Leading digital music library specialist Melco Audio has introduced a generous new promotion offering a free S100/2 data switch worth £2,099, with all N10/2 digital music library purchases from now until the end of May.
The offer is available with the purchase of either the N10/2-S38 SSD drive model (£9,399/EUR 10,999), or the N10/2-H50 HDD version (£7,299/EUR 8,499) at all Melco dealers across Europe, on a first-come first-served basis, while stocks last.
Hand-made in Japan, Melco’s second-generation S100/2 is an evolved version of the original S100, a device widely credited as being the original ‘audiophile’ network switch.
Designed to offer an instant sound quality upgrade to any networked Melco digital music library, the S100/2 is particularly suited to the N10/2 due to its half-width chassis design.
The S100/2 benefits from six one-gigabit Ethernet ports, coupled with two 100 megabit Ethernet ports for audio. The configuration offers greater speeds to bandwidth-hungry devices while retaining dedicated audio ports. Internally, the S100/2 gains an improved power circuit board with a carefully selected AC adapter.
The S100/2 also benefits from SFP (small form factor pluggable) connections which allow upgrades to optical fibre connections with compatible devices, for even greater noise isolation and sonic performance.
About the N10/2 digital music library
The N10/2 is a two-box design, featuring half-width (215 mm) chassis, enabling Melco’s engineers to separate the delicate signal-processing electronics from the power supply.
The ‘head’ unit contains the processing electronics and data connectivity, and the power unit contains a high-performance, low-noise linear power supply with toroidal transformer.
The head uses the same extreme-low-noise, high-precision digital music dataflow as the existing Melco series and crucially, is designed from the ground-up as an audio-specific device; Melco famously eschews standard IT components or PC parts.
The N10/2 digital music libraries centre around carefully selected HDD and SSD drives: 5 TB in the N10/2-H50 and 3.84 TB in the N10/2-S38; the dedicated drives are hand-picked by the factory to provide exceptional audio performance.
Melco’s time-proven software architecture provides reassuring familiarity to existing Melco customers and class-leading ease of use for newcomers.
Twin USB 2.0 ports are available, (plus a further front panel USB port) including a dedicated USB DAC output ready for connection to USB DACs, USB DAC-equipped amplifiers or active speakers. The second USB port enables USB devices to connect and operate effortlessly without any configuration, including: importing or playing music from memory devices, HDD/SSD drives and CD drives (CD ‘rippers’); capacity expansion with Melco’s E100 (or other) storage drive; and easy back-up to HDD/SSD drives.
In addition to Melco’s software architecture, the N10/2 benefits from Melco’s Intelligent Music Library suite comprising MinimServer and SongKong software. The device is also Roon Ready, DSD compatible and offers app control via DLNA/UPnP (in USB DAC mode) with support for TIDAL, Qobuz and vTuner streaming with the Melco Music HD app. Qobuz Downloader and HighResAudio.com also enable direct, error-free high-res downloads without the need for a computer.
The N10/2 can also be used as a self-contained local hi-res digital music player when connected via a USB DAC; data rates of up to 32 bit/384 kHz and Octo DSD are supported, along with gapless and Melco markerless DSD.
Control is via the Melco Music HD app, from the front panel, or from approved third-party RF remote handsets and for network playback, UPnP control point apps.
