[Autopilot]

As some of you probably know, I'm on the official Slim Devices/Logitech test program. My new Duet (Squeezebox Receiver + Squeezebox Controller) arrived today. Because I already have a SB Controller and SB3, i am pretty used to the new (ever increasing) features for the new platform. So what i was most interested in was ease of setup, build quilty and, most importantly, the sound quality compared to my SB3, which i have always been very happy with. This is not a review, it's still in beta, just a quick preview as some people have requested of me.

Setup: Very easy if you are already an SB user. I already had Squeeze Center 7.0 installed and running, it it was simply a case selecting 'Set Up Receiver' and pressing the button on the front of the SBr. 30 seconds or so later it was ready to go. Yes, i had an advantage, but i cant see any one really struggling here - Squeeze Center is easy peasy to install and setup, less hassle than iTunes and the like.

Build quality: Good quality materials used. Minimal design reminds me a bit of a router and wont look as good on show as the SB3 but most people will have them tucked away i think as there is no screen to look at (it's the controller that's going to take centre stage with the Duet). Quite light, but the bottom has a large rubber pad, so heavy cables etc wont drag it around. Not much else to say really.

Sound Quality Vs SB3: The fact that the players can be synced made A-B testing very easy. It was simply a case plugging them in to the same AMP, choosing a track then hitting sync (with the volume at the same level). All i did then was flick between inputs on the AMP. The SBr uses a High fidelity Wolfson® 24-bit DAC and the SB3 a High fidelity Burr-Brown™ 24-bit DAC. The only other real difference is the fact the SBr has no screen. The kit i tested with was; Cambridge Audio 640 Azur AMP, Mission 701 Speakers and decent quality after market phono cables. Not exactly audiophile, but a good medium end system to test them with, and type that many people with use their SB3's and SBr's with. Anyway, audiophiles will be using there own DAC's.

I played a number of cd rips (using EAC and FLAC) from various genres from R&B to Break Beat, from Rock to the likes of Nina Simone. Flicking between SB3 and SBr was not what i had fully expected - i had read testers in the US saying that they are just as good, but i did not expect them to sound so much the same. I listened for over an hour and there are remarkably similar, but i did notice a slight difference after a while - i felt that the SB3 sounded a little warmer at times and the SBr was a touch brighter. I really could not hear any difference between the bass, midrange and treble and instruments equality separated and represented.

So basically, in my opinion, if anyone wants to buy a SB3 or SBr and use the built in DAC (like the vast majority of people will) rather than your own external one, i can honestly say dont worry about sound quality differences. If i was forced to say which i preferred, i would probably say SBr (Duet). But only by a baby's bum hair, and it might just be that it newer to me.

I dont have any higher end kit to test will here, so its quite possible differences might become more obvious with better kit. But if anyone wants me to try anything else, or if there is something obvious i'm missing, i'm open to suggestions.

Now, if they would kindly send me a Transporter...

[blue max 2]

Thanks for the review. I'm seriously looking at one or the other now. I guess the Duet is probably going to end up in my system. I have four large silver boxes and the SB3 is going to look odd anyway, so out of site is best.

Know what you mean about the transporter though

Graham

[Crocodile]

Any chance you could reduce the size of those pics? I'd love to read what you have to say but I'm not going to scroll back & forth 20 times to do it!

[coliam]

Hi Autopilot,

Good review there. Thanks. In your opinion .........

..........as someone considering buying a SB for the first time, and bearing in mind that I'll be using an external DAC,
do you think I'd be better off with the new Duet or is the SB3 just as good.
Or is it all just down to the SB display vs. Duet's remote ? Thanks.

[norks27]

Great review - many thanks for taking the time to test the kit. Sounds like a big thumbs up to me.

do you think I'd be better off with the new Duet or is the SB3 just as good.
Or is it all just down to the SB display vs. Duet's remote ? Thanks.

Looks like it is essentially down to personal preference given that you will be using your own DAC. For my money the wireless remote with integrated display is the hands down winner. Compare it to looking across the room and aiming an IR remote.

Out of interest what DAC are you planning to use with your squeezebox?

[Autopilot]

Not really meant as a review as such - just a first look comparison of some aspects.

Originally Posted by coliam

Hi Autopilot,

Good review there. Thanks. In your opinion .........

..........as someone considering buying a SB for the first time, and bearing in mind that I'll be using an external DAC,
do you think I'd be better off with the new Duet or is the SB3 just as good.
Or is it all just down to the SB display vs. Duet's remote ? Thanks.

