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Review of the Squeezebox
The following review was written by Patrick Schoonveld
A few weeks back, I noticed a shiny and lonely piece of kit hanging around the Slashdot offices. Ever the inquisitive [nosey] individual, I asked and was told it was an MP3 player for review. Thinking this an excellent use of my limited free time, I took it home to play with.
The Slim Devices Squeezebox is a networked MP3 player that can either play music from your collection via its open source SlimServer or via Internet streams. Shipping with a power cable and RCA tulip cable, it also provides digital optical and coax outs as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. This edition is the third generation, which comes in a much more attractive stand up form factor than two previous editions.
There are two versions available, one with 802.11g capabilities built in and one only with Ethernet. The 802.11g edition also ships with an Ethernet jack and can double as a bridge for other Ethernet-enabled devices. The wireless edition is available for $299 and the wired-only edition is $50 cheaper, both from their website.
The first step was to install the software provided by Slim Devices from their website. It is open source and written in Perl, with installers for Windows and Mac OS X as well as RPMs for Linux. I used a Windows laptop with an external drive that had a backup of my music. The installation went extremely smoothly, using a typical Windows installer. Within seconds, the server icon was in the system tray. My biggest issue was that the external drive was connected via USB 1.1 and scanning the 35 gigs of music stored there took over an hour.
On plugging in the device, I was very surprised to find a fluorescent display instead of the usual, inexpensive LCD. Flouros are much easier to see across a room or in the dark. The Squeezebox walked through a wizard-like process of configuring the network choices of wired vs. wireless, WEP key and IP address (DHCP or static) via the remote control. Although punching in a 128-bit hex key may seem inconvenient, it was quite easy due to the mapping of the characters to the numbers on the remote, similar to sending an SMS with a mobile phone. The Squeezebox even found the server on its own and was playing music in just a few minutes.
After it finished scanning my library, I played a few MP3s. I was immediately impressed by the quality of the audio and the speed with which hitting play via the web interface caused music to appear; lag was less than a second. I had assumed that as the laptop and the Squeezebox were both over 802.11g, collisions and traffic issues would be a problem. However, at no time did I ever notice any hiccups. I ran the Squeezebox for several hours while working and downloading a few Torrents, with no issue whatsoever. I also tried adding music to the queue via the remote control. The software on the device makes it very easy to navigate a large music collection using the remote to zip to the first character of any title, again like sending an SMS, hit 1 three time for 'C'. The + button on the remote allows you to add albums, songs or artists' libraries to the queue very easily.
I also played with the Internet radio tie-ins. It took very little time to sign up for a Live365 account and configure the Squeezebox for my account. Although the streams I found were low quality and quite busy, there were many options available including other streaming networks or purchasing a Live365 subscription for better quality streams.
After a week of use, I was very pleased with the SqueezeBox. It sounds fantastic and even using my wireless and USB 1.1 external drive didn't deter the ease of use. However, I had my PowerBook returned to me, which is my main music library and iTunes host. I proceeded to set it up as the primary server for the device. The installation was fairly easy (finding the long forgotten firewall settings took the most time), but the performance was atrocious. I read in the forums on Slimdevice's site that the daily builds have some performance fixes. I downloaded the latest build and still had no luck getting it to reliably play for more than a song. I then switched off the AirPort and plugged in an Ethernet cable and since, have had no problems whatsoever. As it worked fine with my Windows laptop, I am inclined to think it a problem with the Mac.
Since using the Mac, I've also turned on the iTunes integration. Supposedly, it will scan the iTunes library XML file to find playlists and new music nearly instantly compared to searching every MP3 file in a directory tree. I've not found that to be as reliable or easy as rumored on the forums on slimdevices.com. It would be much nicer if there was a "Reload iTunes file" button instead of trusting it will find your music after a user configurable period of time. It did, however, eventually find all of my playlists and make it very easy to play any one of them.
I've used the Squeezebox for another couple weeks with the Mac and have been very happy. The best parts are the reliability and audio quality; 192kb MP3s sound as good as my older Denon cd player to my non-audiophile ears. At $299, it is not an inconsiderably cheap piece of kit as one could build a basic PC to do this and more for a similar cost. However, with the attractive form factor, and great ease of use, I'm inclined to say it's worth it.
Pat's review is accurate. It is also incomplete (but for the squeezebox, that is easy to have happen... you just keep discovering more cool features).
Soooooooooo, in addition to his review I would add the following cool things about this device:
So, you can see there is lots more than just stated in the review, and probably lots more than what I've shown.
I think Squeezebox is a great product (I own three). I am waiting for the day someone (hopefully SlimDevices) comes out with a decent and reasonably priced streaming device that has video out to display liner notes, lyrics, now playing, etc. (and, no, I'm NOT interested in a media center...)
the poor guy responsible for making ads work on Slashdot and other OSTG sites
Ads?
What ads?
And, by itself, it still doesn't support Ogg Vorbis.
:)
FLAC is a nice plus, though.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
The review is correct that the OSX version does not work reliably. I find that the database becomes corrupt, something which never happened under Windows. It is also very slow to create the index. Apart from this Mac-only problem, it's a terrific device.
