Not so long ago, a high-tech audio system only had to provide a CD player and an FM radio. Today, sources have multiplied to the point where it has become a challenge to handle them all, and this is where Pure’s Sirocco 550 comes to the rescue. It covers all the things you should expect in a bookshelf music system: FM and DAB/DAB+ radio, CD, a fully supported “Made for” iPhone/iPod dock, a radio alarm clock feature and a remote control. Then it adds internet radio via a cable or Wi-Fi connection, a USB port that will play tracks from a memory stick, and a video-out that lets you play iPhone/iPod videos on a TV set. Finally, if you store music files on a PC or a networked hard drive, you can download the UPnP-compatible FlowServer and use the Sirocco 550 as a networked media player as well. There’s a lot of functionality packed into one small, smart and reasonably priced (£349.99 or less) black box.
One of the problems with digital music is that it tends to come in a wide range of formats, and the Sirocco 550 handles the most common ones. The CD player will play standard audio CDs plus those old CD-R and CD-R/W discs you used to store MP3 tracks. The network player can handle MP3s and also the WMA, MP2 (used by DAB), AAC and Real Audio formats, though not the lossless FLAC. You can probably find a few other things the Sirocco can’t handle, but it’s pretty hard to beat in terms of playing the maximum amount of music with the minimum effort.
Setting up is relatively simple, and the Sirocco had no problems finding the 61 DAB stations in my area, tuning FM, or connecting to my home Wi-Fi. Internet radio is harder to handle, because there are more than 10,000 stations. Pure’s system is perhaps not as structured as Logitech’s (the one I’m used to), but the solution is to do it online. If you register on Pure’s website at TheLounge.com, you can put selected stations in a favourites folder and sync that to the Sirocco. Getting to that point can be somewhat fiddly, and the Quickstart Guide didn’t give me quite enough help. However, there’s more detail in the Product User Guide online at support.pure.com (PDF), so if you need to set up a Sirocco 550, or plan to buy one, download that first.
The Sirocco 550 often tries to do what you want before you ask, so if you don’t want the defaults, you have to act fairly quickly. It’s not a problem because you get used to it, and there’s a “back button” on the touch-sensitive black-and-white OLED screen. On the other hand, it could go further. If I’m listening to the radio and slip a CD into the front loading slot, it could just play it, like my Quad system, instead of waiting for me to press the iPod-CD button on the left hand edge, turn the knob to CD, then press to select it. Otherwise, the Sirocco 550 provides 40 pre-sets that you can use to save different stations, which I’d guess is more than most people need.
What lets the Sirocco 550 down somewhat are the bookshelf speakers, which are big enough to sound better than they actually do. As you’d expect from Pure, the system does a good of playing DAB radio, and I’m not sure I’ve heard it sound better. If you’re a pop fan, then you’ll probably be pretty happy with the sound, especially if tracks have plenty of bass to start with. I tried some ambient/techno stuff that sounded terrific: the bass stayed tight even after I turned the volume up to 50. The Sirocco claims 80 Watts of power and it held things together well. But it doesn’t do so well with acoustic and/or classical music, when the top end sounds relatively woolly.
Perhaps it’s asking too much of a £350 system, but the Sirocco 550 — which uses “high-quality Class D amplifiers and digital audio shaping technology”, according to Pure’s blurb — can certainly sound better. I dug out a spare pair of BBC-designed Spendor LS3/5a mini-monitors to replace Pure’s speakers, and heard a marked improvement. I’m not suggesting you do the same because I’ve seen the Spendors priced at £1,000 second hand; that would be silly. Still, there are plenty of good cheap bookshelf speakers around, both new and second hand, and at least a few pairs could get a new lease of life plugged into a Sirocco 550 or similar mini system. You may even have some attached to a hi-fi that doesn’t do DAB, or play internet radio, or have an iPod/iPhone dock, or whatever….
Visit www.pure.com or www.thelounge.com or call 0845 1489001 for more information.