The SB3 comes with the standard old school IR remote (you can of course use any universal job too). The Duet comes with the new Squeezebox Controller, but you can buy the Controller separately to use with the SB3 (which i was doing until the Duet arrived, and will continue).

It's horses for courses really - the screen on the SB3 is beautiful, but the new Controller is seriously cool and has a lot of potential. I will go more into that side soon. I think most people will go with the Duet (Controller + Receiver) than just Squeezebox. However, the Squeezebox does have a couple of advantages - it has a headphone socket which is designed to work with things like IR Blaster etc. But thats partly negated by the fact that the new controller (which is wireless) also has IR (which has not been activated yet) which should be used to control other AV stuff like AMP's (already talk of a plugin to control ALL your AV gear like a universal remote). There is also something else the Squeezebox 3 can do extra, but i cant remember right now what it is and i dont think its mouch of an issue.

BTW, the Squeezebox 3 has now been renamed and re-branded as the 'Squeezebox Classic'.

[Mr Forgetful]

Are there any UK stores with stock in of this new Duet yet?

[coliam]

Originally Posted by norks27

Great review - many thanks for taking the time to test the kit. Sounds like a big thumbs up to me.

Out of interest what DAC are you planning to use with your squeezebox?

Hi Norks27 & Autopilot,

Thanks for your comments. I suspected it might come down to personal preference.

The remote looks really good, so I'll probably go for the Duet, when the time comes.

I have a major project to finish first, though. An integrated DAC/Pre-Amp, based around the Twisted Pear Opus DAC modules.
For the moment, I'm using a slightly modded Beresford 7510 Mk5, but hopefully not for too much longer.

[thefrankey]

tnx autopilot.

I just ordered the SBr. It will be shipped at the end of februari here in the netherlands.

I was going to order the SB3 but my girlfriend rather had the SBr thanks to the fancy remote. Can you tell me more about the remote? such as battery life and the display itself?

When you are playing a song, wat does the remote display? And can I roam around the house with it?

Hope to hear your answers.

[Autopilot]

Originally Posted by thefrankey

I was going to order the SB3 but my girlfriend rather had the SBr thanks to the fancy remote. Can you tell me more about the remote? such as battery life and the display itself?

When you are playing a song, wat does the remote display? And can I roam around the house with it?

Hope to hear your answers.

The screen is nice. When playing, as standard, the screen displays album art and time remaining etc. It will switch to a larger album art view after a set amount of time (now playing screen saver). But you can browse you current playlist, menus or music collection while it plays, just like a iPod etc. I am currently messing around with a plugin call 'lyrics' which downloads lyrics from the internet for the song playing and displays them karaoke style. RSS news reader too etc and much more on the way.

Yes you can roam with it, it's proper Wifi.

battery life...

* Active - everything on
* Dimmed - display dimmed and keypad backlights off
o Entered after 10 seconds of inactivity when not charging
o Wakes to Active by motion, key event
* Sleep - backlights, screen and audio off. CPU reduced to 50MHz.
o Entered after 1 minute of inactivity when not charging
o Wakes to Active by motion or key event
* Suspend - backlights, screen, wireless and audio off. CPU suspended.
o Entered after 1 hour of inactivity (no motion, keys) when not charging
o Resumes to Active by motion, key event or docking. The wireless drivers are reloaded, and the network connection restored.
* Power off - everything off.
o Entered when battery level is dangerously low (voltage TODO), following Battery Low warning screen
o Wakes to Active only by charging and pressing the Power (home) key.
* Locked - backlights, screen off
o Entered when user presses special key sequence (VOL+ and VOL- together).
o Screen comes on when GO button is pressed to display instructions for unlocking
o Wakes to Active by special key sequence (VOL+ and VOL- together) to unlock

Battery Measurements
Mode Average mA (1) Battery life (2)
Active 210 5 Hours
Dimmed 120 9 Hours
Sleep 59 19 Hours
Suspended 10 4.6 Days
Power off 0.7 2 Months

Remember, it's still in beta and improving daily. It will really justify it's price once the DAC and IR are made use of - once they are, if done well, it will probably be the best 'remote controller' ever made, for anything, seriously. but right now, still needs work.

[thefrankey]

Thanks for your reply, I eventhough do not understand the last phrases you wrote about de IR and DAC.

It will be shipped so then its not a BETA?

I'm really lokoing forward to receive my duet.

[Autopilot]

Originally Posted by thefrankey

Thanks for your reply, I eventhough do not understand the last phrases you wrote about de IR and DAC.

