Melco N50

DIGITAL MUSIC LIBRARY

- KALMAN RUBINSON

Melco, the Japanese maker of the N50 Music Library featured in this review, is not a household name among US audiophiles. Veterans may recall the Melco 3560 turntable, which was considered extravagant at its 1978 launch, in part because it supported three tonearms. Confusingly, several subsidiaries of the giant keiretsu Mitsubishi are called MELCO (for “Mitsubishi Electric Corporation”), but the maker of the N50 is not one of those MELCOs. This “Melco” is, rather, short for “Maki Engineering Laboratory Company,” and though it got its start in hi-fi, these days its best-known products are network-attached RAID arrays made by Melco’s American division, Buffalo Americas.

Melco’s audio division, known as Melco Syncrets, sells products similar to those produced by Buffalo Americas but tuned for hi-fi, including servers that incorporate all the digital elements that benefit from a being in a single box. The new N50 lacks only a DAC to be a complete digital source.