BIOS: Technology Means Business

Sony’s RC-Series is designed to set the standard for the home digital studio. It offers excellent features for sound and video editing, with full support for both the DSD Audio and HD Video standards.

HDTV is poised to become the TV standard of choice (yes, we’re still waiting here in the UK FFS - Ed!), alongside HD-format movies and HD camcorders. Unlike conventional PCs, the RC-Series is ahead of the curve because it can be use as a fully HD-compatible home server.

The tower system (from £1200) is supplied with a Sony Network Media Receiver 200 (VGP-MR200E), capable of streaming HD content to an HD-ready TV elsewhere in the home. Controlled from a TV interface via remote, the Network Media Receiver also provides access to your PC-based photo library and music collection. Just as video and images are routed to the TV, music is sent directly to your sound system.

The Network Media Receiver is future-proofed by DLNA compliance. This open standard for interoperability and compatibility was created by the Digital Living Network Alliance of which Sony is a founder member.

Just as HD represents the future of the moving image, Super Audio CD is the next-generation music format. The RC-Series can record, edit and play music at SA-CD quality, and even upgrade older recordings to the new standard.

The key to all this is the Sony Sound Reality audio processor which can up-convert conventional CD-quality music into uncompressed Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format. Using the pre-installed SonicStage Mastering Studio software, the DSD signal can be re-mastered into 5.1 Super Audio CD, revitalising the original.

The power behind the RC-Series comes from Intel’s new dual-core Pentium D processor. The VGC-RC202 uses the 2.8GHz Pentium D 920. Dual-core technology is effectively a two-in-one architecture that offers huge potential speed advantages over the old single-core approach, making it the ideal choice for machines like these.

When it comes to the visuals, nVidia’s 256MB GeForce 6600 graphics provides the muscle. Why on earth doesn’t Sony ever ship decent gaming cards with any of its systems? Behind the scenes, twin hard disks in a RAID 0 array yield up to 600GB of storage and there’s 1024MB (2 x 512MB) of 533MHz DDR2 memory.

The RC-Series is among the world’s first ASIO (Audio Stream Input Output) ready Windows-based PCs, running the Steinberg-developed ASIO 2.1 audio driver architecture. Branded Sound Reality by VAIO, a marriage of technologies offers another first in terms of its advanced DSD (Direct Stream Digital) audio solution for PCs.

This advanced level of audio integration creates a sophisticated proposition for several different audiences, including the music professional, the home studio user and the enthusiastic domestic music consumer.

In order to provide maximum audio processing functionality without affecting background CPU performance, Sony has integrated the PC’s audio capabilities on a dedicated one-chip DSD solution using ASIO 2.1 as the integration platform within the PC. Alongside the DSD chip, the new Sound Reality by VAIO PC owes much of its audio processing power to a new version of Sony’s SonicStage Mastering Studio.

This application lets you record, edit and play music in both DSD and PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) audio formats. Its PCM recording capability is critical since this is the core enabling technology behind CD. You can take a standard stereo CD, rip it to your PC hard disk drive and thenup-convert the audio signal to a fully uncompressed DSD audio stream.

[Best Desktop PC Pricing UK]
[Best Desktop PC Pricing US]

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