Who fancies a cocktail? Let’s face it, it’s the perfect time of the year for one. Or two. Or five (we won’t judge!) in fact, for the purpose of this blog, we’re going to indulge you with three delicious cocktails. All perfectly put together with killer ingredients and expert mixing! Great any time of year, but particularly the festive season.
Don’t worry, we’re not about to bombard you with beautiful drinks. This is hi-fi, which means our version of a Cocktail is something else altogether! If you haven’t heard of Cocktail Audio yet, and you think you could benefit from a system that encompasses everything that’s good about easy, accessible, lifestyle hi-fi, squeezing it all elegantly into one place, then this is something you need to read.
Nothing says more about a brand than the products within, so here are the three stages of the perfect cocktail. Each is designed with ease of use and complete versatility in mind, and each is designed to take the hard work (and the endless need for separation!) that the quest for high fidelity sound a thing of the past. If you love music, but you love your time, your space and your money just as much, one of these “hi-fi in a box” set ups may indeed be the right thing for you. And if it’s not for you, it’ll definitely be right for someone.
Oh and remember, Cocktail also go by the name Nova Acoustics. Different names, but the products are the same. Oh and each one has different hard drive sizes available – just make sure you refer to each one separately to see what they are.
And now for the fun stuff! That right there is the Cocktail Audio X12 media player and server. It’s the lowest priced model in the ‘hi-fi in a box’ range, yet still manages to pack one heck of a punch, in terms of both features, and sound! It’s is a HD (i.e. 192KHz/24bit sample rate/) hi-fi music server with a hard drive, but that’s not the main point here. What really makes the X12 the intriguing little device that it is, is the CD Ripper, which allows for the high quality ripping with CD meta data (including album cover art!). This coupled with the ability to load your vinyl and cassette tape collections on board (all in CD quality!) means that this is one of the most effective ways of gathering all of your music (and I mean all!) together in one place, and then not having to worry about it, ever again! … and, if you can believe it, there’s more to it than that. The X12 supports several different file formats including: Hi-res 24bit/192kHz WAV and FLAC files, Apple Lossless, Audio Codec (ALAC), APE/CUE, M4A, AIFF… and pretty much every one you can think of. It also boasts the ability to stream too, supporting the services Qobuz, Simfy and Reciva internet radio, all of which are easily controlled by the 4.3inch TFT LCD screen with full colour user-friendly GUI (and the remote, and yes: there’s an app too!). Also, if you have yourself an iOS device, there’s the ability to stream wirelessly via the Share Play function. It has a built in amp too, so there’s no need for adding anything else. Just plug in your speakers, rip some CDs and away you go. Not a bad little all-rounder, I’d say. But yes, there’s still room for improvement. Stepping things up, we have the Cocktail Audio X30 all-in-one hi-fi system. Yes, it rips and does everything the X12 does so well, but there’s a little more to it than that. The X30 is a HD music server, a network streamer, a NAS Drive, a CD Player and an Amplifier in one unit. All you have to do is add speakers, and you have a fully functioning hi-fi music syste, capable of extraordinary things, that’s completely ‘no fuss’. Rip-wise, it utilises an optical disc drive (ODD) with 24x high speed. You can listen to music while ripping too (which makes the whole process of actually loading up your CDs much less labourious!) and best of all, it’s compatible with CD, CD-DA, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-R/RW. So no matter what format you’re storing your tunes in, there’s a way of getting it on there. And thanks to the inbuilt Burr Brown DAC (the PCM1792A, just in case you’re interested!) the isolated power source and the powerful (and dynamic 100W (50W per channel) digital amp, the sound is top notch. Oh, and it’s fanless too. So that makes sure any interference is at a minimum. Thanks to a huge range of inputs and outputs, the X30 is incredibly versatile. If you can dream up a use for it, it’s likely to be possible. You can even hook it up to a monitor, which means you can display the album art while it plays. And on top of all that, there’s network streaming and internet radio too, alongside wireless capabilities. If versatility, complete hassle-free access and a decent sound quality are your bag, the X30 will not disappoint. It currently supports up to 4TB of 3.5” hard disk, 1TB of 2.5” hard disk and 500GB of SSD, and increased capacity will be supported by impending firmware updates. So basically, you’re covered. Even as your music collection grows! Last, but by no means least, we have the gorgeous Cocktail Audio X40 media player and server. The X40 does everything that the X30 does (which, let’s face it, is a lot!) but seriously takes things up a notch in terms of quality. A seriously serious notch. It’s probably easier of we just bullet-it from here on… – Premium DSD DXD Audio DAC featuring native DSD file direct playback What that amounts to is the potential for a serious piece of hi-fi kit, with plenty of room for improvement. Even the aluminium chassis is more rugged and hard-bearing. Overall, it’s an amazing device. Rugged, powerful, versatile and with a clean, detailed and dynamic sound, no matter what you chose to play (it even has gapless playback, so if Opera/Classical is your bag, it’s got that covered. So. Cocktail has options. Hi-fi in a box, at your finger tips (quite literally, there are apps!), all you have to decide is: how much quality do you want from your components? If you have any questions, or would like to arrange a demo (it’ll be a pretty easy one if you do, they’re legendarily easy to use even at the highest level) then give us a shout. If you’d like to take a closer look, you can see the whole Cocktail/Nova range (including the models above) by clicking here.
X30
X40
– Playback of DSD64 (2.8224MHz), DSD128 (5.6448MHz), DXD (24bit/352.8KHz), PCM signal up to 32bit/384KHz including
24bit/192KHz WAV/FLAC and full range of hi-res audio file formats
– ES9018K2M Sabre³² Reference DAC built-in
– XMOS 32Bit/500MIPS digital signal processing unit
– Phono INPUT (Moving Magnet) for turntable
– 192kHz sample rate for vinyl and cassette ‘rips’
– 5 inch full color TFT LCD for intuitive GUI
– HDMI Out connector for using an external screen (such as your TV or monitor) as its GUI screen
– Supports up to 3.5″ SATA hard disk 4TB, 2.5″ hard disk and SSD (with the potential for updates)