Hello.
Recently, I have been offered an XBOX One S in a 'family emigration sale'. I've been able to play with it a bit, and found that it seems to function acceptably as a games console and a Netflix player. These are both appealing characteristics. However, I wondered if it can also perform 'acceptably' as a music player(mp). I understand that 'acceptably' means different things to different people, so I thought I might ask a few questions to offer context:
Does it have 'audiophile' pretensions and bragging rights down the pub?
Does anyone here use one as a music player? What is there about it that appeals and satisfies? Any niggles and disappointments?
Has anyone here considered one as a mp, and rejected it? What turned you off?
There is quite a lot of 'information' online about devices which have XBOX in their name, but my cursory search (I tried at least 1 page of search results, OK? What more do you want!? Blood!?) does not seem to suggest that there are many killer 'audiophile' implementations specifically using the One S. There was also talk of :
1) Optical SPDIF being limited to 24/96 which might be a bit disappointing, one day.
2) FLAC is not mentioned in the 'formats supported' list on the device settings screen (unless it's hidden?) Maybe it would need an update?
My AVR's HDMI circuitry does not seem to work, so if this is what the cool kids use to attain bliss, I'm out of luck.
Currently, most of my listening is from CD via a standalone CD player. If I want to play media files (mp3 and suchlike), I use 2 methods:
1) Play or stream from a phone/tablet via a 3.5mm stereo male to 2-RCA male adapter into my AVR (on which the HDMI board seems to be broken) or my preamp (which has no digitality whatsoever).
2) Plug a USB stick into my BR player which sends audio to the AVR via SPDIF coax.
I find these methods less than ideal, and wonder if the XBOX One S could offer a better solution. I might then bestir myself to convert my quite bulky and dusty CD collection to disk and perhaps find it easier to explore the forgotten corners, or even dip a toe in the streaming (e.g. Deezer, Tidal ) world. Money is tight, and I am only considering it because of the emigration sale, but the Netflix and game player talents are very appealing. There is a problem in that it would blow up my possible/putative/fantasy/MaybeOneDay RaspberryPi+Dac (or equivalent) option, so if it could also scratch that itch, I would find it easier to justify to myself.
So...anyone tried it?
Recently, I have been offered an XBOX One S in a 'family emigration sale'. I've been able to play with it a bit, and found that it seems to function acceptably as a games console and a Netflix player. These are both appealing characteristics. However, I wondered if it can also perform 'acceptably' as a music player(mp). I understand that 'acceptably' means different things to different people, so I thought I might ask a few questions to offer context:
Does it have 'audiophile' pretensions and bragging rights down the pub?
Does anyone here use one as a music player? What is there about it that appeals and satisfies? Any niggles and disappointments?
Has anyone here considered one as a mp, and rejected it? What turned you off?
There is quite a lot of 'information' online about devices which have XBOX in their name, but my cursory search (I tried at least 1 page of search results, OK? What more do you want!? Blood!?) does not seem to suggest that there are many killer 'audiophile' implementations specifically using the One S. There was also talk of :
1) Optical SPDIF being limited to 24/96 which might be a bit disappointing, one day.
2) FLAC is not mentioned in the 'formats supported' list on the device settings screen (unless it's hidden?) Maybe it would need an update?
My AVR's HDMI circuitry does not seem to work, so if this is what the cool kids use to attain bliss, I'm out of luck.
Currently, most of my listening is from CD via a standalone CD player. If I want to play media files (mp3 and suchlike), I use 2 methods:
1) Play or stream from a phone/tablet via a 3.5mm stereo male to 2-RCA male adapter into my AVR (on which the HDMI board seems to be broken) or my preamp (which has no digitality whatsoever).
2) Plug a USB stick into my BR player which sends audio to the AVR via SPDIF coax.
I find these methods less than ideal, and wonder if the XBOX One S could offer a better solution. I might then bestir myself to convert my quite bulky and dusty CD collection to disk and perhaps find it easier to explore the forgotten corners, or even dip a toe in the streaming (e.g. Deezer, Tidal ) world. Money is tight, and I am only considering it because of the emigration sale, but the Netflix and game player talents are very appealing. There is a problem in that it would blow up my possible/putative/fantasy/MaybeOneDay RaspberryPi+Dac (or equivalent) option, so if it could also scratch that itch, I would find it easier to justify to myself.
So...anyone tried it?
