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It's high time that audiophiles struggling to keep tabs on a sprawling collection of CDs and MP3s consider a hard drive-based stereo component system. These devices act as a combo CD player and digital archive. When evaluating one of these boxes, consider the drive's size and the system's navigation.
SPLURGE
Escient FireBall
The FireBall does for music what TiVo does for television - it uses your TV screen to organize all of your music in menus. You can play an album, burn it to the CD-RW drive, rip tracks to the hard drive, or upload to a portable MP3 player. The device spits out artist bios and discographies from OpenGlobe, a service that the FireBall accesses when online. The 40-Gbyte drive holds more than 900 CDs' worth of tunes.
$1,999, www.escient.com.
BEST BUY
PDHercules Jukebox II
PDHercules Jukebox II The best MP3 storehouse is also the cheapest. The Hercules offers straightforward convenience in an all-around central nervous system for your stereo. It lacks a Net connection but pulls info from an internal CDDB database. Even obscure CDs are ID'd by the Hercules, which houses 300 discs. (For unlisted CDs, enter data via a PC and USB cable.) Bonus: It has a port for uploading music from vinyl.
$500, www.pdhercules.com.
OVERRATED
HP Digital Entertainment Center
When computer equipment sneaks into the living room, there are bound to be growing pains. All hard-drive-based boxes generate subtle noise from their magnetic discs and cooling fans. Unfortunately, this unit makes the most ruckus. True, the center has lots of extras - Ethernet connectivity, Net radio, a CD-RW drive, and a 40-Gbyte hard drive - but in a quiet room, its heavy-metal music sounds like a twin turboprop.
$1,000, www.hp.com.
PLAY
Virtually New York
Eye Gloss
Rinse 'n' Read
Read Me
Fighting Fire
Cyberman
Tadpole
Armitage: Dual-Matrix
Next-Gen Multiplayer Online Games
Stunt Driving From the Sofa
Turn Your PS2 Into a PC
Puppet Master
Sim Studio
Audiovent Studio
Julia Fordham
The Makers
Fetish
Setting Up Base
Instant Readouts
On-the-Fly Typing
Char Warriors
Good-Bye CD Towers
Covert IM Services
