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SliMP3 Successor; Radio Station in a Box
XDG writes "Slim Devices just updated their website and announced The Squeezebox, the Wi-Fi successor to the SliMP3 player. The new hardware adds digital output, support for uncompressed WAVs, and, of course built-in 802.11. And, best of all, it's still a simple front end hardware device running on upgradeable, customizable, 100%-open-source server software. Anyone that owns or ever drooled over a SliMP3 has something new for their holiday wish lists!" We also have a submission about a "digital radio station in a box" from World Vibrations.
Geez, why did I know I would see this here? I just got my SLIMP3 two weeks ago. I can't speak for the Squeezebox, but if it's anything like the SliMP3, go for it. I love the thing.
:( Oh well.
I like most everything about the device. It's easy to setup and control, sounds and looks great, and is actively supported by its developers and fans. There is an extensive FAQ and a popular support mailing list.
There are, however, a few things I would like to have seen, that the Squeezebox fixes. First, the SliMP3 is wired only. You can hook it up to a wireless bridge to make it "virtually wireless" but that's not an out-of-the-box solution. With many competitors releasing wireless solutions, SlimDevices caught on and developed their own. The SlimP3 also does not have an optical audio output. An optical connection would make the sound quality even better, however, most users would not notice a difference.
The display is a little small, and hard to read from across the room. However, most competing products display via a TV, meaning you'd have to be near a TV to select the music you want. The SLIMP3 doesn't require a TV and looks at home in your home theater system.
I thought it was definitely worth the $239 price, but now I wished I'd waited two weeks and got the Squeezebox for $299
As near as I can tell it can stream from shared folders. I'm *very* tempted to get one of these.
Squeezebox actually has a painted finish - the case is polycarbonate, but it has a "soft-touch" surface. It's actually sexier in person than the slimp3.
According to the product brochure, FLAC and Ogg are both supported via on the fly software conversion, so the support is there, albeit not native to the hardware.
They are also donating 10% of net profits from squeezebox to the EFF.
Read that page - they even make a little jab at the DRM music stores. Pretty bold...
You install the software (written in perl) on your Linux, BSD, OSX, Windows whatever machine and tell it where your collection is located.
That's it.
You may control the device from either the provided remote control or via web interface (http://localhost:9000).
I have a SliMP3 (predecessor device). MP3s are served up by an open-source streaming server, to which the SliMP3 (and Squeezebox) connect. The server runs on Unix, OS X, and Windows -- pretty much any OS with a modern Perl implementation. The device can connect to multiple servers running on different boxes; the server also plays nicely with iTunes.
Other streaming MP3 clients can connect to the server, e.g. iTunes, etc.
Playlists can be built with a web server built in to the streaming server (or via the remote, but that's a little less convenient).
Spend the $299.
I've had a SLIMP3 for the past year and would not trade it for anything (cept a squeezebox). The biggest thing is portability - I can leave it in the bedroom for music, move it to the backyard for the BBQ parties, move it to the living room to play holiday tunes, and take it to the kitchen when friends come over to play cards. All you need is an Ethernet run to the room - Squeezebox removes the cords altogether.
The UI is intuitive, the web interface rocks, and it's really easy to use.
(as featured on bbspot's daily links) has some interesting info on internet radio and it's legality.
This post was brought to you by the number 584811 and the characters / and .
You are mistaken.
Squeezebox supports (uncompressed) PCM passthrough. WAV, AIFF, Ogg, and Flac are all supported, can all be played now without transcoding.
In fact, it is trivially simple to hook just about any codec you want into the server now.
Disclaimer: I'm the guy who wrote the squeezebox firmware.
There are truth to both sidss regarding the audio support.
Think about it this way - does your sound card support Vorbis? Does your TV support Hi-8? You have to think about things a little differently here - your files are not stored on squeezebox; they're streamed from your computer. So if the squeezebox supports raw PCM, you can decode whatever format you want and just send it.
I tried one of the slimdevices previously using their 30 day money back guarantee and found that their unit caused to much RF interference - diagonal lines on my TV.
This was indeed an issue with early SLIMP3 models. I designed SLIMP3 in my garage with almost no money - certainly not enough to afford proper RF testing and design consulting. Sometimes a garage project just gets big....
We did it right with squeezebox though. It is fully compliant with CE, FCC, and Canadian class B requirements and is very quiet. Furthermore, if you use the optical connection, you have total isolation.
I love TiVo. I have one Series 1 model and am planning on getting two Series 2 models. However, you're cost analysis is a bit off.
$299 for Squeezebox or...
$199 TiVo
$12.95/Month or $299/Lifetime
$99 Home Media Option
$50 Wireless USB Adapter
Grand Total: $647, assuming this is your first TiVo purchase and you opt for the product lifetime subscription.
Anyway, the two devices are quite different. Sure, they overlap functionality, but one requires a TV and the other doesn't. They can be quite complimentary devices. Analyze your situation and buy the device that best suits your needs. If you've got money to blow, get one of each, or multiples of each. Both devices come from great companies that do their best to support the community. Don't trash one over the other.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
The reason I went with the Turtle Beach Audiotron instead of this device is because it does not need any kind of back-end server running in order to access music files. This is an issue for me, as all my media is stored on a home NAS (Linksys Gigadrive).
The cool part about the Audiotron is that you simply point it at any SMB shares (thru its built-in web interface) and it'll scan for music on those shares. Works great - with no need for a separate PC working as a middle-man to point to the files.
What you want is irrelevant; what you've chosen is at hand! - Spock, ST VI
Um...where's the Ogg-decoding hardware? If you know of a chip or a core that can handle Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, it would be feasible to build it into a device like the Squeezebox. Otherwise, you'd need to add a CPU (one that's considerably more powerful than whatever microcontroller they're currently using) and appropriate firmware.
OTOH, you can get hardware MPEG audio decoders for not much money. It'd only take a fairly simple controller to shovel compressed audio data from the network port to the audio decoder.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
The UI comes from pointing a browser at the SlimServer to set up the playlist for the stream going to your MP3 playing software.
So, say there was a SlimServer running at Slashdot.org. Then the URL you would point xmms or winamp or iTunes or whatever at would be:
http://slashdot.org:9000/stream.mp3
Then, to set up the playlist you would point your browser at:
http://slashdot.org:9000
"From my cold, dead hands you damn, dirty apes!" - CH
or $249 for the Sound Blaster Wireless Music which is a similar "wireless DAC," but the display is on the remote.
I really wish Slim had moved in this direction because I'd much rather use their open source server than Creative's Mediasource.
I don't see well enough and rooms in my house are big enough that I won't be able to read a Squeezebox across a room, but I don't want a TV-output option (CRT warm up time, power consumption, size, home theater video routing nightmare, etc.)
Sorry, PCM might be fine when you connect through wired ethernet, but it's not a good idea when using it with 802.11b. The 1.5mbit/s of the PCM stream might be less than the practical max of 5mbit/s, but take non ideal signal conditions or other users on the same network into account, and it won't work.
Transcoding might be a solution, but the superior coding quality of ogg or other codecs certainly gets lost by this additional coding/decoding step.
And as another poster mentioned it takes some computing power on the server.
A more powerful controller that could implement different decoders in software would be an advantage.
Disclaimer: I'm working for a company that develops a (yet to announce) audio player device.
you mean to say that it *does* read from SMB, NFS, whatever. i have one and i use it with an NFS share from a linux box to win2k server and it works like a champ.
Actually, the SlimServer does support ID3 tags in WAV files and has for a while.
And the cd30 only supports windows because they use the crappy windows speech synthesis to create almost recognizable facimiles of the information in your ID3 tags.