3beez, is a new company based in Lafayette, Colorado specializing in the application of computer technology to home audio and have announced recently the Wax Music Management System.

The Wax system provides a flexible metadata scheme which makes it effective at cataloguing large music collections, especially those that include music from classical,  jazz, and other challenging genres. Its catalogue is based on musical works, not tracks, so it is easy to survey collections for a desired selection. Users can control the system using a tablet  or  from a desktop system or smartphone.

Where existing solutions limit  metadata mainly to album title, artist and track title, the flexible metadata scheme allows users to decide how best to describe recordings in each genre.

“If  you  have  a  recording  of  the  Tchaikovsky  Violin  Concerto  with  Joshua  Bell  violin, Michael Tilson Thomas conductor, and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra accompanist, who is  the artist?” asks 3beez President, Jeffrey Barish. “With  the Wax system, the user can define metadata fields for the composer, soloist, conductor and orchestra —  or  whatever makes  the  most  sense for  the genre  of  the recording.   For  shows, one could use show, composer, and lyricist; for film music, film and composer.  For the first time, users can decide for themselves what works best for the particular recordings in their collections.”

The Wax Box provides storage using two 1 TB hard disk drives, one for the sound archive and one for backup. It also has an optical disc drive for ripping CDs.

The Wax Box is completely silent.  It features fanless cooling, and the hard disk drive spins up only long enough to transfer sound files to a cache on a solid-state drive.

The system has an analogue output with support for 192 kHz/24-bit audio and also supports  the  use  of  an  external  USB DAC.   The  Wax  Box  supports  all  major  codecs, including FLAC, ALAC, OGG, AAC, and MP3.

$5000.