Melco N1 Digital Music Library

The N1 is Melco’s all new flagship music library and sits right at the top of their range above the N10/2 and also the old flagship model the N1ZS

As you can see from the images Melco have completely redesigned the N1, it is pretty much completely new from ground up in terms of casework and the internals, it has a new mainboard and new power supply, which is itself is larger than the external power supply supplied with the N10/2 and comes with a 3.84TB SSD drive.

The N1 offers 5 USB ports – on the rear there are 2 USB DAC ports (one rated at USB 2.00, the other at USB 3.00) giving a wider range of compatibility with more DAC’s than ever before. If you are using the USB 2.00 DAC port, the USB 3.00 socket can be used for a D100 for example. There is a Back Up USB socket and an Expansion USB socket, there is also an additional USB socket on the front so plenty of connections.

There is the same LAN and Player Ethernet sockets – although they have now been upgraded to neutrik style sockets and critically the N1 also has a single SFP Fibre socket so if you already own an S100 or S10 you can do away with Ethernet altogether and connect to your network via Fibre. The S100 and S10 both have 2 SFP sockets with if you are using an ADOT fibre kit you can now run Fibre right through.

There is also an external clock input as well which can further enhance performance.

The menu system is same as previous Melco models although the N1 is running with new firmware and we have Minimserver 2 and Twonky UPnP servers, SongKong and it remains Roon Ready as well as having the same auto-downloader functions from High Res Audio and Qobuz.

When connected to a USB DAC Tidal and Qobuz streaming are available as ever.

The fit and finish of the N1 is a significant step above over anything Melco have produced before, the chassis is manufactured from 3mm thick stainless steel and the solid corner pieces are incredibly solid and are a nice contrast and really sets off the look of the machine, along with the 2 vertical lights than run down the front.

I’ve had my N1 for a couple of weeks already and the customers who have seen it in the flesh so far have been quite take aback by the design and the build quality, one customer did not even realise it was a Melco at first until he saw the logo.

In terms of performance the N1 is a huge upgrade over any previous model as well, including the N1ZS (all variants) and the N10 and N10/2 – Melco have really gone back to the drawing board with this machine and it is very obvious when you sit and listen to it. It’s incredibly musical, transparent, very fast and clean sounding. I’ve already had a couple of Melco owners make the upgrade after hearing what the N1 is capable of doing and I’ve more demonstrations already booked – I’ll go as far to say this is the most significant product Melco have ever released.

Available in black or silver and as ever part exchange is welcome!