I've got 2 so far. There just isn't anything better right now. There aren't many alternatives for playing FLACs and OGGs at all. And the server software is free software, written in Perl! What more could a hacker ask for?
I own a SliMP3, their first gen device. What really makes this product is the software. It consistently amazes you with how well it performs and how easy it is to use.
This is a great example of the power of open source software. A devoted group of users has really polished and streamlined the software.
Pat Schoonveld (the poor guy responsible for making ads work on Slashdot and other OSTG sites).
/. flash-based ad causes Firefox to munch CPU. Granted, it wasn't Pat that made the ad, but at least I can now point my finger!!
Now I know who to be pissed at when a
(Yeah, yeah, I know -- FlashBlock, AdBlock and all that jazz)
you do need a fairly fast machine to get that great performance to which the reviewer is referring. I'm trying to use an old dual-PII 233 machine and it's quite slow to serve up web pages, find tracks by artist, etc. Seems like it ought to be fast enough for this relatively simple task, but I guess perl is just slow. My perl is not threaded either, so all the load is on one of the processors, and lets the other be mostly idle. I've been wondering if there could be a way to compile it to machine code rather than having to run it interpreted?
One improvement is to use mysql instead of sqlite; I have done that, and it is still too slow. But on a 1 ghz or faster machine it's fine.
Why is the price $299 ?
I have a old laptop that does the same thing...ok,its not good lookin or small
but what the heck.
I hope someone makes and sells these for $99 to $139 range.
I dont think the hardware should cost more than that.
any other alternatives to *slim which are not that expensive. ?
I need to have a mp3 player that just sucks all the mp3s/oggs from an external HD and doesnt require a computer to operate.
Pat
I've had one of the previous generation Squeezebox devices for a couple of years now, and I'm very happy with it. While I could have set up a Linux box doing this, I have limited time to fart around with things and the squeezebox just WORKED. The device itself support mp3 and uncompressed audio streaming, and since most of my music is in FLAC format (from ripped CDs), I thought I'd have problems with it. However, I just installed the software, let it dig around my music collection, and changed some firewall rules and was off and running.
The biggest complaint I have about it is that sometimes if the server is busy (scanning music again, for example), it will stutter during playback. A bigger buffer would be useful here I think.
Also note that the SlimServer software can be used without the device. In fact, if you want to try out how you will like a squeezebox, there is a Java applet that exactly emulates the squeezebox, including display, remote control, and more. A good way to tell if you are going to want to spend $300 on the box. See the http://softsqueeze.sourceforge.net/ softsqueeze web site for more information.
There's also a simpler client that can also talk to the slimserver that you can run. A friend has been running this on his stereo PC for several years now, without getting a squeezebox. It works great for him, and you control it via a browser on the slimserver, just like with the regular squeezebox.
The browser control of the server is another thing I love about it. If I'm on the patio or in the dining room with music playing, I can just use my laptop to change the volume, skip a song, or pause, instead of hunting down the remote. Plus it works really well to add a particular song we are talking about at a party or the like.
It's a great device. I got it on sale at $249, and am very happy with it. In fact, we have two of them. I want to add another one for the bathroom for showering tunes.
Sean
A few weeks back, I noticed a shiny and lonely piece of kit hanging around the Slashdot offices.
Slashdot has offices? Is that a euphemism for "basements"? Given that the "editors" don't edit (nor often exercise demonstrable discretion), I am puzzled about why they would need any offices.
-b
myselfmusic
WiFi for the Nintendo DS is currently in the process of being hacked. After it's done, I can't help but think that this would be among one of the PERFECT homebrew apps for the system, assuming that the device does what I think it does. The way I understand it, this device streams music from your home PC, and plays it for you, with an interface to change songs. The DS would make a fantastic platform for this, as it has a touch screen and is more than capable of decoding MP3/Vorbis on the fly... 4MB of Memory is more than enough for a buffer as well. If nobody else develops a client for this for Nintendo DS, I just might be interested in coding it myself, as this is something that has always been #1 in my list of wants for Nintendo DS homebrew. (Although before now, I hadn't really thought about how it should work).
The wireless is 802.11g, not b. Don't think flac, wav, or shn could travel well over b.
I still use my Turtle Beach AudioTron.
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audiotro
The biggest selling point to me for the AudioTron was the fact that it didn't need server software. The device would scan your network for CIFS shares with MP3/WAV files (Windows Networking or SAMBA) that it had access to.
The AudioTron also has a complete web interface in it's firmware, supports internet radio stations, had a semi-active third party software community, integrates well it your stereo system (looks like a stereo component), supports optical audio-out, etc...
Too bad they discontinued it.
I have to admit I find the Airport Express far more interesting and relevant to my needs. 802.11b/g, wired ethernet, ability to act as bridge, ability to serve USB printers, digital and analog out, doesn't take up any space in my AV rack, and iTunes integration is, needless to say, perfect. Oh, and it's $129 :).
Mind you, it's a different paradigm -- you control this box via the remote, whereas with the AE you tell iTunes what music to stream to it -- but it works pretty darn well for me.
8/10
How about a builtin HDD or CF card so I don't have to have my computer on to listen to stored music?
