StreetFire RBX1600

Manage your collection of CDs store in up to four Sony MegaStorage CD Changers with the RBX1600.

Photo Courtesy of StreetFire

The StreetFire RBX1600 home media device takes management of your music collection in a different direction. Instead of focusing on MP3s and video files, the developers at StreetFire Sound Labs have created a product which uses your PC, home network and a broadband connection to help manage your actual collection of CDs stored in up to four Sony MegaStorage CD changers.

The RBX1600 is capable of managing up to 1600 audio CDs. It sits quietly in your home entertainment cabinet alongside your Sony MegaStorage CD changers, providing the ability to control your collection with customizable playback capabilities which can be set from any computer on your network.

Management of your CD collection first occurs at your computer. After loading CDs into your changers, the RBX1600 communicates with your router to do searches of the FreeDB online music database to retrieve the usual artist, album and song title information. This is displayed in the open source media management software, which is compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows operating systems. Through this software, the CD collection can be browsed, searched, filtered, playlists can be created and track information edited.

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The RBX1600, using the information collected and created by the management software, commands the appropriate Sony MegaStore CD changer to do things like sample the carousal, play the CDs and display CD information like track and titles. Control of what is playing, including predefined playlists, can be handled either through a remote control or the software.

Photo Courtesy of StreetFire

On the back of the RBX1600 a number of ports and interfaces exist. Among these there are four S-Link A-I/II ports for controlling the Sony Megastore CD changers, a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet port, four optical digital audio outputs and one input and a analog output.

Under the hood of the RBX1600 exists a StreetRacer CPU card with a 400Mhz high performance Intel XScale processor. The device also houses 64 MB of flash memory to store the application software that runs in the device, your CD collection?s information and your customized playlists so that you can use your changers even when your computer is off.

Keeping in mind the open ended design of the software, the RBX1600 is open ended as well. The developers encourage owners to modify the Linux based device as they see fit through ?HackPoint? interfaces which allow the box to be re-purposed for just about any other task.

The developers, through downloadable updates, plan upgrades of the device to allow streaming of the CDs over your home network in the near future.

For more information, visit StreetFire’s RBX1600 website.