Melco N1A Network Storage and more.

What does it do? First of all it brings your music back where it should be, that is, with your Hi-Fi where it belongs. It sits in your Hi-Fi rack together with your favourite bits of Hi-Fi kit rather than in another room as part of a computer system.

It comes with 4 USB sockets for one backup (USB 3) one for expansion (USB 3) one for import (USB3.0) and for convenience one on the front panel for import (USB 2). It's got plenty of space for your music as it contains 2 x 2TB hard drives (that can be used as a raid array).

In operation it is superb. Plug it in, power it up, and within half a minute it is ready to use. This product is built from the ground up for audio streaming and you can tell. In a blind test against our usual NAS I picked the Melco every time.

Recently it had an update which allows you to plug in a Dac for a complete solution. As I was writing this we received the new 2qute Dac from Chord electronics so out the box it came, we plugged it into the Melco and it worked flawlessly straight away (Stay tuned for an upcoming blog on the 2qute).

For me this is a game changing product as we can now, with confidence, sell you the complete streaming solution that works out of the box without getting bogged down with talk of computer periferals. Don't take my word for it though, come and have look and listen.