Squeezebox is now 802.11g, not b
The new Squeezebox in fact has a 802.11g, not 'b'. Runs at 54 Mb/s, not 11.
there are three generations of them, and I'll be damned if I can tell which one he reviewed....
that's usually helpful.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I've had a SqueezeBox v1 for several years and I love it as well. I was originally interested in it because of the server software - that it was Open Source and written in PERL. Plus they encourage hacking of the hardware and of the software. Any company with those morals gets my support.
When I first got my SqueezeBox in the mail it would not play correctly - the sound was all distorted. I sent them an email and they told me to just open it up and see if anything was loose or broken from shipping. I asked "Won't that void my warranty?" and they just said no, don't worry about it. So I popped it open and found that there was a broken piece floating around in it. They just told me to send it back and they replaced it very quickly and covered all shipping charges.
Sure, you can run to your local electronics store and get a wireless MP3 player for less than the Squeezebox, but does it run on Linux, is the software Open Source, is the company 'Not Evil'?
If only more companies were like Slim Devices we would have some really cool things going on.
My Mama's got one of these. And my Daddy never sleeps at night.
Does the Squeezebox have proper unicode support? I listen to Japanese music mostly, and it would be sad if the device wouldn't display any of my tags.
the guys at slim don't f#ck around - i have 3 of these and it's by far and away the best home option available.
Slimboxes are now into their third generation and have been 802.11b & 802.11g since they came out with the V2 over a year ago. The 802.11b only status of V1 slimboxes was the reason I didn't buy one. I've been very happy with my V2.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
For those of us who have just less then 60GB of mp3s, wouldn't an iPod be a better choice?
It's a bit more pricey but then you can walk on the street with it too?
Maybe if it was ~$100
Doesn't 802.11b use CSMA/CA...thereby eliminating all collissions, much like token passing networks?
Oracle.
why does the DS have to do the decoding? Wouldn't you just want to use the DS as a cool remote / interface to the server? OR do you mean having the music actually play through the DS' speakers? That would be sweet.
I saw the Squeezebox player at someone's house and thought it was the coolest thing, until I found the Roku Soundbridge. The Soundbridge can link with iTunes natively and doesn't require any more software like the slimserver to run. It is also a ton cheaper. It's available retail for $149.00 at Circuit City and is going on e-Bay(where I picked up mine) for around 100 bucks.
I can now read libraries from my Mac Powerbook 15" iTunes, my PC iTunes, and my wife's PC Laptop iTunes!
Check it out as it is even cooler and a lot cheaper too. One caveat is to make sure your Router is compatible or else you'll have to run some workarounds to get it going.
I didn't find any "what's new" link on http://slimdevices.com/ for this edition of the squeezebox, does that mean that the packaging is the only new thing in this release? Thanks! -M
Yo' mama goes in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out
from someone else with two of the previous generation version.
The present version has got a much better D/A converter, whereas the old one was a bit crap if you had a decent hifi. The good thing is that both versions have digital electrical (SPDIF) and toslink out, so I just run the spdif into a good quality cheap DAC.
As hifi nuts update their kit regularly, you don't have to pay much for some top notch kit which is a few years old, and there is nothing to wear out in a DAC.
You can also use the web interface to manage what is streamed to your computer, and you can co-ordinate multiple players to all play the same thing, which is handy for parties.
Good gadget, but definitely happier in wired mode than wireless, I have found.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
One little correction: the new Squeezebox 3 is an 802.11g device, not b. Even better wireless goodness! (The Squeezebox 1 was 802.11b). I picked up my Squeezebox 3 last week at the Slimdevices road show here in Seattle, and I've been loving it. I also have two of the first-generation Squeezeboxes.
My other favorite features in the new version:
- native FLAC support! (It used to have to convert to WAV before streaming to the unit)
- SqueezeNetwork, which lets the Squeezebox stream from the Internet without a local SlimServer running.
- better DAC
- new grayscale display with cool VU meters, etc.
Yeah. Being anywhere that's away from your PC... and streaming the music to your DS over a network connection or internet connection. The speakers aren't so great, but when using headphones, the audio quality is quite good.
With AlienBBC you can get the full collection of BBC streams through the squeezebox, too.
Since BBC streams everything in Real format, I think this is the only thing short of a full HTPC that gets the full beeb collection to your living room outside the UK. Even XM and Delphi only have a few beeb channels.
Sean - will the Squeezebox ever support Video? Now *That* would be sweet.
Airport is fine to airport networks- but it's interoperability with the other 802.11x standards leaves a good deal to be desired. I'm willing to bet the worse quality experienced with Airport turned on was due to Airport, not the Squeezebox or the computer itself.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I read the whole review. Nowhere does it mention if this device is Web 2.0 compliant. Can I use Ruby on Rails and AJAX with the Squeezebox? Podcasts are not even supported. This device is not important to the blogosphere as a whole.
You never owned the box, so how could you know?
:) Sorts of like Tivo.
It is way better then the soundbridge. Buy one and try it out. There is 30 days return policy.
Excelent internet radio support for example.
Great community of hackers.
And many, many more....
