The new movement?

It seems there are a lot of products appearing recently that are 'all in one' systems. This I suppose has become popular due to large hard disks allowing whole music collections to be stored inside a tiny black box, and also by digital amps.

All in one systems have been possible for a long time but were never very popular with enthusiasts. Most would claim inferior sound quality to be the problem and while true in most cases, I don't see it being a problem of the technology, it just wasn't something many bothered to make.

So why were they not popular in the past for enthusiasts? Maybe it seemed pointless saving a little space on the electronics when one's music collection would dominate most of a room anyway?

Secondly, do you think they can become popular with enthusiasts now, or does it simply remove too much of the fun that comes from buying separates?

Thirdly, if they are not going to be popular with existing enthusiasts, who will buy them? Will they find new enthusiasts?

 

The main issue for me is it becomes single point of failure / single point of obsolescence. Much audio technology is proven, trustworthy and reliable. As an example I've got the TV on and the sound is going through a 15 year old passive preamp, 41 year old power amp and a 26 year old pair of speakers. The TV itself will be in landfill long before any of these components are unserviceable, as will the expensive laptop I'm typing this reply on. It makes no logical sense to combine these items into a single unit. Any decision to do so will almost certainly be based on trivialities such as aesthetic trends.

Tony.

 

I have experienced this. I bought a Samsung 32" CRT a few years ago and it developed a fault within a couple of months of purchase. Samsung were unable to repair it because they had no spares.

 

Upgradability , adaptability to mention a few reasons why all in one systems are not popular , what would people do with all those expensive interconnects that they wouldn't need anymore?

 

As you say, the hi-fi parts are proven, so what is wrong with combining them? I suppose these systems have computer tech in them and could become out of date quickly, but most are software upgradable and probably allow for new CPUs and storage to be added.

So what do you think is going to happen to the all-in-one products such as the Uniti, M1Clic, Olive, CA 640H etc..

 

They will end up in landfill extremely quickly since hard disc based music players are not the future.

Cloud technology is the future and I'd say it will be good enough in only a couple of years.
It will have enough capacity, bandwidths with increase and costs will fall.

 

they will be replaced by single box integrateted's with built in dacs and streamer clients. It has to make more sense to have the storage and server on your computer network rather than in a hi-fi box. (Marantz 603 or something). I am looking for something of that ilk for the office set up. Why have 3 boxes when 1 will do.

 

I think they can all play from network storage. As Rob says though I don't think many can stream music from Spotify for example.

Rob, have a look for an app called Ghost Town on your iPhone. My Dad has it on his HTC phone; it looks at you tube and assembles returned searches in to music albums with all the tracks and cover art etc, but taking the sound from youtube.

 

It will all end in landfill very quickly. The pressure on costs will totally over-rule any idea of 'qwality'. We are now in a race to the bottom exactly similar to those dreadful 'music centres' of 20+yrs ago, but now sold on the lie of 'cd-quality'.

Tony is right; and I'm willing to take quite a large punt that certain 'classic' components will actually still be worth a fair bit in 50yrs time as a result.

 

i still prefer "separate" unit's, if one goes faulty either i can use a substitute till the unit comes back from surgery but i will still have music, not if i had an all in one,