Spending time in Holland this week speaking with people about streaming audio brings home a point made to me over and over - "I don't want a computer in my listening room". This even with the knowledge that our upcoming Silent Server is, in fact, a dedicated computer - which seems to be ok to folks because it has only one purpose in life - serving music and the customer.
So it isn't that we don't want a "computer" in the room - it's that we don't want a "work device" in the room.
I am sitting at my laptop "work device" writing this post. The very laptop I use at our seminars to serve the music and the very laptop people point to and don't want anywhere near their systems. They see a keyboard, a screen, confusion, work and everything their high-end systems are meant to get them away from.
The upcoming Silent Server, however, is a box without a keyboard, without a screen, dedicated to a single purpose in life: serving music and serving the needs of the system owner. Yet technically we all know it's a "computer".
What I take away from these wonderful interactions with our customers is the word "computer" means work and the potental of being required to do something other than just kick back and enjoy the tunes.
So I will remove the engineer in me and agree.
No computers in the listening room!