It is great. Changes you life
I thought I would post how I use mine. I didn't buy the hardware because I am a cheap skate, but I did down load the software since my place is wired in ever room several times over. Upon noticing the port nubmering I wondered if I could, instead of creating and hauling CDs/DVD full of MP3 to the office to listen while I work, configure my router to route traffic to the server and listen in from work. This works flawlessly!!! I just type in http:////steam.mp3 and it is up and running. All I have to do from here is queue up music. There is even an option under the "Sever Config" link that allows you to password protect your stream and server, which I did. :-) No me and my friends can listen to my several different streams at the same time, unless your work blocks media files (.mp3) you can too!!!!
The box itself seemed like too dumb of a client, asking the server about what it should do in response to every action. Perhaps the wireless connection back to my computer wasn't good enough (it was a fair distance), but even so, the fact it could play an MP3 *at all* would indicate it should have a good enough connection to present a usable UI. But the response was always slow, with little indication whether it was working or not. I probably wouldn't have minded the slowness of certain operations if I could tell reliably that it was definitely *doing* something. But instead I'd have to wait 10 seconds and try again if it seemed to have not noticed the remote signal.
For actual listening, I could get maybe 30 minutes of play before it randomly stopped. Getting it going again was hard, involving rebooting several different pieces and finally just praying it would start working. I could never understand what was going on.
It's entirely possible that a bad connection to my computer leads to a general degredation of... everything. If I can get it working again I'll probably try to connect it via ethernet. But even if that is the problem, the degredation is not very graceful.
Another thing that annoyed me, and may or may not still be the case, is that it only plays MP3s. I got the impression that it played oggs from its marketing, but that's just bullshit. The server software happens to be able to transcode to MP3. Having the server transcode to MP3 is stupid (and uses up a lot of CPU to boot), and I ended up simply transcoding all my oggs to mp3 and keeping them on disk instead of having it do this on the fly.
The slimserver is free to download, and so is softsqueeze (bundled with the server). You can run softsqueeze in a browser or as it's own program. It's a Java applet, so it runs on all platforms.
The softsqueeze is basically an emulator of the actual hardware, but not quite as cool. It has SSH tunneling built into the software so you can use it at work very easily. The streaming is very well done so the bandwidth requirements aren't bad at all.
I love this stuff and I don't own any of the hardware.
Our own squeezebox worked so well for my wife that I purchased one for my father and another for my best friend as well. All three enjoy the painless remote control interface. Both my wife and friend are decidedly non-technical and prefer to have little or nothing to do with computers, but the squeezebox has been a big hit with them. My wife, a professional pastry chef, says that it has changed her work life in the kitchen. It is a really well concieved appliance.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
And loving it.. I run the server in a VMware ESX guest with the CPU shares lowered to just 5 - same as my DNS server (default is 1,000). My father-in-law changed out my exploded water heater on Father's Day for free last year so I thanked him with a 2nd gen Squeezebox. He ABSOLUTELY loves it, and built a 220GB MP3 collection around it, and wired up whole-house audio and music around the pool.
.pls generator they coded up and basically wget the .pls files for their entire collection! No one else has mentioned the tight Shoutcast integration. Finally, more recent versions of the server software lets you pop a .pls URL right into the web page and tune in. Pair that up with greasemonkey script that adds a .pls link alongside every MP3 URL and you can quickly and easily queue up any .mp3 URL you find on the net.
I have had some issues with Centos 4 show up only in that VMware guest, however. ARPs don't complete properly and the MAC for the SliMP3 shows up as (incomplete) until I cron up a job to fix it manually. I also have to cron up an ntpdate command every 10 minutes, as the clock is off by about 45 seconds every 10 minutes. Strange.
Finally, as others have pointed out their favorite things to play.. years ago I found Vibeflow.com for hundreds of hours of a wide variety of great music. And if you poke around behind the curtains, you can find a
Seriously, check out Vibeflow's Alias Circa show archive.
Intelligent Life on Earth
It is also, to the best of my knowledge, the only networked audio device that has a command line interface. telnet into the slimserver on port 9090 and you can control all of the SqueezeBoxen on your network directly - makes writing 3rd party clients very easy...
The only Good System is a Sound System
...and it has become an indispensible appliance in my living room. I simply cannot stress enough how wonderful internet radio streams are when they're coming in through your stereo via a remote controlled appliance instead of through your desktop speakers and computer.
I wouldn't say that it transforms the internet radio/mp3 listening experience as significantly as, say, TiVo transforms the television watching experience, but it's still pretty significant.
The reviewer seems to have covered all the basic information, but didn't emphasize some of the less obvious features that, for me, make the Squeezebox worth its price tag..
Also, I happen to be one of those people that has to compulsively hack up every device to do unnatural things, which means that the open-source Perl server is critical (even though it is kind of a beast). Some more neat things for hackers:
I know there's lots I'm forgetting but I have to try to get this post in while there is still a chance somebody will see it...
Squeezebox v1 with the graphic display upgrade, and SlimServer 6.2.1 on a Debian sid box with vorbis-tools installed. Ogg tracks play just fine, and I haven't really messed with transcoding options on the server. It Just Worked.
