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Melco Audio music libraries stream digital music files directly from internal storage, connected or netwrok drives , or from on-line streaming services with the highest sound quality. They also conveniently solve the problem of how to organize digital music files so you can quickly find the music you want to listen to

PC computer-based or IT industry NAS drive based systems can play digital files but are prevented from true high resolution audio because they are crippled from the start by inferior power supplies generating noise, bad data timing from poor pulse edges, and reflections on the data bus. By using dedicated hardware design, customized data management, the greatest possible data precision and noise mitigation, Melco Audio music libraries minimize the errors, noise, and jitter that degrades sound performance. No computer hardware, peripheral devices, or specialised IT knowledge is required

The free Melco HD App or other media player apps installed on your tablet or smart phone provide the control to play songs stored on the Melco or from Tidal and Qobuz streaming services.

An ethernet connection is required to receive the control and streaming services data, however a separate dedicated ethernet port positions the Melco Audio Music Library between the router and the Network Player filtering network traffic so only the audio data stream is passed onto the Network Player.

There is also a USB player for connection to a USB DAC. The proprietary USB-like internal bus architecture always keeps the data under rigorous clock control all the way to the USB audio connectors which become true high fidelity interfaces something which is never the case in the typical computer environment. This architecture also allows connection of other USB storage devices, and optical drives to rip or play CDs.

Melco Audio Music Libaraies come with Minim server, a highly tuned server software with better memory allocation management which is particularly important with very large audio files. SongKong music metadata management tool is also provided. The sharp front panel OLED displays connected devices, song title playing, sampling rate, storage used and guides the User through backup and CD ripping processes.

Built in Japan, Melco Music Libaraies have proven themselves to be extremely reliable.

Why Sound quality is limited when streaming from 'computers', DIY based servers, or plastic NAS drives

Audio processing is never the highest priority for operating systems in general purpose computers which are designed to manage multiple simultaneous tasks using an interrupt driven polling process to allocate processor resources moment by moment. In Laptops or PCs, moving data to and from disk drives is optimized for speed over precision and internal USB data transfer may not be bit perfect unless the drivers are well designed and robust.

When moving data, the lack of precision creates timing errors that induce jitter within the audio samples. Sound is further degraded by the introduction of noise from several sources; closely packed circuits operating at high frequencies, bursts of processor activity, and power spikes from hard drive operation. When random noise is mixed in with the digital samples it interferes with the DAC's ability to handle the digital stream.

How a Melco Audio Music Library is built from the ground up for higher sound quality

Precision is best achieved by keeping things simple and using a single threaded RISC type processor (ARM) to manage the digital data with instructions executing in one clock cycle on one "pipe". Data is preserved in a single stream - like a CD - giving far greater audio data timing precision than complex multi-threading CISC processors (INTEL) whose internal machine level instructions require varying numbers of clock cycles while creating higher levels of electrical noise and proximity interference that is very hard to completely remove and becomes a problem elsewhere.

Proprietary USB-like internal bus architecture always keeps the data under rigorous clock control all the way to the USB audio connectors which become true high fidelity interfaces something which is never the case in the typical computer environment. This keeps jitter very low.

In Melco Audio music libaries data is read (and written) to custom hard drives (HDDs) run at a lower speed and there is no noisy fan. In the Solid state drives (SSDs) background wear leveling optimization algorithms are carefully controlled so they don't intrude into music streaming

Power supplies are always important in audio but especially so with digital data. Low-noise power supplies, separate regulators are required. A true ground reference (3-wire IEC connector and metal casework) is not even considered in plastic NAS drives while internal batteries in Laptops have a floating ground and wall warts and 2-wire inline supplies have no grounding for interference rejection from circulating ground currents within the USB environment adding noise to other components in the Hi-Fi system. Using Optically isolated Ethernet ports prevents noise passing on to the network player and the rest of the audio system.

Minim server is highly tuned software with better memory allocation management which is particularly important with very large audio files.

Melco Audio switches for better sound from streaming services

Melco Audio's audiophile switches offer a helping hand to take care of network traffic removing noise introduced by low cost commodity routers and switches. Routers and switches provided by Internet Service Providers or sold in stores prioritize video data packets by default. Different speeds are required: 100MB ports for sound quality and 1GB ports to provide extra bandwidth for peripheral devices that generate a heavy load of network traffic such as the Roon Core. Fibre Optic SFP ports provide the means to use cables which reduce jitter in data tramission between components along the streaming chain.

Practical considerations in building a digital file library - finding the music we want to listen to - the usual methods don't always work!

Like grocery stores and public libraries, music collections need to be organized to find the music we want to listen to. As with the CD, if we rip "Ella and Louis Again" do we label as Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong? Is George-Ira Gershwin allowed? What about an aria from a three CD box set opera; not easy to remember if it's on the end of disc two or the beginning of disc three. There is no shelf position to help with digital files and unfortunately when the professional specifications for audio CDs (red book standards) were finalized, only a table of contents not track contents are encoded on the disc and a third party produced the booklet to go with it.

So its not suprising that because the "meta data" associated with digital files use inconsistent, highly specific (proprietary) or non-robust tagging (label) schemes, this information may "fall off" when copied using proprietary server and ripping technologies. Until now the only way to tidy up a music library was to export a music file to a PC and run a program to manually fix the tags (in a way the specific server software can understand) and the load back onto the music library server. A UPnP server that handling data transmission and presenting the library to the control point app may be confronted with incomplete meta data.

Minim Intelligent Music Library (MIML) - a better way to manage your digital music files

Melco Audio Music Libraries inludes a starter edition of "MinimServer" a specialised UPnP server platform with "Intelligent Browsing" developed independently by Simon Nash that lets you browse tags in any order and taking into account your previous browsing selections and contents of your music library. The starter edition in Melco Music libraries has preconfigured browsing profiles for classical, rock/pop and jazz. Each genre of music has its own set of applicable tags such as "choir or conductor" for classical music or "BPM" or "Record Producer" for rock. Once the music has been organized more appropriately, these convenient options make browsing far easier. You can further customize these and using advanced configuration features by upgrading to the full version of MininServer

SongKong music metadata management tool - add missing cover art or unnamed "track 01" songs and sort out duplicates

SongKong, a music metadata management tool developed by JThink Ltd indie developer Paul Taylor - is an indispensable comprehensive music library tool has been optimized in this version for Melco-Audio servers and comes with a set of reconfigured profiles to work with the MinimServer 2. Use directly without needing a PC and all changes are stored in a database and can be undone.

These software products work well together and are effective tools that add a lot of value to Melco-Audio products.