Melco S100 Data Switch

Having recently taken delivery of a new Melco N100 server, I had the pleasure of chatting through the Melco proposition with Dan Raggett, the new General Manager for Melco Audiophile NAS project.  Dan took over from the esteemed Alan Ainslie earlier this year; Alan is still involved in the Melco project.  Dan is very engaging indeed and has total knowledge of his project.  Having also successfully installed a Melco S100 data switch Dan took me through a brief history of Melco, descended from Linn’s original foray into the Japanese market.  In the end, Buffalo Electronics, the supermassive Japanese company, ended up being the right partner for the new Melco project and the aforementioned Alan ensured the audiophile requirements of a networked server could be delivered by a noisy (in the electrical sense of the word) electronics company, like Buffalo.

I will go into greater detail on the N100 and its undoubted audiophile credentials in the review to follow, but all the way through, Dan Raggett was at pains to point out the attention to detail that ensures the audiophile N100 delivers.  Such details include not just the anti-vibration HSSS chassis and the fanless design but the option to upgrade to Minimserver as Melcos preferred uPnP vehicle and also SongKong integration, a fantastic metadata editor.  This metadata editor is also supported by Melco as further optimisation of the N100 experience and represents, to me, a game-changer in swapping your existing library to Melco, particularly if you are into classical music or Jazz.  This attention to detail is probably because Dan Raggett comes from audiophile stock, his father worked at Naim in Salisbury, as he did for a few years, rising to Sales Manager in a short space of time for the Southern region.  But three years was enough, and wanting to stay in the music and Hifi game, a jump to Melco in the UK was an ideal opportunity.

So an excellent experience with Dan Raggett who unwittingly put me onto something I have always wondered about; how do I get my cables to relax straight when they come out of the box?  Dan says at Naim they use a snake shaker!?  A device to shake a suspended cable, straight!  It generally needs 100 shakes to get there, Love it, now that is attention to detail!

My reviews to follow of the Melco N100 and the Melco S100 in the coming weeks.  I’m powering the boxes using a Plixir power distributer, that comes via the Singaporean distributor for Melco, but is shortly available in the UK.

Separately I will be doing a piece on SongKong, the unbelievably good metadata editor that is supported by Melco.