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Thread: Squeezebox - the simplest ideas are often the best

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    Ex-MSFT Paul Adams's Avatar
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    Smile Squeezebox - the simplest ideas are often the best

    Recently my wife and I got a new car, and being as mechanically inept as I am the only customisation I felt happy with was purchasing a replacement head unit - the one I ended up with was a Sony "Giga Panel" one with 1GB of memory built into the face-plate, which plays MP3s (this was a must).

    We embarked then upon the consolidation of my previously sampled CDs and her project to go through her CD collection and go sample-crazy - ending up with a single repository of all our MP3s on the file server.
    This was a healthy exercise which led to the deletion of tracks which came from albums purchased for single songs (it's rather sad how often we have both done this), and the standardisation of sampling rates and normalisation.

    Now we could not only load the head unit for the car with ~250 tracks we both enjoy, but could also stream straight over the network from any computer.
    Nifty.

    But then came the question of how to play MP3s in the living room, and I recalled hearing some talk of a "Squeezebox" (on this very forum, I think) which sounded just like the ticket.


    Well colour me impressed - ordered it Wednesday afternoon and it turned up on Friday morning, it took no effort to connect to my WPA-protected wireless network and coxially hook up to my Marantz SR8500 amp, installed the song-serving software on my server and within minutes the speakers were merrily playing away.

    The interface and design of the connectors are as simple as they need to be whilst giving access to all the necessary features.
    A product that does exactly what it says it does, and it just as easy to set up.


    Now comes the tricky part - fixing up all the ID3 tags to make sure the "genre" is correct so we can play random tracks to suit our mood (typically metal/rock) - it's strange how some people have categorised songs as completely the wrong genre (Michael Jackson "Off The Wall" != Rock).
    ~ I have CDO. It's like OCD except the letters are in alphabetical order, as they should be. ~
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    Almost in control. autopilot's Avatar
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    Yep, i love my Squeezebox 3. Been using it everyday for months on end. It's one of the best things i have ever bought in my entire life. Everyone i have every shown, techie or not, as wanted to buy one. It's so rare a product hits the nail on the head so well.

    Just a shame that Rapsody does not work in the UK.
    Last edited by autopilot; 23-07-2006 at 02:26 PM.

  3. #3
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Even my mum would quite like one

    It didn't take much to get her interested, i just logged onto SqueezeNetwork and found a Country radio station broadcasting from middle America

    Once they get their back garden sorted out and new summer house built, i'm going to set one up and rip all their CDs so they can sit out in the garden listening to music.

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    Almost in control. autopilot's Avatar
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    I did'nt think it would take long for Funkstar to show up in this thread

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    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    :shrug:

    i traul the New Posts seach ever time i log on. so shoot me

    anyway, i lurves my squeezebox

  6. #6
    Sexual Force johnny02004976's Avatar
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    sorry for sounded like a noob - but what do Squeezboxes do??
    Contrary to the odd name and translucent-grey color, Pocari Sweat does not taste like sweat
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  7. #7
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?BeginnersGuide

    Basically SlimServer sits on a PC and serves music to a SqueezeBox over your wired or wirless network. This is much more than just an audio sender as the backend can do some very cool things. Using lossless audio files (FLAC, WMALossless, WAV and ALAC) the sound quality is extremely high, enough to rival CD players costing 10x as much.

    There are so many other features i could witter on about, but i don't have time right now

  8. #8
    Sexual Force johnny02004976's Avatar
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    these sound awesome, im gonna get looking for one......i can see me getting slapped back by a huge pricetag

    EDIT: maybe not, £160 seems very reasonable
    Last edited by johnny02004976; 23-07-2006 at 06:50 PM.
    Contrary to the odd name and translucent-grey color, Pocari Sweat does not taste like sweat
    Hardware:

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    Home Entertainment - Xbox 360 with 37" HD LCD TV, Acoustic Energy Aegis EVO A speakers (5,1), Yamaha RXV359 AV reciever
    Media Centre II - X2 4000+, 1GB, 400Gb Vista Ultimate


  9. #9
    Almost in control. autopilot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Funkstar
    :shrug:

    i traul the New Posts seach ever time i log on. so shoot me

    anyway, i lurves my squeezebox
    I was just saying that because i knew what a massive SB fan you are mate.

  10. #10
    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    that was meant to be a bit sarcastic and flippant Dom. Obviously i failed misserably to convey that

    (damned tinterweb forumy-bobs)

  11. #11
    Spider pig, spider pig
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    So what can a squeezebox do that an XBox 360 can't? Other than that the 360 needs a screen I guess...

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    Synergy leverager
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    Nothing. Get an Xbox360. Much more audiophile. I got a squeezebox 3. its crap really.

    Hang on, what am I saying??

    SB3 (plus Slimserver and squeezenetwork of course) is fantastic. I've had mine for a few days now. Stream all my music as FLAC (lossless compression), and never has my moderately OK hi fi sounded so good. And its so simple to use. I've been talking to my wife for months for ages about getting one, mostly getting rolled-eye responses, until finally I wore her down. Now its installed, even she thinks its really cool and so simple to use.

    Its very easy to get installed and set up. The hard bit is ripping your music, and tagging it!

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    Synergy leverager
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    Forgot to say, if you are happy with what an xbox can do for you, for streaming music to your hi fi, thats cool.
    An SB3 just does streaming very well, and the unit is eligant - think minimal Apple-approach-to-design. The DAC in the unit is very high quality, so you get high quality sound piped to your hi fi (digital or analogue). It also supports both wired and wireless interfaces for streaming music from your media server (I just use my normal PC).

    I could go on and on with what it can do - best check the web site (http://www.slimdevices.com). Its not without its flaws (mostly in the server software, but thats under constant development, and is open source as well), but few things are.

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    Almost in control. autopilot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mutley
    Its not without its flaws (mostly in the server software, but thats under constant development, and is open source as well), but few things are.
    You can say that again, Slimserver is geting worse IMO. Personally i think they are heading towards Sony territory at the moment. Everyone keeps saying that 6.5 will fix it all, but every beta i have tried has had serious problems and they are calling it an alpha ffs. Talk like that will get you flamed to death on the offical forums though.

    I am getting very very frustrated, but all that said it's still the best thing in its class and i absolutly LOVE IT

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    Synergy leverager
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    I've had one dabble with 6.5 a little while ago, and decided not to bother after that.
    Been on 6.22 for a while, then moved to 6.3.1. I had some problems with MIP, but figured out what the issues were and its been fine since. I shall stay there until I see what 6.5 can really do for me...

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    So whats ethernet sound quality like compared to wireless sound quality?

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