So the one thing I was worried about before getting a Squeezebox was that I wouldn't be able to navigate my MP3 collection easily enough from the remote. But this just wasn't the case, and it turns out don't go to my computer to queue up music as I thought I'd have to before getting the thing. The easiest way to queue up music, assuming you know what you want to listen to, is simply to search for it. If you have any proficiency sending text messages using a cell phone, this will be completely natural to you. You just type a few letters, hit the forward arrow button, then scroll through the list. It does partial string matches, and you can search by album, artist, or song. And then if you just want to browse, you scan through the list; the number pad is active and you can use it to jump to a particular letter if you like. Simple, and it works great and looks nice to boot.
The real benefit of what it does is bridge the internet's content with your stereo. Put on Radio Paradise and that's dinner. Soma FM for later. Some crazy station on shoutcast for a party. Or my own CD's... (Tired as they may be.) Radio 1190 for that cool Japanise pop program and the laxidasical DJ...
It also acts as a bridge, so other devices can use it's ethernet plug while it uses the 8011g. (Playstation 3!?)
My wife gets lost in some of the menu items but I'm sure that will be improved upon (your local squeeze box server has different menu items than when you connect to the Squeeze server). I think that they should be more integrated...
That said, they are always improving my sqeeze box with new flashes, and server software. The people that run it actually answer questions on their mail lists. And they provide technical answers to technical questions.
Bottom line is that I'm very happy with it (wife is too) and when I'm rich, I'll consider getting a second one for another room.
Cheers,
-b
how did I hear about this review? my squeezebox delivered slashdot rss headlines to my living room!
I Have owned a Squeezebox for 18 months. It performs extremely well. Best of all I can remotely control the device using my WiFi PDA and it's 'browser. This gives me the complete freedom to use the server software to chose down to individual tracks. It's also a conversation piece and jawdropper to sit in a chair, infront of guests, asking them what music they want and dialing it up immediately! Incidentally I also use it with Shoutcast which has some very high quality feeds thesew days.
My biggest issue was that the external drive was connected via USB 1.1 and scanning the 35 gigs of music stored there took over an hour.
This seems more of an issue with having the drive connected by USB 1.1 than an issue with the software.
I ran the Squeezebox for several hours while working and downloading a few Torrents, with no issue whatsoever.
Perhaps it is just me, but I've never found bittorrent to choke my wi-fi connection. It does have a lot of packets going in and out, but nowhere near the capacity of my 802.11g router. If you use unwise settings for your network, such as kajillions of connections per torrent, you're likely to exceed the bandwidth of your broadband connection before you get into trouble with your wi-fi network.
I've been eyeing the Squeezebox for a while due to my obsession with FLAC since buying fancy headphones, but have been scared away by the price tag. I can't justify buying a $300 component until I have a better receiver.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I used a Squeezeebox v2 on MacOSX (Panther) for 6-7 months. The server was a dual 2GHz G5. Performance was horrible, the music kept cutting out, etc. I was convinced the Squeezebox was trash. Then one day, it would work flawlessly, seemingly without any change. A week later, the dumpster again seemed like its proper home.
I ended up finding out what my problem was. I was running a few (2-3) Torrents, using Bram's stock BitTorrent software. The number of simultaneous network connections was pretty high. In this situation, the Squeezebox couldn't open connections, or keep open ones open, and it would skip, studder, or seemingly just disappear. Web traffic never seemed to suffer, only the Squeezebox. Today, I've found that my Mac is much happier running the (sometimes laggy on a 1GHz Powerbook) Azureus and limiting simultaneous network connections to 80-100. I believe there is an undocumented issue with Panther not handling large numbers of simultaneous open connections well.
Perhaps the reviewer could verify that Torrents are not in play while the Squeezebox is being tested. If they are, perhaps simultaneous network connections can be throttled. I am interested in a V3 product, but only if it will continue to function on my Mac.
Just like the iPod transformed music on the move this nifty box of tricks has transformed music in the living room. There are several killer features which persuaded me to post my £1,500 Primare CD player on eBay, and invest in a couple of these puppies:
- completely silent and wireless - sits amicably next to the hi-fi
- native flac support and digital outputs for unsurpassed audiophile sound with an outboard dac (less than 50 pico seconds jitter apparently)
- AlienBBC plugin allows browsing of BBC programmes on demand via the remote control - believe me this is the way forward. just look at what the tv operators are pushing at the moment (ntl, sky)
- beautiful vacuum plasma display that is visible from anywhere in the room displaying track listings, rss news feeds, weather reports, etc. you can even set monster sized text.
- open source extensibility - I'm usually a bit of a passive activist when it comes to OSS - but the simplicity of creating perl plugins for this thing encouraged me develop my own curious 'enhancements'
- perfect use-case for wireless technology - stick a couple of these things around the house and without nasty trailing cables you have awesome synchronised multi-room sound
My 300 strong CD collection just got relegated to the attic!
That was the main reason I got the SqueezeBox3. Also, it's purdy-lookin'.
Here's the URL: http://www.archive.org/audio/
How many "CDs" were in the reviewer's collection? It couldn't have been very many because the Slimserver scans rather slowly. While scanning, performance is terrible. That he completely glossed over that greatly reduces the credibility of the review.
