Slim Squeezebox vs Roku Soundbridge

Never heard of the Roku .. I've had a Squeezebox for some time now, not the new 'sexy' display variety. Nice and easy to use, the PC service consumes quite an amount (75Mb on my system) but since it's all swappable it's not a big deal.

Soundwise I can't hear any problems, I rip @ 320k and play back via a Denon 3803 so the amp. isn't shabby, one wouldn't use it for 'audiophile' quality but then neither would one use an MP3 player. ;)

I like it. :smashin:
 
KraGorn said:
I've had a Squeezebox for some time now, not the new 'sexy' display variety.
What do you mean? They haven't changed the display on it have they? Or have you got the Slimp3?
Nice and easy to use
Yes, definitely. I've used a Slimp3 (the predecessor)
one wouldn't use it for 'audiophile' quality but then neither would one use an MP3 player. ;)
Maybe not 'audiophile', but I'm hoping to get a decent stereo performance after its been through a DAC.
 
No, I have a Squeezebox from early last year. However in the summer they changed the original LCD display for the fluorescent one you see today, it was a straight panel swap for US customers ($80 IIRC), but wasn't offered as an upgrade outside the US.

Playing a ripped CD through the Squeezebox and A/Bing it with the CD in my Pioneer 868, not audiophile CD playback either but it suits me :), I can't tell the difference.
 
By pure coincidence an announcement about Squeezebox 2 dropped into my mailbox today.

I listen to music, not look at what's playing it. ;)
 
I have been using a squeezebox for about the last year and have it connected to a Meridian system. I didn’t compress my music collection but stored them all as WAV files instead to preserve the sound quality. All I can say is that the system is absolutely brilliant with the sound being indistinguishable from the original CD played through my 508.20 player. I really can’t recommend the Squeezebox highly enough – it just works and works well. I don’t have any experience of the Roku but for sound quality, I can’t see how the Squeezebox could be improved.

Incidentally, I upgraded my display on the Squeezebox. It costs £69 and can be purchased from here;

http://www.multitask-computing.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=228

I would recommend the upgrade, it vastly improves the legibility of the screen.

Regards

Ashley
 
Cheers KraGorn - I've been looking at their site, and wish I new what all the changes were. Good news though.

Ashley
I also plan to store music as uncompressed WAV files.
Are you using the Squeezebox's digital out?
 
Yes, via coax (also used optical). I have a few .WAVs but decided 320k MP3 was indistinguishable, but then at my age the top-end isn't as crystal clear as it used to be. ;)
 
I use the squeezebox in my front room (with the old display!) running the digital out into my my tag av32r. All the mp3s are being served from a mac mini (which the slimserver seems much more stable/less resource hungry than the windows version!), hooked into my itunes library.

Very pleased with the quality.. I cannot tell the difference (most mp3s are lame standard (192Vbr).

so what the squeezebox 2 got then ?

Cheers

matt
 
I have had a Roku running for the last couple of months and I love it! I'm not using the digital output and the analogue outputs are acceptable given the price but I reckon that an external DAC would improve the sound quality quite a bit. Mind you, there's a thread on the Roku Forums concerning the channels sometimes swapping with digital output so it may be worth waiting for a fix before buying.

I use LAME 3.96.1 preset extreme MP3s for my music and have an embedded Linux server running 24/7 to serve the Roku, namely I run mt-daapd on an uNSLUng Linksys NSLU2. Current up-time on that is 35 days and over 450 songs served without a hitch. If you are interested in ultimate sound quality, the latest snapshots of mt-daapd support on-the-fly conversion from FLAC, ALAC (or Ogg Vorbis) to WAV for streaming to the Roku.

_
 
Triggaaar said:
Cheers KraGorn - I've been looking at their site, and wish I new what all the changes were. Good news though.
This is from the e-mail I got:

"Squeezebox2 features include:

- True 802.11g wireless
- Lossless compression (FLAC) support
- Audiophile-quality digital and analog outputs
- Enormous audio buffer
- Grayscale display with more than twice the resolution
- Pure-software audio decoding on a screaming fast processor
- Bridging, cross-fading, visualizers, and more..."

