Would you buy a beautiful Viking stove if you knew you had to keep a Kenmore on hand to cook certain dishes? Most people would rather eat take-out every night than tolerate such a clumsy arrangement.

Yet those who use music servers—devices that store your music collection on a computer-style hard drive for easy, instant access—often live the same lie. Most music servers rely on a computer to transfer music to an MP3 player, burn CDs of your favorite music or download album-cover art. Last year, Escient’s FireBall E-40 server proved that computers are not mandatory accessories for music servers: On its own, the Fireball performed all the aforementioned tasks. However, its 40-gigabyte hard drive did not hold enough for serious music fans. The new E-120 solves that problem with a capacious 120-GB drive.

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Using the Fireball’s interface on any TV screen, you can select music by artist and genre, and create your own custom playlists. (Click image to enlarge)

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Using its internal CD recorder, FireBall can make regular or MP3 CDs of any music on the server—or of any music from your CD collection because it can also control CD changers. Your installer can connect up to three 200- to 400-disc CD changers to the E-120. It automatically identifies your CDs and places them on the same on-screen interface you use to play the hard drive’s MP3 files. It sorts and displays CDs by title, artist and genre for easy browsing, just as it does for MP3s. The advantage is you do not have to spend time copying all your CDs onto the hard drive. There is one limitation, though—the control feature works only with certain Kenwood, Pioneer and Sony CD and DVD changers.
FireBall’s Internet radio feature lets you access Internet radio stations from around the world through the same interface you use to select MP3s and CDs. Escient builds in a list of about 100 stations. You can also play other stations you choose, although you can only access stations that use Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio, not those relying solely only RealNetworks’ popular RealAudio format.

Most interesting, though, is that the E-120 allows you to hear all 60 channels from Sirius satellite radio through the Internet—a service that normally costs $12.95 a month but is free, at least for now, to FireBall owners. As Escient President Bernie Sepaniak tells us, “I don’t know that it will be free forever—they may change their business model someday—but it’s free for the foreseeable future.”

A single E-120 can also stream music to as many as four of Escient’s MP-100 Digital Music Players through your computer network, so you can acccess most of the music available through the E-120 from any room in your home. The MP-100 is basically an E-120 without a hard drive. It accesses Internet radio and MP3 files on the E-120’s hard drive, but cannot play CDs from changers connected to the E-120.

We encounter no problems in setting up and configuring FireBall. Once we wire the E-120 to a router so the server can access the Internet, everything is ready to go in about five minutes. While you will probably prefer to control FireBall through a Crestron-style touchscreen remote control, we do just fine with the supplied remote and wireless keyboard.

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The Fireball comes with a wireless keyboard, but most users will prefer to control it with a touchscreen remote. (Click image to enlarge)

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We then transfer a couple of CDs onto E-120’s hard drive. Other servers we have tested convert the digital audio from CDs directly to MP3, then store it on the hard drive. Once the CD is finished (which, on the servers we have tested, takes 11 to 22 minutes for an hour-long CD), the file is ready to use. Escient’s process, though, differs because the server copies a CD straight to its hard drive in about five minutes without converting it to MP3 first; then it does the MP3 conversion. Our E-120 takes about 50 minutes to convert the music from one CD.

The upside is you can record a couple dozen CDs in one-fourth to half the time other servers take, then let the E-120 do the MP3 conversion later. According to Escient, you can use any of the E-120’s functions during the conversion, although an operational glitch in our E-120 prevented us from doing so. The only downside is that it takes about three times as long for the final MP3s to be created and ready to play, but this should rarely pose a problem.

Once the MP3 conversion is finished, the song titles appear in a nice grid with album art, album and track names, and access to an online store where you can buy and download music. We use the E-120’s menus to sort the music into playlists, a particularly handy feature if you want to set a specific mood for a party or a romantic evening.

With the new larger hard drive, you can store up to 1,800 hours of MP3 music at the E-120’s standard quality setting of 192 kilobits/second, although that number drops to about 850 hours when using the higher-quality setting we prefer. That means you can have a 75-day party without repeating any music.

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The Fireball’s generic remote accesses all of its functions, but lacks the grace of a sophisticated touchscreen. (Click image to enlarge)

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FireBall achieves what so many audio servers cannot: It cuts the apron strings to the computer. And now it has enough hard-drive space to be truly useful. The interface is easy to use, and Escient is smart enough to know you might want to listen to your music somewhere besides your home—and makes it easy to do just that. The FireBall E-120 truly stands alone.

DESCRIPTION
Hard-drive-based music server with Internet radio, CD changer control and CD-R/CD-RW recorder. Stores and organizes music using CDDB Internet database.

CONNECTIONS
Audio: Three optical digital and three coaxial digital inputs for CD players, optical and coaxial digital outputs, RCA-style stereo analog input and output.
Video: VGA-style RGB output; S-video output, composite video output.
Control: IR in, three Sony S-Link out, three RS-232.
Networking: RJ-14 phone jack, RJ-45 Ethernet port, USB port for MP3 player connection.

RECORDING/PLAYBACK MODES
Records and plays uncompressed, and MP3 at 320 and 192 kilobits/second.

DIMENSIONS
4.6 x 17.4 x 11.8 inches (hwd).

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: E-120, $2,999; MP-100, $999
CONTACT: 800.372.4368 www.escient.com