Managing Multiple Media Adaptors (continued)
Like the Airport Express the Squeezebox has digital and analog connections, like the SoundBridge Radio it has an alarm, volume control and headphone jack but it works with WPA out of the box, has a coaxial digital connector as well as optical digital – and it can display RSS feeds. It also has an Ethernet connector in case you want to connect it with a cable or use HomePlug AV connectors to avoid the interference you may sometimes get on a wireless network. Setup is divided into several stages and typing in your wireless password is less painful because the numeric keypad works like texting on a phone; on the down side you have to look up and type in the IP address of the computer running SlimServer. After that you go left and right, up and down through the menu options using the remote control; there are buttons for shuffle, repeat, search, favourites, text size and other handy features but you can get at everything through the menu.
The Squeezebox also has the best multi-room features we’ve seen outside the Sonos offerings. Connect multiple Squeezebox units around the house and you can play the same music on two or more of them; you can set that up from the Player Settings in the SlimServer software or with the Squeezebox remote control and control both players with either remote control. The SlimServer software also has a built-in Web server so you can control it from another PC – or a PDA or smartphone with Wi-Fi, including a Nokia 770 tablet. Or you can run the SoftSqueeze software on another PC to make it a virtual Squeezebox that you can control in the same way.
Instead of leaving your Mac or PC on all the time, you can put it on standby and set it to wake up when you turn the Squeezebox on (change the Energy Saver settings under System Preferences on a Mac and the Power Management settings for the Local Area Connection in Network Connections on the PC). If you’re running Windows Server, including SBS and Windows Home Server, you can run SlimServer on that instead of leaving another PC on all the time, although you may have to reconfigure the ports used to avoid clashes; Veritas Backup and some security applications use port 9000. And if you have a NAS from Infrant, Linksys or Buffalo – including the Terastation we used for this guide – you can install SlimServer onto the NAS itself. This isn’t straightforward except on the Infrant ReadyNAS; you have to telnet in, install Perl and the SlimServer software plus a startup script and you may need to change or hack the root password through the built-in Web server. If you do run SlimServer on your desktop computer you may have problems connecting to a mapped drive; specify the share name instead (\\STORAGE\MUSIC in our case) and remember that indexing the music library can slow your system down.
As well as playing Internet radio, the Squeezebox also works with Squeezenetwork, a Web service that aggregates Internet radio stations, music services like Rhapsody or Pandora, podcasts and an online ‘digital locker’ that you can upload your MP3s to. Some of the services – including the digital locker – charge a subscription, but it’s another way to play music on the Squeezebox without having a PC on. You can also control your players from the Squeezenetwork site.
DIY or done for you
If you’re looking to save money and you already have a good hi-fi setup or powered speakers that you want to add your digital music to, the Squeezebox is by far the best of the wireless adapters, because of the variety of ways you can run SlimServer and for the multi-room synchronisation. It’s about twice the price of cheaper alternatives like the SoundBridge (£190 rather than £99) and not that much less than the £249 you’d spend on each Sonos ZP80, but you’ll want a controller and cradle with the Sonos which bumps the price up that bit more. But spending the extra money on the Sonos gets you a well thought out system that’s easy to install and that makes the most of existing home entertainment hardware as a source or an output, with the best multi-room features you’ll get without going to a professional installer.
- Hardware,
- Networking,
- multi-room ,
- music ,
- budget
You have not mentioned the number of music files that the systems will handle.I learned the hard way that the Sonos will not handle very large numbers of files. I also spoke with the folks at Sonos and they told me about 40,000 was the max number of files their system could handle and they did not plan on making it any handle any more. On the other hand the Squeezebox/Slimserver combo is able to handle an unlimited number of files. I currently have over 56,000 and adding daily with the expectation to hit over 100,000 with-in 8-10 months. I traded my Sonos in for a Squeezebox and am much happier now. Also IMHO it also sounds better.