Pro X100 (HDD 4TB) …

Cocktail Audio has created some excellent features in the Pro X-100 with an improvement over my Cocktail Audio X-40 in the identification of music titles and artwork, although it still requires a great deal of user assistance instead of doing the job automatically over the internet with Gracenote or a similar service. This remains a flaw that has made my purchase of the Pro X-100 disappointing. That said, there are several other critical areas that seriously require improvement. The device operates on an array of different apps that must be installed and then have little, if any instruction on their use, or otherwise don't work well, since they are not tailored specifically to the Pro X-100's operational design. This adds complexity to it's use far beyond what should be simple, easy and enjoyable process to store, display and deliver high-quality music to an audio system. The unit has the capacity to do the job well if Cocktail Audio developers would expend more effort on examining the user interface and ease-of-use issues. These issues are a serious obstacle to the enjoyment of what otherwise could be an excellent and very useful product. I have raised these issues previously with an email direct to Cocktail Audio, but did not receive a reply or indication of interest in anything that I said. These are pricey components, and therefore should work as expected. It is my hope that Cocktail will rise to the challenge of becoming a strong competitor in the ample space that exists in the market for a high-quality music server that includes all of the best features and capacity...and, very importantly, is easy to use.

Hardware does the job admirably. I am using this to rip my CD collection and also to server music from attached USB drive containing terabytes of previously ripped flac files.I am using the devices optical output into a Musical Fidelity VDAC then to passive attenuator (Creek OBH-12) then to QUAD 909 amp to ELAC Debut tower speakers.The sound quality of this system is magnificent. No listener fatigue after 8 hours and the band/orchestra sound like they are in the room with me.I do sympathize with the complaints of the 1st reviewer. One should be comfortable with the practice of installing and using web apps on music server or be willing to spend some time to learn the apps and how to configure and use them. Some of the configuration steps are not well documented and are tricky to get right. For example I am TIDAL subscriber and getting this to work takes concentration and careful setting of configs in various places, or it simply does not work and there is no indication why.On the other hand, the internet radio sources that don't require coordination of usernames and passwords are fairly trivial to setup in the player.So if you are willing to put in the effort to get the trickier streaming apps setup in the player, and willing to learn the devices setup screens, and have an audio system capable of reproducing highest quality hi fi audio, and want to rip and stream terabytes of sound files, I think you will be very happy with this device. I am!