Don't get me wrong, this is a good product and I own 3. But like any product, it has issues.
One of the big issues is the monolithic perl code which drives the server. Desipte the fairly recent supoort for a database backend, performance with large collections remains disapointing in many ways. Some would take exception to the philosophy of adding lots and lots of features over fixing the core "audio applicance" reliability. I'm sure it will eventually get fixed, but it seems to be moving more slowly than my collection is growing! (+1.5TB).
is audible.com format supported? I own lots of audible.com content that I can play on my iPod and iTunes. It would be nice if I could play this content on a squeezebox...
In real-time. I've been perusing and participating on the SlimDevices forums, and I have seen countless threads where knowledgeable end-users of the SB have requested updates to the firmware to fix bugs or even improve some signal processing alorithms (like digital volume attenuation). The Slim Devices CEO and CTO both appear quite often on the forum and respond and implement both bug fixes and the end-user suggestions. I'm guessing it's a pretty small operation, but still, that's great customer support. These guys really know their stuff.
I already own a Squeezebox 2, so having the DS act as one would be OK, but what I'd really like it to have it act as a WiFi remote. That's the one thing I really covet from Sonos is their slick remote.
There is a stripped down version of the Slimserver interface that can be accessed via PocketPC, but it's pretty slow to navigate. There is also a stand alone program that can control Slimserver for PocketPC (3rd party makes it, wants $45 for it), but the interface requires the use of a stylus, and is pretty cumbersome.
Another cool thing about the Squeezebox is that the firmware is upgradable, and so is the hardware that does the audio decoding. When Slimdevices released the third generation of the Squeezebox, all I had to do was download the new version of Slimserver and my SB 2 got in-hardware WMA decoding for free!
One negative is that I'd say playlist editing is pretty painful with Slimserver... it's getting better with every release, but it's still got a ways to go.
The critical Squeezebox feature for me it's ability to handle large collections. Lots of products work well with a few thousand songs, but Squeezebox handles 100,000 and more. It can take quite a while to scan, but it actually works, which is more than I can say for any of the other products I tried with that many songs.
There's a few downsides, if you're using a format that requires transcoding [e.g. Apple Lossless] you won't be able to fast forward or rewind inside of tracks. The software is not hiccup-free and [again with the Mac stuff] it's cumbersome to add plug-ins or manually edit the files in OS X. Mine has crashed or shut down without warning a couple times as well. Basically, it's a perfect geek toy but I wouldn't buy one for my mom.
Overall though I'm extremely happy with mine, and I enjoy the fact that the company's employees are so approachable and responsive.
Yeah, that's another thing that I was thinking about. I have always wanted to build myself a media server to do stuff like play DVDs, play music, play Xvid movies, or that sort of thing. But I've been kind of stumped as to how to go about actually controlling the thing. A remote control doesn't offer the power or flexibility that a person would want. A keyboard and mouse defeats the purpose. Web control seemed to be the best option to me. But that would still require a person to control the PC with a laptop or a computer in another room, which is still clunky as hell.
:) (It seems that the UDP library for the DS has been submitted for review... meaning I should probably start coding the basic interface in the next week or two).
Now a DS on the other hand... is affordable, you probably always have it with you, it has a touch screen, and is perfectly capable of controlling a server. In sleep mode, a DS will last a very long time without a recharge... it's the perfect device for controlling such a server.
Methinks that I have a programming project in the near future.
It is open source and written in Perl, with installers for Windows and Mac OS X as well as RPMs for Linux.
What about a configure script or makefile to build it from source? It would be perfect if I could just add an ebuild for it to my portage owerlay to install and unistall thourgh portage.
...Patrick Schoonveld (the poor guy responsible for making ads work on Slashdot and other OSTG sites) /. employees and get posted on the front page. I'm guessing a free unit it pretty cheap advertising.
Now it all makes sense. Send you're swag and free stuff direct to
I loved the original look of the slimp3- such a geek toy.
Then they changed the look and rounded it and made it curvy- and I didn't like the look as much but I bought one- got a wired version for $179 and was happy with the deal.
I went to buy another one and now they've changed the look again and all I can ask is "why?" The vertical shape doesn't fit anywhere- it makes it look big and bulky (even though it isn't deep) and all in all it looks like a new iMac. As the version I want is no longer available I'm left with a single unit and no intention of buying another one until the shape changes again.
-sirket
Have you checked out the SlingBox from Sling Media: http://www.slingmedia.com/ ?? It's kind of the opposite of what you're looking for in implementation, but it can accomplish similar ends...
;) It also has some sort of registration with a central server, if you are on a DHCP connection it will report it's IP, etc, so you have basically an ID that you enter in the client viewer, and it connects to your box no matter where it is or what IP it currently has. Tin-foil hat crowd need not apply.
