rep, David Carr, who apparently told him my DAC was too old to be compatible despite being on the list of approved DACs. So I bought a PS Audio Direct Wave DAC. It had the same trouble. I called the dealer yet again and he finally got David Carr to call me. That was when I found out V3.1 was defective. He told me to upgrade to V3.11 which he said would fix the problem. After the upgrade to 3.11, the DAC was visible in PlugPlay, and I could connect the two and play music. It sounded decent if not very good. The problem was that the directory was totally corrupt. Many downloaded files did not show up at all under various categories and files had no identification. Also many files just plain contained the wrong songs. At this point I backed up the files (32 hours), and reformatted the drives. Despite this, the newly imported files were totally messed up. I tried multiple re-formats and multiple import methods and still the directory was corrupt. The server will play music at least but I never know what will play. So after 4k and 12 days, I still don't have a usable server. Promised calls are not returned. Customer service has been worse than lousy. I think the server itself may be okay but the software is horrible. also the interface compared to other servers I have used is sub-par. Not ready for prime time. Hopefully I can return this and get an Aurender.