Soundbridge or Squeezebox, again!

[baldrick]

Which should it be and no, I don't want Sonos! Unfortunately we're building a house with an awful lot of insulation in the walls and between floors, the whole house is lined with foil backed King Span and there's a near continuous sheet of aluminim divided the ground and 1st floors, so I'm not 100% sure how wireless kit will work!

With the out of the way should it be a Squeezebox or a Soundbridge? Does one offer anything special over the other? The overall design is different but the colour schemes, displays etc... look very similar!?!?

[AMc]

If you're having the house built then get a couple of runs of cat5 or better cat6 cable and faceplates installed in all the rooms so you can cable.
That way you can use wired links which will make your life cheaper and easier for audio and allow you to add full video etc. in the future.

I can't vouch for either system but remote access to all your music is really really good - it rescued >1200 CDs from gathering dust in the cupboards while we played the 5 we'd bought most recently.

[Uridium]

Had the same dilemma myself a few months ago, couldn't decide if the SB3 was really worth the extra £80. I went for the Roku soundbridge eventually and have no regrets.

the SB3 is supposedly better for "Ultimate" audio quality but to my ears the Roku does a fantastic job.

As far as signal strength goes i live in a '50's built house with thick solid walls and the Roku gets a wireless signal in a location where my laptop with PC card Wlan can barely pick one up.

Also some excellent 3rd party apps coming out now for the Roku (check the community area on www.rokulabs.com) for remote control via your PC or PDA as well as the new Firefly media server.

Roku SB works perfectly with Windows Media Connect as well and is "Playsforsure" certified

With the display set to double height on the Roku it is easily readable from quite a distance and the Date/Time display when on standby is a nice extra.

[NookZ]

I have to redress the balance and recommend the SB3 over the Roku.

For me the killer difference is the Pandora.com connection you get with SB3 - that's worth the extra £80 on it's own!

[baldrick]

Thanks for the input guys, but what £80 difference. I've found the Soundbridge M1000 for about £140 and the SqueezeBox 3 for £180....

I've just found pandora.com and it's incredible!!!

[Uridium]

Agree the Pandora support is nice although apparently Roku and Pandora are "Talking".

Mind you I rarely listen to the radio

SB3 must have dropped in price a bit then as they were around the £220 mark when I bought the Roku.

[baldrick]

Originally Posted by uridium

Agree the Pandora support is nice although apparently Roku and Pandora are "Talking".

Mind you I rarely listen to the radio

SB3 must have dropped in price a bit then as they were around the £220 mark when I bought the Roku.

The wireless SB3 is around £220 but the wired version is £180...

[andrew1810]

Another vote for the squeezebox from me, having owned both, the sound quality from the analogue output on the Squeezebox is better than the Roku (if using a DAC, there isn't much difference though)

Also, I prefer Slimserver (although Roku software has improved since I owned one)

AlienBBC is a must-have plugin for the squeezebox, allows you to listen to BBC radio, play-it-again etc.

[baldrick]

Originally Posted by andrew1810

AlienBBC is a must-have plugin for the squeezebox, allows you to listen to BBC radio, play-it-again etc.

Are you saying you can't get the BBC stations on a Soundbridge?

[andrew1810]

I'm not 100% sure about this, hopefully a current Roku user will answer too.

Looking at the Roku forums, only a few BBC stations are supported (5 live, world service, Radio 4 and BBC7 by the looks of things)

For radio 1, radio 2 etc. you need to use Slimserver and AlienBBC

Basically, any radio that plays in Windows Media Player will work on both the Roku and SB3, any that use RealPlayer will only work using AlienBBC

[Uridium]

There is also a BBC Radio1 Stream available now in WM format so it's just Radio2 now that isn't available on the Roku.

Believe one of the gadget mags (stuff or T3 i think) has a group test of Music streamers this month...........

Personally I didn't want to be installing loads of extra software/plug ins etc.. (one of the main reasons for choosing the Roku as it is a UPnP device) but you can run the Roku from SlimServer and use the AlienBBC plug in if you really wanted to.