Soundbridge / Squeezebox / ?

[Monty1977]

OK, had a long play with it last night ... 1 word - amazing! Quite possibly the best bit of audio kit I've ever purchased and worth every penny of the £210 price tag.

Sound quality is incredible even through my modest system, the menu/navigation system is excellent, the display is perfect and the number of features crammed into the tiny unit is fantastic.

Pandora is my favourite, what an incredible service .. non stop feeding of your favourite music - genius! Sadly I wasn't able to get the Last.fm plugin working so I cannot compare the two .. if anyone has a Mac running OSX and has this working some tips would be great!

I'm pretty sure I'll be getting another one for the bedroom really soon....

Adam

PS: If only these guys would make a streaming video player too with HD capability

[JohnG]

Are you connected wirlessly or wired ? What format and bitrate is you music encoded at ?
I've been looking at these on and off for a year or so now and am still deciding

[Monty1977]

Originally Posted by JohnG

Are you connected wirlessly or wired ? What format and bitrate is you music encoded at ?
I've been looking at these on and off for a year or so now and am still deciding

Wireless.

My iTunes library is 90% mp3 @ 256Kbps or higher, the Squeezebox is connected to my amp via the optical digital output.

Do it .. the interface is wonderful, very iPod in it's design .. remote is great too.

Adam

[JohnG]

I think I will. Now the only decision I have to make is if I should go for one of those Qnap NAS hard drives or not !

[Monty1977]

Originally Posted by JohnG

I think I will. Now the only decision I have to make is if I should go for one of those Qnap NAS hard drives or not !

I'm looking at that option too as it would be nice not to have the Mac on all the time .. what is nice is that you dont need the computer booted to use Pandora as it accesses the internet directly.

Cheers,
Adam

[JohnG]

I suppose it's easy enough to add the Qnap box at a later stage

[peterbell]

Originally Posted by JohnD76

I have heard that the display on the Roku can fail, hence why I went for the SqueezeBox.

Just my luck, then, to receive my SqueezeBox yesterday with a faulty display!

Other than that - it's a wonderful device! My main purpose in buying it was to allow me to listen to Internet radio away from the computer, but it does so much more.

I have a library of MP3s which I use on the PhatBox in my car and I used these to try the SqueezeBox - particularly the Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem, an excellent test with a wide dynamic range. Playing through the small amplified speaker system from the computer, these sounded fine. Then I moved the SqueezeBox downstairs to play through my Arcam/Mordaunt Short system. This was something of a disappointment - lots of extraneous burbles and squeeks. However, last night I downloaded and installed EAC and the FLAC encoder and used this to re-rip the Verdi. What a difference! To me (and my 52 year old ears), the sound, even using the SqueezeBox DAC, is indistinguishable from my Arcam Alpha 9 CD player.

I can see the CD player being pensioned off, and a QNAP being acquired!