The Controller has an Infra Red emitter (IR), like a normal remote, which can be used to switch on AMP's and control other AV gear (not just your Squeezebox(s). It also has a DAC and headphone socket, so the remote itself can be used as a Squeezebox player. However, these wont be functioning when it's first released.

[thefrankey]

oke, so the receiver as well the remote had a DAC on board. That was the thing I didint understand. Thanks again

[thefrankey]

Is it possible to download the squeeze center software? I can download SlimServer, but want to test squeeze center on Windows 2003,.

[bobinski]

Hi,
deliberated over wether to buy a Classic or the Duet and picked up a classic 2nd hand and all i can say is "wow!".
What a truly great bit of kit.
Connected first time to my pc, 80gig of music scanned relativly quickly and now i have almost instantaneous acsess to my music and radio..Great screen, responsive remote.Really wonderful.
Once things settle down i might look at the duet remote but not really sure i would NEED it.
More important to look at a nas or home server though will keep an eye out on peoples experiences with the former and the new Squeeze centre software.
Anyone hesitating over purchasing either version of the Squeezebox should not.It really is that good.
cheers
bobinski

[Crocodile]

Originally Posted by thefrankey

Is it possible to download the squeeze center software? I can download SlimServer, but want to test squeeze center on Windows 2003,.

http://www.slimdevices.com/downloads...ly/latest/7.0/

[davepuma]

Originally Posted by bobinski

Hi,
deliberated over wether to buy a Classic or the Duet and picked up a classic 2nd hand and all i can say is "wow!".
What a truly great bit of kit.
Connected first time to my pc, 80gig of music scanned relativly quickly and now i have almost instantaneous acsess to my music and radio..Great screen, responsive remote.Really wonderful.
Once things settle down i might look at the duet remote but not really sure i would NEED it.
More important to look at a nas or home server though will keep an eye out on peoples experiences with the former and the new Squeeze centre software.
Anyone hesitating over purchasing either version of the Squeezebox should not.It really is that good.
cheers
bobinski

Can I ask you where you got it 2nd hand? I had a few bids in on fleabay but most went for close what I can get a brand new one for, so that's what I have done. Fair play if you got a bargain though.

I had always intended getting a SB with display and will wait for the reviews on the duet. Fingers crossed my SB3 will turn up tomorrow, so I can get cracking. It's an odd design though and despite how good the display looks, I still think it's going to stick out a mile, so I wanted to wall mount it out of the way.

As I'm looking at getting another universal remote, I thought I would hang fire to see if the duet one lives up to the hype. The other Harmony (Logitech) remotes have pretty shoddy build quality and cr@ppy buttons. Don't get me wrong, I love my Harmony 525 as it's a breeze to set up and apart from the odd glitch is a pretty fine bit of kit that I would recommend to anyone. I am in the middle of configuring my ancient Pronto for the bedroom and it's a hobby setting that thing up..... especially now it's an older model. I will probably get a duet for the living room and a NAS to house all the music and my photos. I will stick with external drives to house my DVD back up collection though.

[timmorris]

If you think the consumer Pronto is a hobby in itself have a go at the new Professional. I set one up for my brother including a serial extender. I set all the Sky icons up from scratch and the whole set up took 40 hours.

Tim

[DennyL]

I was confused about the DAC in the Duet's remote control. Does anyone have any idea when it will be - what is the word? - activated? What are the issues? Does this mean that when one is in range of one's wifi the remote will be able to be used as a portable player with headphones? Does the remote have a headphone output or a digital output or what? How is it anticipated that the DAC in the remote will be used?

What I really want to know is if I shall be able to use the remote in bed with headphones and have access to all the music on my music server .

[timmorris]

The hardware is in place. It is simply up to either Logitech or any member of the developer community to write the software to take advantage. I'm sure that before long you'll be able to use it as you suggest as an ipod-like device that streams from your server.

Tim

[thefrankey]

In this article http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2272948,00.asp

PC Mag descibes a slow remote, what is your opinion?

[timmorris]

I should have mine in a couple of days (to use with an SB3. I'll report back.) I can't imagine it being any worse than the Nokia 800 web browser which doesn't have nearly the same lag as they describe in the article which is less than a second when changing volume and 2-3 seconds when selecting and playing a different album. SC 7.0 seems faster than SB 6.5. Maybe they had a heavily loaded PC. I have my music sitting on a Windows 2003 server whixh handles email, file sharing and various other tasks for half a dozen users. SC uses hardly any system resourses - I've tested it with 4 hardware and 3 software players running and response is still fine.