These things are great. You basically plug in your AV and network, and it streams media from whichever input you select (it supports mutiple). The cool part is that the software (yes, unfortunately it requires a client, downloadable from their site - Windows only I believe) lets you select different remotes and it has mutiple IR transmitters running to each of your home theater devices. So say you switch to you DVD player input, the remote in the software changes to your DVD player remote (even emulates the brand and shape, layout, etc) and voila, you can play DVDs from your changer. Then switch inputs to your cable box, and watch streaming live cable TV, change channels, etc - even watch movies on OnDemand and the like.
It actually does a great job with the streaming as well, it will sync with the software client and they'll negotiate an optimal encoding and compression rate based on your connection. You can also set it to a hard setting, but this is nice because it will account for busier or slower network times, if say, you happen to be watching at work
I unfortunately don't own one, but a guy I work with has one and he's showed me all of this. I think they run $300. The real caveats are really just the reliance on a Windows client, which isn't a huge deal to me as I would only really use it from machines at places like work, laptop while traveling, friend's houses, etc. I realize that they dont' playback of computer video files to a TV, but it's still a really cool device along similar lines....
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
I can confirm for you, there were indeed no torrents downloading. The only software running on the machine was Firefox, and that was idling. This wasn't a primary machine at the time.
It seems to be a wireless vs. wired problem. On the cable, no problems. However, I did have a problem last night during an update, which was after the review was written. That seemed to be more of a CPU time issue than network connectivity.
P. Schoonveld
schoonveld (apestaartje) ostg.com
(the damnable ad guy)
Squeezebox indeed can readily handle tens of thousands or more tracks. It can take a while to scan, but you only need to initiate a scan when you add or change music files on the server. That process can be manually initiated or on a regular schedule. For example, it's easy enough to initiate a rescan every day at a reasonable hour, say noon, when all good slashdotters are asleep, not listening to their tunes...
I use the Airtunes even with my PC hard wired into a belkin base station, yes I know apple says you cannot do this, I have had no problems. For 100less I think you get a better deal. Even if I add a wireless remote it is still $70 less.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
www.sonos.com Amazing multiroom system. Super feature set. Passes the WAF (wife acceptance factor). Simple, it just works.
what.. you came here for news?
haha
...and when daddy gets home. Darn it all to hell he never gets no rest.
Cause she's playin' all night
And the music's all right
Mama's got a squeeze box
Daddy never sleeps at night
Well the kids don't eat
And the dog can't sleep
There's no escape from the music
In the whole damn street
Cause she's playin' all night
And the music's all right
Mama's got a squeeze box
Daddy never sleeps at night
(With Apologies to The Who)
Dolemite
Save the World! Use a Quote!
I have a squeezebox now since 6 or 7 months, and it is worth every penny. Installation was a breeze; plug in, installed the software on FC3, pointed it to my mp3 files and after scanning those, I was up and running. The software (being open source) is in multiple languages and keeps getting better. From time to time, there are free updates, both on the slimserver software as well as on the firmware of the thing.
I don't know what I can say bad about it, I'm totally hooked.
Mark
I just discovered http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/ today.
This is a project to convert the ($99 list) Hauppauge MediaMVP box into a MythTV frontend and a SlimServer (Squeezebox) frontend.
A cheap way to get much of the Squeezebox functionality and a lot more and do some hacking in the process...
X.
- Plenty of RAM half gig minimum
- fast disk (especially if RAM is cramped)
- Access to fast network
observationsI disagree with the review about the ...same quality on the PC.....
IMHO Wired http://www.wired.com/news/technology/audiophiles/0 ,2934,68891,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html have the sense of it, vinyl will survive - it's the CD format that will go - it's too compromised between quality and convenience.
if "Faith" could be proved with facts - would it still be faith? So why does "Faith" try to present beliefs as fact? -
After seeing a Squeezebox player owned by one of my friends, I decided to research streaming music player HW. For 1/2 the price of the Squeezebox I decided to purchase a Roku Soundbridge M500(this model is LED display based, but there's a m1000 that's the same thing as the Squeezebox for $179.000 - I just went the cheaper router).
I was also considering cheaper route of buying an Airport Express since I'm a Mac user too, but decided from Roku's product info that it'd be a better choice because it had the remote and display of the song playing + Internet Radio(w/o needing your computers on), unlike the Airport Express.
I got my http://www.rokulabs.com/ Roku a week ago for $100 off of e-Bay and it has been awesome. The only caveat to my experience is that my router was not the best one for working with the Roku, but as a geek I was able to telnet into the sucker and use the posted workarounds on Rokus helpful forums and get things working. The Roku is better because it supports native iTunes sharing so my music was automatically available after I got the Roku setup, including my 35 playlists for different settings. All 3 machines in my household: my 15"Powerbook Mac, my wife's Dell Laptop, and my eMachine desktop were able to share their tunes to the Roku within minutes. The Roku also supports Slimserver and Windows Media connectivity and Music Match Jukebox.
Overall, the native Mac OSX and iTunes support is what sold me. You can even use the mac to go to a webpage and control your Roku or even telnet into the device to edit the preset Internet Radio stations, or just import a playlist from iTunes of radio stations. If you're a Mac OSX use, ditch the Squeeze and get a Roku.
Check out the "Hi-Fi Squeezebox": http://www.at-tunes.co.uk/
I am also using Dvorak, since last week of last year -- ie. very nearly one year now.
