Recording and Production in the News

Competition winner Paul experiences the sweet sound of success

"Absolutely perfect!" That was how Paul Johnson from Solihull described the fabulous home entertainment system he recently won after entering the on-line competition we recently ran in conjunction with Stuff and What Hi-Fi magazines.

The prize included an Imerge XiVA® musicM8™ dedicated entertainment server, a Sonos Zonebridge and a Sonon S5 speaker.

On hearing that he had won, Paul was so surprised he initially thought our phone call was a scam. But when his prize arrived a few days later he was delighted.

"The prize is brilliant and everything fits in perfectly with my current hi-fi kit," he says. "Co-incidentally, I recently bought a Sonos Zoneplayer 90 that I use to stream music from my PC, via a BT Homehub broadband router to a Denon 2307 AV receiver and then to a pair of B&W 685 speakers. I also stream to a pair of ancient TDL RTL1 speakers in a separate room. The prize has enabled me to use the Sonos S5 speaker in whichever room I choose and stream the music wirelessly."

Paul adds that the Xiva MusicM8 also allows him to free up space on his PC hard drive and keep all of his media on one server. As Paul has discovered, this advanced, dedicated entertainment server is the great way to store precious music collections, photo memories, movie clips and more, then play back and browse wherever and whenever you want.

Another advantage offered by the XiVA musicM8 is the ability to encode audio to MP3, FLAC and WAV, and even dual encode to both MP3 and FLAC or MP3 and WAV. This means that whenever you rip a CD or download an audio track, you can have a high quality file available for your HiFi system and another for your iPod.

"I am currently transferring my music to the Xiva musicM8, although I am considering ripping my CDs again at a higher bit-rate," Paul says. "I also want to use the Zonebridge to extend the system at some point. I love the fact that I can control all this from an iPod Touch or an iPad - in fact the only downside I've experienced so far is that the S5 keeps being hi-jacked by my daughters!

Imerge is now offering another lucky person the chance to win a great home entertainment system - this time consisting of an XiVA musicm8, a Sonos ZonePlayer 120 and PMC DB1i speakers. To enter all you have to do is log on to www.xiva.com, answer a simple question and fill in your details before September 30th 2011 and you could also be taking home a fantastic prize.