Music On Tap

Elac Discovery DS-S101-G Music Server

- Al Griffin

BEFORE DIVING INTO A REVIEW of Elac’s Discovery DS-S101-G music server, it seems apt to ask: What is a music server? In the past, it was a standalone audio component with a built-in hard disk that stored and played a ripped CD collection while connecting to the internet to fetch metadata. While products that fit this description still exist, a music server can also be something as basic as a software application running on a computer or on a network-attached storage (NAS) appliance. The server application, wherever it may reside, acts as a librarian for your digital audio files, sorting and retrieving them, and then routing the data to a USB DAC or a networked audio component that translates the ones and zeros into music.

With no built-in storage, Elac’s Discovery is a compact component that links to either external USB storage or a NAS device, provides analog and digital outputs to connect to your audio system, and is controlled by an app. In this case, however, the software that runs the show is from Roon Labs, a music library and discovery platform that has earned acclaim for its advanced user interface and sophisticated handling of metadata. Regular users of Roon pay $119 per year (or $499 lifetime) for a subscription. With the Elac Discovery, you get a scaled down version called Roon Essentials—included at no extra charge. The main difference is that, with Essentials, your music library is limited to a still substantial 30,000 tracks.