I like it a lot, but it really shows how many places are difficult or plainly impossible to reconfigure (user login screen (I managed to fix my WinXP at work, but not my KDE at home), bios, dos or flash based applications, etc).
Those unconfigurable places really wreak havoc on my blind typing skills when I later return to Dvorak. I have not been able to retain my qwerty skills (but then, I have tried to avoid it).
Have you guys Dvorak keyboards, or just software-remapped qwerty keyboards? I used a bunch of self-made stickers for a while, but now all my keyboards look like qwerty (occasionally causing fun situations with guests).
The hardest thing to get used to is those "peck" situations where you mouse around and just need to hit a single key every now and then -- I am too easily distracted by the (lying) key caps.
"Good news, everyone!"
I've become very dependent on smart playlists. Basically all of my listening is based on dynamically generated playlists on a variety of constantly updating criteria. Some examples of my commonly used playlists are:
- 3, 4, or 5 star rating but not audiobook, podcast, or holiday
- 4 or 5 star rating but not audiobook, podcast, or holiday
- 5 star rating but not audiobook, podcast, or holiday
- Genre rock and not played in the last 30 days
- Alternative and not played in the last 30 days
- Last played yesterday
- Last played in the past week (these are for identifying that song I heard recently but don't remember what it was)
- No rating and not audiobook, podcast, or holiday (I use this playlist for "rating sessions" so obviously I need to be able to rate songs from whatever interface I'm using)
- Most frequently played songs
I've been spoiled. I just can't go back to any music playback system that doesn't keep track of how I've rated each song, how many times I've played it, and when I played it last.
My stereo isn't in the same room as my main listening speakers. I have the stereo downstairs in the family room. Upstairs in the living room I have a pair of (reasonably high quality) bookshelf speakers mounted on the wall and a subwoofer. I use a remote repeater to control the volume and selection on the reciever downstairs. So far so good - I can switch sources and control the volume and CD player from upstairs.
So then I have my media computer also downstairs hooked directly to the stereo through the sound card outputs (yes, I know the squeezebox high higher quality outputs, but I can't tell the difference between playing off the computer and a CD, really).
So if I had a squeezebox I couldn't see the display because it has to hook up to the line inputs on the stereo (at least according to the diagram on the web site). So what I would need is a remote head unit that I can put upstairs to control the box hooked up to my stereo. I didn't dig too deep on their web site, but I didn't see it. What I've done to solve this problem myself is to write a web interface to AmaroK so I can control the songs from our ibook that's upstairs. This gives me maximum control for minimum visible equipment.
For listening to the TV, I picked up a Ramsey Electronics FM transmitter and hooked it up to the TV out. Then I tune the radio downstairs and voila! It actually sounds really good - much better than you would think (the FM is not compressed, unlike your basic radio station).
I purchased their first generation device on the strength of reviews similar to this one. However the output was way way too low, meaning that:
1) You have to pump it up when listening and down when changing to another input (CD, FM, etc) or risk getting blasted out.
2) You have to pump it up meaning you get more noise from the amplifier and such.
The company's response? Too bad, so sad. They stopped responding to calls about it. They claim they published somewhere some obscure technical detail that showed their output was "line level", as they claimed, but some obscure version of line level that no one ever heard of.
I have a Roku Soundbridge, they have the nice display and better prices and work with the (free) SlimServer software.
I bought 2 of the original SliMP3 players 3 years ago, and have since added a Squeezebox2. I also run the Java software client "SoftSqueeze" on my PVR box, with keys bound to my Hauppauge remote, and on my workstation.
u ct_info.php?products_id=394&osCsid=d36fe1b16b40778 a4c40769dfec64b65
I can sync all of these up together, and even sync the controls so raising the volume does it on all the clients, hardware or software.
The hardware clients are as thin as they can get really - the remote codes are not interpretted by the client: they are sent to the server, which acts upon it and sends back the text to display on the client. Because of this server-centric design, you can get the server to do anything you like in response to a remote code.
This open architecture has produced armfuls of wonderful plugins, from RSS readers, weather, to plugins that will display a biog of the artist currently playing. For me though, the killer plugin is AlienBBC. I can browse through the entire "listen again" archive by station, show or day and choose anything. The day this happens for TV as well, will be joyous indeed. As the BBC listen again archive is (for reasons presumably known to the BBC, but not adequately explained to me) streamed in the adfest protocol that is the so-called "Real" media, AlienBBC uses mplayer to transcode the streams on the fly to something a little more friendly. You can chose from good old mp3 to lossless formats like FLAC.
My setup runs quite happily on a mixed mode 802.b/g network. I always buy the wired players, so I can upgrade the net later without throwing them away. Plus, where you want the player, isn't always a good place for the antenna - so my advice is keep em separate.
The high geek factor of the software may put some people off, but you can just use it out of the box (although you'll have to rip your CD's with something else - I use cdparanoia and lame, fronted by Grip) There are also some nicely packaged Slimserver music server devices now too - check out this one from Multitask:-
http://www.multitask-computing.co.uk/catalog/prod
this is one of my biggest gripes with airtunes, not being able to use it for listening to any video audio through my stereo system.