FAQs
MELOS AUDIO – THE COMPANY
WHO ARE MELOS AUDIO?
We love music and we love building products that inspire and delight the customer, helping them to fall back in love with the soundtrack to their life.
THE MELOS AUDIO TRINITI
WHAT IS MELOS AUDIO TRINITI?
Triniti is a digital audio system, that stores, plays and streams your digital music collection in the highest possible sound quality.
Triniti has the storage capacity to hold your entire music collection in a lossless, uncompressed format. And this, along with the onboard high-quality DAC (Digital to Analogue Convertor), allows you to listen to your music in a level of sound quality that you’ve probably never heard before. Our DAC is engineered to be completely transparent, so that it doesn’t colour your music in any way, or embellish detail that doesn’t need it. You hear your music in the way in which it was intended by the artist.
This enjoyment is in addition to the beautiful design of the product, introducing an aesthetic appeal rarely seen in the world of HiFi. Triniti is wrapped in a cool, handcrafted anodised aluminium shell, fronted by a carefully oiled Walnut bezel, which incorporates the innovative capacitive touch panel to switch the unit from standby to on and back. There are no buttons on the unit, nor a cheap remote control, as it simply doesn’t need them.
Triniti is controlled via your smartphone or tablet (Android and iOS) or another computer. These devices need to be connected a WiFi network, on the same physical network as the Triniti, which is connected back to your WiFi router via an ethernet cable.
Every Triniti includes Roon music library management and control software, which we believe is the best ever conceived. We are official Roon partners and Triniti is designed around the software.
WHEN SO MANY OTHER MANUFACTURERS OFFER WIFI WITH THEIR PRODUCTS, WHY HAVE MELOS AUDIO NOT INCLUDED IT WITH TRINITI?
We want our customers to enjoy the best possible experience when listening to their music. We can’t guarantee this with WiFi connectivity, as we (as a manufacturer) have no control over the quality of the WiFi signal and strength and equipment that you use to allow WiFi in your home. A poor quality WiFi service will result in audio dropouts, glitches and pauses in playback that will spoil your enjoyment. It only takes a glitch of a fraction of a second to turn enjoyment into frustration. We therefore only recommend using a wired network connection for your Triniti unit.
If feeding a network cable to your Triniti unit is impractical, we’ve successfully tested Triniti with many of the various Powerline ethernet adapters on the market that allow you to use a spare plug to route a network connection from your router to the location of your Triniti unit.
IS TRINITI AN ALL-IN-ONE SYSTEM? DO I NEED ANYTHING ELSE LIKE SPEAKERS?
Triniti is the home for your music collection, allowing you to stream it to other WiFi or Apple AirPlay© enabled speakers you may have in your home. However, to use the onboard DAC built into the Triniti, you’ll need to connect Triniti to either an amplifier and pair of speakers via the RCA connections on the rear of the Triniti or a pair of active speakers.
For a more minimalist system, where space is at a premium, we’d recommend connecting Triniti to a pair of active speakers.
We thoroughly recommend using Triniti with a pair of Xeo 2 (bookshelf size) or Xeo 6 (floorstanding) active speakers from Dynaudio
If you have any questions about this, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to advise.
CAN I CONNECT TRINITI INTO MY EXISTING AV RECEIVER?
Yes, of course. Just identify a spare analog input on your AV receiver (such as Remote or CD) and connect Triniti via RCA leads. Be sure to configure your AV receiver to use stereo mode to drive just two speakers (or 2.1 to include a subwoofer if you have one) when using the Triniti input.
HOW DO I GET MY MUSIC ONTO TRINITI?
You can copy your collection onto Triniti by using another computer connected to the same network. Search for Triniti on your network, then drag and drop your music collection into the Triniti’s storage folder. Once done, Roon will recognise the music that has been added to Triniti and then organise it all ready for your enjoyment.
MUSIC FORMAT
WHAT IS UNCOMPRESSED, LOSSLESS OR HIGH-RES MUSIC?
Uncompressed or lossless music simply means CD-quality music stored in the quality that it was originally recorded onto CD. It’s music that hasn’t been converted to a compressed format, or sampled at a lower rate.
Two main audio formats, such as .WAV and .AIFF have the ability to store music in an uncompressed form. The .FLAC file format does compress audio, but doesn’t lose anything in the process, so is still deemed to be lossless and therefore suitable for storing/archiving CD data.
Formats such as .MP3 and .AAC both compress music files and lose some of the detail too. Perfect for using on your portable digital audio players or smartphones, where you don’t tend to miss the quality anyway, but on very detailed and high quality audio systems, you’ll find that the music sounds a little flat and lifeless.
High-Res music tends to refer to music of a quality that surpasses the standards set by CD-based audio. CDs have a bit depth of 16-bit and a sampling rate of 44.1kHz
The sampling rate refers to the number of times samples of the signal are taken per second during the analogue-to-digital conversion process. The more bits there are (as in bit-depth), the more accurately the signal can be measured. Going from 16-bit up to 24-bit (which TIDAL offers on its Masters collection) will deliver a noticeable gain in quality. Hi-res audio files usually use a sampling rate of 96kHz or 192kHz at 24-bit.
WILL MY COMPRESSED MUSIC COLLECTION WORK WITH TRINITI? I DON’T HAVE MY MUSIC COLLECTION IN A LOSSLESS FORMAT.
The Triniti will play compressed music, but bear in mind that in doing so, you’re not benefitting from the full experience of listening to your music in its full quality and detail.