The description of the Sonos using more bandwidth when streaming the same internet audio to more than one player is a bit misleading. If you are streaming the same station to two players you just have to sync them and they use the same stream. I use Alien BBC rarely but spend most of my time listening to music ripped from CDs in FLAC lossless format. The one thing they don't mention is sound quality. A very high proportion of the members of the Unofficial Meridian forum have junked £1000 CD transports in favour of SB3s, but none of them have Sonos. The SB3 (and the duet) and flac gives you better sound quality than most disc players when used with an offboard DAC.

Tim

[timmorris]

Originally Posted by Autopilot

Remember, it's still in beta and improving daily. It will really justify it's price once the DAC and IR are made use of - once they are, if done well, it will probably be the best 'remote controller' ever made, for anything, seriously. but right now, still needs work.

I think that title will remain with the Pronto Professional with Barry Gordon's custom action for Squeezecentre. It is as powerful as a Crestron with the serial extender and costs peanuts in comparison, but at £1000 is still a lot more than the Squeezecentre controller.

If they build in a way to send IR commands over WiFi to an IR blaster then I think it might stand a chance.

Philips remote controls have come a long way since the original Pronto and I know a number of custom installers who use them in preference to Crestron now. The first time you program one it is a pain, but that template can then be easily customised to work with other people's kit.

Nothing Logitech have produced to date can compete with the flexibility and power of the Pronto range.

Tim

[ModelCitizen]

As an owner of a Duo, SB2, SB3 and a Transporter, I have to say that the SB3 looks really cool, whereas you might as well stick the receiver in a cupboard as it's a ugly little plastic brick (not even as pretty as a Netgrear router).

I love the controller and use it all the time. I think it marks the coming of age of the SlimDevices/Logitech stuff. However, the screen on the Transporter/SB3 is useful. It's very handy to be able to just look up to see what track is playing/how much time is left etc etc rather than to have to scrabble around (or walk across the room) to find the controller

The downside is that you are beginning to talk serious dosh if you're going to buy an SB3 and a controller.

MC

[christhedon]

I have a PS3 and Onkyo 605 amp. It seems unless you play with the PS3 settings and turn off stuff that you can't get all channel stereo on the ONkyo Amp (Its something to do with the signal sent to it by the PS3 - it restricts the audio options on the amp).

If I buy the duet will I be able to get all channel stereo on my amp? (Ps all channel stereo plays stereo out the back speakers as well as the front. Seems like the signal that gets sent to the front speakers also gets sent to the back ones...)

[Keiron]

Is there any news on when the headphone output on the remote will be activated?

[BigTone]

Originally Posted by christhedon

I have a PS3 and Onkyo 605 amp. It seems unless you play with the PS3 settings and turn off stuff that you can't get all channel stereo on the ONkyo Amp (Its something to do with the signal sent to it by the PS3 - it restricts the audio options on the amp).

If I buy the duet will I be able to get all channel stereo on my amp? (Ps all channel stereo plays stereo out the back speakers as well as the front. Seems like the signal that gets sent to the front speakers also gets sent to the back ones...)

I'm a bit confused about what your aiming at here. The duet connects to your amp via the RCA analogue connectors on the back of your amp, whilst your PS3 is digital via HDMI or SPDIF. Thus the amp output is chosen entirely by yourself.
I assume you mean that if you use your PS3 as a media player, the audio isn't in 2ch. stereo? To be honest, the PS3 and the XBox360 offer capability for media streaming, but the Slim Devices offers both quaility software and hardware solutions (I know I have played with media streaming on both ps3 and XBox360). If you want to listen to music, and you have a PC lying around, then buy the duet, (don't delay!) its a fab. piece of kit.

Cheers

BT

[timmorris]

The Duet also has sp/dif and optical outputs if you have an amplifier that has a quality onboard DAC. Prologic II, Meridian Trifield and Lexicon Logic 7 are all proprietary methods of extracting the phase cues inherent in any two channel recording and applying algorithms which attempt to recreate a three dimensional soundstage. The degree of success depends on how the music was originally recorded. Some good quality accoustic recordings using dual coincident mic techniques can sound fantastic when played through "synthetic" multi-channel algorithms. The information is acutally present on the track UNLESS you've compressed it using mp3 or AAC - as soon as you use any perceptual coding algorithm on music one of the first things to go is the phase information of echoes arrving at the mics. If you are playing lossless music (FLAC or Apple losless) then that is a different matter.

Tim