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I had two goals in reviewing the McIntosh MS300, to find out how easy it is to use and how good it sounds. You can back up all the music on the MS300's hard drive onto an external computer with the required storage capacity (a very large hard drive). And for operations more easily done with a keyboard input (such as loading the Web address for a favored internet radio station), a wireless keyboard is provided. I suspect that most MS300s will find their way into custom installations with upscale touchscreen remotes. ![]() Many of the most used buttons are very small and labeled with tiny letters. The MS300 comes with a generic, universal remote that serves the purpose but has far more buttons than you need. This limitation is the result of copyright concerns. One obvious shortcoming of the Internet radio feature is that you can't record the radio content, either on the hard drive or a CD, for later playback at home or in your car. But I doubt if many readers will use it as a primary music source. It's a nice feature, despite the limited audio quality this source offers, and fine for news, weather, sports, and talk. The MS300 can receive it, catalog stations, display a list of stations on its Radio Guide, add, delete, and edit stations to the Radio Guide, and play them back over your system. The MS300 can also stream MP3 music files to the web browser. And because the MS300 also has its own built-in web server, it may be remotely controlled over a home network using a standard web browser. Updates to the system software are also downloaded over the Internet link, either automatically or manually. But the system did find the covers for a few rarities, such Songs of the Sephardim, on Dorian Discovery. Admittedly, a lot of the titles I chose are far from the mainstream. In this event, it simply uses a generic, pre-loaded cover, a variety of which are provided for a number of genres, like classical or jazz. ![]() The system could not find the cover art on a surprising number of the 80 CDs I loaded onto the server in the course of this review. The latter requires an external Modem (not included). ![]() A high speed Internet connection is strongly recommended, but a dial up link may also be used. An Ethernet port is provided on the back of the MS300 for this purpose. Some of the information stored and displayed on the server about each title (particularly the cover art) is downloaded from the Gracenote disc lookup service on web. In order to use the MS300 properly, it must be connected to the Internet. These Playlists and Groups may be edited or added to at any time. These playlists are then added to the master directory by the name you give them-and also listed in the Group genre. You can create custom Playlists as well-tracks from the same or any number of different titles arranged in any order you choose.
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