You’ll hear your compressed music for what it really is. Even though our DAC has a neutral bias and zero colouring, it will reveal everything and won’t cover anything up. So if your music suddenly sounds a little flat and lifeless, that’s because it is!
I USED ITUNES TO COPY MY CDS, SO THAT’S OK, ISN’T IT?
We’ve all been here, going back around 10 years – the rush to get our CD collection digitised and loaded onto our iPod or iPhone. Chances are though, the quality at which your CDs were sampled at may have been overlooked. This being the case, your digital music collection is of a lesser quality than the source, i.e. your CDs.
In most circumstances, compressed music sounds OK and listened to via portable Bluetooth speakers or standard issue earphones or earbuds, you probably won’t feel like you’re missing anything.
If you do still have your CD collection, it is well worth re-sampling them in lossless quality so that you’ll always have a digital copy of your music in CD quality.
When you listen to it on Triniti, you’ll hear the difference.
I STILL HAVE MY CD COLLECTION – HOW CAN I MAKE ANOTHER COPY IN LOSSLESS/UNCOMPRESSED FORMAT?
You have a couple of options available, depending upon how large your CD collection is and how much spare time you have!
Option 1 – The DIY Route (for smaller collections and if you have the time and inclination)
If you have a computer available to use with a built-in CD/DVD/BluRay drive, you can sign up for a free trial or purchase a copy of DB PowerAmp CD Ripper software. It’s compatible with Windows and OS X computers.
Take your time getting to know how it all works, but once done, this software is great and is our recommendation.
This approach is fine for a small collection of CDs, but it does take time to work your way through your collection.
Option 2 – The Done-for-you route
By far the quickest and easiest option, have someone else do it for you.
When you buy a Melos Audio Triniti, we’ll rip the first 250 CDs in your collection for you.
We have a great relationship with PodServe, who manage the process for us.
If your CD collection is in excess of 250 CDs, then you simply pay the extra at the checkout when you buy the Triniti. We’ll take care of the rest.
When you order your Triniti, we can even carefully co-ordinate the build of your system to coincide with the copying of your CD collection, enabling us to even load your freshly copied CD collection onto your new Triniti before shipping it to you.
WHAT STREAMING SERVICES CAN BE USED ON TRINITI?
At present, Triniti works with TIDAL only. TIDAL is one of a small handful of online music streaming services that has a largely high-res (i.e. uncompressed) collection of music.
TIDAL is tightly integrated with Roon, so it’s a seamless transition to browse both your own music collection along with the content offered by TIDAL.
HOW MANY CDS CAN I STORE ON TRINITI?
Triniti comes in three different models, featuring either a 1TB, 2TB and 4TB storage drive.
1TB = around 1400 audio CDs
2TB = around 2800 audio CDs
4TB = around 5600 audio CDs
CAN YOU UPSCALE MY COMPRESSED MUSIC COLLECTION?
TBCCAN I IMPORT MY EXISTING ITUNES PLAYLIST INTO TRINITI?
Yes, this is catered for with Roon and there’s an easy step by step process to follow to enable this. You would perform this step after copying your music collection onto the Triniti.
HOW DO I BACK UP MY MUSIC WHEN IT'S STORED IN TRINITI?
We’ve developed a backup and restore utility for the Melos Audio Triniti. This allows you to plug in a blank USB drive to the USB port on the rear of the unit, then simply launch the backup built-in utility to create a full backup of your precious music collection. You can then disconnect and store the USB drive in a safe place.
If you add more music to your Triniti over time, then simply repeat the backup process again to capture all of the new music. Our backup utility is smart enough to ignore the existing music that it has already captured and will just focus upon the new music that it hasn’t seen before.
WHAT IF I HAVE A LARGE CD COLLECTION, IN EXCESS OF THE STORAGE OFFERED BY TRINITI?
The Melos Audio Triniti, via Roon software, will allow you to connect a different storage medium to it, for example a NAS drive or simply a USB drive connected directly to the unit.
However, the larger the music collection, the more load it places on the RAM and CPU of the Triniti. Our hardware isn’t designed to cope with such heavy loads, so performance may suffer as a result. It may work, but your experience will not be the same, so as that is our key focus, we wouldn’t recommend using the Triniti with music collections in excess of 5600 CDs.
WHY ISN’T A CD DRIVE INCLUDED OR BUILT INTO THE TRINITI?
CD drives are prone to failure and ripping CDs requires specialist software. We aren’t a software manufacturer (which is why our product is based around Roon) and we’d rather concentrate upon delivering a great experience to our customers.
ROON
WHAT IS ROON?
Roon is music library management and control software, designed to work on Windows, Apple Mac and Linux-based computer platforms, along with apps available for use on smartphones/tablets.
It was launched back in 2015 and was discovered by us shortly afterwards, as we were specifically looking for the ultimate music software to pair with our conceptual audio hardware product.
Roon is, we believe, the very best music management and control software available to use. It is far superior, in every way, to any HiFi manufacturer’s in house attempt at library management and control software.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROON NUCLEUS AND MELOS AUDIO TRINITI?
There are some similarities between the two products, but also a lot of differences. Both use Roon OS as the core operating system (ours is a modified version of Roon OS).
The Melos Audio Triniti incorporates a very high-quality DAC, whereas the Nucleus does not.
Triniti incorporates gentle curves into its design and natural wood; the Nucleus enjoys more of an industrial look and feel.
They’re different systems designed with slightly different customers in mind. However, both offer a wonderful world of musical enjoyment.
WHO IS THE MELOS AUDIO TRINITI AIMED AT?
They also appreciate carefully considered product design and the beauty of a complete, high-res audio system in a small footprint.