I Have Seen the Future

A feature called Swim plays randomly selected tracks. Swim on its own isn’t a compelling feature—the opportunity for jarring juxtapositions is high. But Swim combines synergistically with Focus to create a stream of randomly selected music from within a genre or sub-genre that evokes a sense of surprise, serendipity, and discovery. Swim and Focus together bring out tracks and artists you might not have listened to for a long time. (When importing a CD, you can flag favorite tracks so that they are more likely to be played in Swim.)

Albums culled through Focus can be stored as a Collection. A Collection is a group of albums to which you can add or from which you can remove specific titles. A good use for a Collection is if different family members, each of whom might have diverse musical tastes, access the system. Each member would have a Collection, so that he or she sees only those titles of interest. In other words, your teenage daughter’s Britney Spears albums will be invisible to you, and she’ll never see your Billy Holiday records. You can, however, introduce your daughter to Billy Holiday by transferring an album from your Collection to hers. Separate Collections can be a way of not only isolating different family members’ tastes, but also of sharing and suggesting music.

All this sounds a bit tedious when explained in words, but it’s actually incredibly simple, intuitive, easy to learn, and fun. More important, the ability to dig down and instantly find exactly the music you want to hear (or think you might want to hear) completely transforms the way you interact with your music library.

The Sooloos marketing literature emphasizes the system’s ability to program hours of background music, quickly set different moods for different occasions, and the social aspects of music listening. Although Sooloos delivers on these promises in spades, a more compelling reason to own the system is, in my view, Sooloos’ function as a vehicle for exploring your music collection, discovering connections between musicians and albums (the Peter Erskine example earlier), following the evolution of an artist, and just gaining insight into music through instant access to anything in your collection. For example, I listened to the great Zappa guitar instrumental “Black Napkins” from Zoot Allures and wondered on which other albums that track appeared. (Many of Zappa’s 72 officially released records—many of them double albums—are live sets with performances of previously recorded works.) A Search instantly brought up a list of discs containing performances of that piece.

Most TAS readers will connect Sooloos to an outboard digital-toanalog converter rather than use the system’s integral DAC and analog output stage. (See the accompanying article “Do Hard-Disk Drives Sound Better than CD?”) That’s a good thing, because the sound from the analog output jacks was significantly inferior to what’s possible with even a mediocre external digital-to-analog converter. The sound from Sooloos’ analog jacks had compressed dynamics, hard timbres, leanness in the midbass, and an odd mechanical quality. Using an outboard digital converter is mandatory, in my view. It’s not surprising that the integral DACs are lacking; they are asked to operate inside what is essentially a computer.

As stunningly powerful as the system is, there are aspects of the Sooloos experience that I found disappointing. First, Sooloos ships with no owner’s manual. That’s right—no owner’s manual. For guidance, the purchaser is expected to go to the Sooloos Web site and use the “Knowledge Base” to get answers to specific questions. (Sooloos now includes printed “quick start” instructions.) Although I would have preferred sitting down with the system and a printed manual, I tried the on-line instructions but found them to be of little help. The instructions were typical of those written by someone intimately familiar with the system, who expects the user to be familiar with concepts and devices that are second nature to the manual’s author. For example, I couldn’t get the system to boot up the first time, and learned from the on-line instructions that the system must be connected to the Internet. And how do you connect it to the Internet? “Since all of our Systems ship using DHCP, you will need a DHCP router to get the System up and running the first time. At that point you can switch your System to use static IPs.” What if you don’t know what DHCP or a DHCP router is? (I didn’t.) Similarly, the on-line instructions have this useful piece of advice: “Launch System Manager (this should not be necessary), and perform whatever tasks you need to.” The system’s sophistication, both in its user interface and in the thought behind its feature set, is undercut by the lack of a professionally written owner’s manual. Once the system is up and running, however, there’s little need for an owner’s manual—Sooloos is that easy to master. I gave a visiting manufacturer a 30-second overview of Sooloos and sat back and watched him navigate the system. He had mastered the basic functions of selecting music and Focus within minutes. Moreover, he was instantly enthralled and declared with great enthusiasm, “I’m getting one!”
 

Conclusion

Sooloos is one of those products you don’t think you need until you experience it for yourself—and then you’ll find it indispensable. I can’t say enough about the brilliant user interface, or about the thoughtful design behind the feature-set. Sooloos gives you exactly the tools you need to manage and explore your music library without bogging you down with superfluous features. The system was obviously conceived by music lovers with a deep understanding of how people relate to their music collections. The price of admission is steep, but once you’ve experienced the power of having your entire music library at your fingertips, there’s no going back.