My quest fro a way to deliver computer-based music to my stereo system is at an end.(Surveying The Soundscape)

My quest for a way to deliver computer-based music to my stereo system is at an end. I'm not promising that I won't start down that road again, but I will assure you that this is the last report you'll get of about a product that didn't quite do the job for me.

Of course, something that just misses with my needs or expectations could be perfect for someone else. With this particular product, the PrismIQ MediaPlayer, I'm definitely the odd man out. Dig_It, CNET, and TechTV all named PrismIQ the "Best of CES 2003." But then, those accolades were published within about a week of the show. I'd guess they weren't based on much hands-on experience.

Believe me, I had a lot of that. Much of it was positive and some of the negatives might not have been the fault of the PrismIQ system itself.

The positive part was the fun of beaming MP3 music files from a computer on the second floor to the audio system on the first. The TV screen presented the menu that I had previously established at the PC. The remote did its job neatly and the sound was surprisingly good, certainly the equivalent of MP3-encoded CDs played directly with the DVD player, or WAV-from-MP3 audio CDs played on a regular CD deck.

In this whole experience, by the way, I found that the very worst way to listen was through computer sound card outputs. Noise and distortion hit levels I haven't been called upon to tolerate since calling off my visits to the weight room at Pit Bull Gym. Don't consider for a minute running interconnects from your computer to your audio system. Get the music out of your computer while still in digital form. Convert it to analog at or near its destination.

Getting back to the PrismIQ MediaPlayer, if the sound quality was good and the operability was decent, what was the problem? Well, there were a few.

The first was similar to what I experienced with the Neuros and what apparently is common with media management and playing software. The cataloging software ignores the structures you've created among your music files and slams all the filenames together in one big list.