They also mention the server software version 6 is available in beta and it's supposedly a lot smaller than before, that was my only real gripe about the whole package.
 
Difference between Squeezebox and 2 are on their website here
I don't know enough about the technical specs to know how good it could be.
 
Triggaaar said:
Ashley
I also plan to store music as uncompressed WAV files.
Are you using the Squeezebox's digital out?


I was using the analogue ouput originally but then obtained a Meridian 24bit DAC from Ebay so am now using the digital output. In my opinion it sounds much better but the analogue was still very impressive.

The Squeezebox2 has an upgraded DAC so it probably sounds much better via the analogue output than the original Squeezebox making an external DAC unnecessary.

Regards

Ashley
 
I've had a roku for the last couple of weeks, and i have to say i'm very impressed by its useability and sound quality, though Its in the kitchen so sound is not vital. The nice thing abouth the roku is that you can use it with a range of server software. I use jrmc on my pc's so being able to use exactly the same views on the roku is a bonus. It also works with slimserver, and in fact emulates the squeeze box UI, so all plugins etc work. it will work with any UPnP compatible server and Itunes.
The only thing i'm not happy with is that it doesn't support MP2, but most wireless music players don't either.
If you like the squuzebox UI you can still get the bettr looking (IMO) roku and use it with slimserver.

RD
 
At the moment, the choice has been answered by Slimdevices, who have kindly designed and built the Squeezebox 2, just for me. The fact that it can play FLAC files without compressing them to MP3, is a big advantage.
 
Hi there - have made a few posts elsewhere about my Roku and it's great - but sound quality is paramount to me being a bit of an audiophile nut :)

Now I skipped on the version I Squeezbox but the version II has more audiophile goodies according to their web site - anyone do a sound comparison (with high end gear and outboard DAC)?
 
I have also been looking at these.

I believe teh sound quality will be fine from either one, at least any differences will not be obviously discernible.

The big difference for me, and where the Squeezebox wins is in the speed of the wireless connection.

I use my wireless network for PC access and maybe for streaming video in the future.

The Roku only has an 11MBs connection :( vs 54Mbs on the Squeezebox.

This means that your whole wireless network will run at 11Mbs if you plug the Roku in, thus decreasing the performance of everything else on the wireless network.

If you connect it via Ethernet (wired connection), then this will not be a problem

Hope this helps
 
I had a Roku and upgraded to the Squeezebox2 without looking back, audio quality seems better and the increase in wireless speed is much better.
I also found the Roku had to buffer each track (I have AIFF files) where as the Squeezebox seems to run them straight away.

The web interface is also useful and was one thing I found was missing from the Roku so I can select tracks from any networked PC in the house!
 
andrew1810 said:
I had a Roku and upgraded to the Squeezebox2 without looking back, audio quality seems better and the increase in wireless speed is much better.
I also found the Roku had to buffer each track (I have AIFF files) where as the Squeezebox seems to run them straight away.

The web interface is also useful and was one thing I found was missing from the Roku so I can select tracks from any networked PC in the house!

Me too - just received my Squeezebox 2 and straight out of the box there is a noticeable improvement over the Roku - both using built-in DAC and Chord 64. The Roku did have a more pronounced bass line, but me thinks that was due to the Russ Andrews power pack I got for it before I heard of the SB2 (looking on the SB2 forums I see someone has a RA power pack for that too so guess what the next upgrade is!!).

Software offers much more control than the Roku and I just love that analogue VU meter screensaver! Not sure how to deal with playlists yet - iTunes had the edge for that but haven’t used iTunes with SB2 so far - just letting SlimServer find my EAC ripped folders and play from there (which will cut out a stage in the ripping process!).

I can report no re-buffering at all so far as well (wired access) - the Roku had a real problem with Internet radio buffering and very occasionally on AIFF files from iTunes as well. All in a more refined product in it’s second generation I feel - but like they say - not as cool looking as the Roku :-/
 

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