From One to Many

Request built its name as the Mercedes of music servers. Other music servers work fine, but most of them are as dully competent as a Toyota Corolla. Like an E-Class sedan, Request’s servers rise above mediocrity with superior construction and thoughtful, unique features.

Music servers make the most sense when you can access them from any room in your home, which hasn’t been so easy to do with Request’s products. The company set itself to fixing the problem—and, in the process, its engineers rethought the way a multiroom system should work.

The result is the iQ, an entire multiroom system built around a music server. Even though it’s structured differently from most competing systems, the iQ is not really so different in day-to-day operation. Once again, it is Request’s unique, thoughtful features that distinguish the product.

Most multiroom systems center around a switcher/amplifier. Your installer connects source devices, like a CD player and a radio, and the switcher/amp routes the sound to multiple rooms. With the iQ system, the iQ.IMS music server is the core. The IMS can emit as many as four separate music streams, plus radio from optional XM and AM/FM tuners, streaming audio from the Internet, audio from cable boxes and satellite tuners, and music from the Finetune online service. Instead of having a closet full of gear, you have just a few boxes—and your installer has a lot less programming and configuring to do. Request’s 16-channel iQ.IMA amplifier provides the power; no other amplifier will work with the iQ.IMS.

Your principal interface will probably be the iQ.TS35, a 3.5-inch, in-wall touchscreen. When you’re not fussing with it, the screen shows the weather and/or the latest numbers in your stock portfolio. Personally, the thought of my music collection flowing through the same device that delivers my financial market news makes me queasy, but I’d probably better get over it. How much aesthetic purity can anyone who lives in the same county as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan really achieve, anyway?

Back to the iQ.TS35. Those who aren’t afraid to punch a button will quickly figure out how to use the TS35 to browse their music collection by artist, genre, song, or album. Hard buttons on the right let you navigate through the music collection, while hard buttons on the left adjust volume and mute the sound. The screen also displays album art, which gives it a certain “wow” factor compared with more basic control devices.

Request offers other control interfaces, too. The TS.15 is a jumbo, 15-inch touchscreen that’s somewhat easier to navigate than the iQ.TS35 but is rather bulky. It’s best suited to sit on a tabletop or bar. There’s also the Freedom, a wireless Nokia Web tablet with a 4-inch screen that employs the same exact control interface as the TS35. Like all of these interface devices, the Freedom can control the sound in any room, so it’s practical to carry it around the house with you—and maybe even to use it as your sole iQ interface. You can also control the iQ system from any computer on your home network.

All of this is nice, but none of it is revolutionary. What Request gets so right with this system is the way it interfaces with that most popular of all music servers, the iPod. That sentence is not really accurate, though: The iQ system actually interfaces with the computer that interfaces with your iPod. It accesses all of the music and podcasts that you have stored in iTunes, even those that you’ve purchased through iTunes that are burdened with digital rights management, or DRM. Thus, you can take your iPod on a trip, and your spouse can still access that music while you’re gone. What’s more, you can set the iQ.IMS to rip your CDs twice: once at a high bitrate for home listening and once at a lower bitrate for the iPod. You can then transfer the music from your server into iTunes and onto the iPod. No other music server comes close to this level of iPod integration.

Two other features that carry over from Request’s past designs are well worth mentioning. First, you can stream music from your iQ system through the Internet to any computer anywhere; so, when you’re traveling, you can play all of your music through your laptop. Second, if you install Request servers in multiple homes, you can set them to sync with each other automatically, so a CD that you rip in your Dallas home also appears on the Request server in your Maui condo.

The fact that the iQ system spreads your music collection throughout your house is nice, but other products do that, too. What’s exciting about iQ is that it accesses more of your music—and sends it to more places—than any other music server I’ve seen.

DESCRIPTION
Multiroom music-server system that consists of the iQ.IMS music server, iQ.IMA 16-channel amplifier, and various control devices.

POWER OUTPUT
16 channels, 80 watts per channel

CONNECTIONS
iQ.IMS: RCA jacks for six stereo audio outputs and stereo audio input, coaxial digital audio input and output, optical digital audio output, two USB jacks, RS-232 jack, eight RJ-45 jacks for iQ.TS35 connection, RJ-45 jack for network connection, DB-15 VGA output for TS.15, component, S-video, and composite video jacks for onscreen display

iQ.IMA: RCA jacks for eight stereo audio inputs (each with loop-through output), 16 pairs of plastic binding posts for speaker connection, RS-232 and USB control jacks, block connector for trigger and doorbell mute

iQ.TS35: RJ-45 jack

TS.15: USB cable, DB-15 VGA cable

PRICE/CONTACT
Price: iQ.IMS and iQ.IMA $7,000, iQ.TS35 $500, TS.15 $1,500, TS.15N (network-connected) $2,500, Freedom $1,200
Contact: 800.236.2812, Request.com