jsaliga
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2007
- Posts
- 2,256
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- 13
There hasn't been a great deal of discussion about the Squeezebox Duet around here. There were a few short threads where a lot of SB3 owners basically poo pooed the new product because some felt the display on the remote was too small, or it wasn't ergonomic enough for them, or whatever.
I was actually planning on buying a Slim Devices Transporter. I have been waiting for the right buying opportunity to come along, having seen used ones sell on Agon for as low as $1,250. I went so far as to sell my Denon DVD 3910 to make room in my rack for the Transporter, and I was planning on pairing it up with an Oppo DV-980H.
Last night I was at a Circuit City and saw that they had the Squeezebox Duet for $349. So I decided to check it out. I was stunned by the super tiny footprint of the receiver, and it seemed tailor made for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of available space and doesn't want to change racks or expand its size. I thought my phono preamp was small, but the Squeezebox Duet receiver is about half its size. Here's a picture of it in my rack, inside the red rectangle. The TC-760LC phono preamp is to the right.
I love the tiny footprint of this device. My feeling was that if it delivered satisfying sound quality then I could forget about buying the Transporter and think about replacing the Denon 3910 with a used Esoteric DV-50 -- something I had ruled out a few weeks earlier because I didn't have room for both a Transporter and the DV-50.
I'm not sure what people aren't liking about the remote.
Here it is next to the cordless phone on my desk. I find that it fits very comfortably in the hand, and the controls are somewhat similar to the i-Pod. You rotate the wheel to scroll up and down through lists, and the center button is used to select your choices. The arrow buttons allow you to navigate forward and backward through menu choices. It's very intuitive and easy to use.
Setting up the Squeezebox Duet wasn't quite as simple as the instructions that came in the box made it out to be. I wanted to connect my receiver to my wired ethernet network. I also have wireless 802.11G, but that network is reseved for computers. The issue I was having is that the Squeezebox Duet seemed to want to default to a wireless network setup, and did not give me the option to configure it for ethernet. I reset the receiver five or so times and then suddenly the option to do an ethernet setup was presented on the remote. So I quickly set the IP configuration of the receiver and all was fine. Part of the problem is that the included documentation is very thin, amounting to nothing more than a quick setup guide. There is no software or other documentation in the package. If you buy the Squeezebox Duet then I recommend that you download the full user's guide from the Slim Devices support site before doing anything.
Once the hardware was configured I created a SqueezeNetwork account and downloaded the SqueezeCenter software. While that was taking place the remote notified me that new firmware was available and asked me if I wanted to download and install it. So I did that while I was working on getting the SqueezeCenter software configured.
I decided to buy a Western Digital My Book 1TB external USB 2.0 hard disk. I have several smaller drives that I could use, but it too was on sale at Circuit City for $179. I have a mountain of FLAC files scattered across several smaller drives, and this was a good opportunity to consolidate all of that stuff onto a single drive.
I found the SqueezeCenter software to be pretty effective, though it isn't without its quirks. For example, I don't care for how it deals with multi-disc sets. But that is really a minor complaint. Once I got the hang of the software I was able to get it tweaked more or less to my liking.
I gave a few albums that I ripped to FLAC a listen that I know came from excellent masters. I was very much surprised by how good this little box sounds. It wasn't a critical listening session mind you, as I was doing some work on a report for a customer. But I have to say that it sounded very good. I am listening to it now as I write this post, so I have had a day with it and have listened to everything from Lionel Hampton to Frank Sinatra to Beethoven to Liszt to the Beatles....and so far so good. I am very impressed wtih the sound quality. Forgive me for not saying it is just "passable" or "tolerable" so as not to offend the sensibilities of the "money's no object" crowd. I am sure there are many better sounding digital sources out there, and a few of them might even justify their high prices. But I find that the Squeezebox Duet delivers a lot of terrific sound in exchange for its meager asking price.
As attractive as all of this is, to me the package becomes a killer deal because it gives you access to internet radio and some subscription based online digital music services such as Rhapsody and Pandora. Of course, it's easy to like services such as these when they are free for 30 days. There is also access to several free services, but the quality of those are all over the map. For most the bitrates are pretty respectable: 128kbps WMA or 192kbps variable bitrate MP3. But there were several internet radio stations streaming 96kbps mp3. IIRC Rhapsody is 256kbs MP3, and I generally found the sound quality on this service to be superb. I won't keep all of the paid services when the trials run out, but I will probably keep two: Rhapsody and Sirius Internet Radio as both have a lot of content in musical genres that I listen to a great deal.
If you've been sitting on the fence with the Squeezebox Duet then I suggest you jump off. The product delivers tons of value for the money, is easy and intuitive to use, and will provide many hours of listening enjoyment. Highly recommended.
--Jerome
I was actually planning on buying a Slim Devices Transporter. I have been waiting for the right buying opportunity to come along, having seen used ones sell on Agon for as low as $1,250. I went so far as to sell my Denon DVD 3910 to make room in my rack for the Transporter, and I was planning on pairing it up with an Oppo DV-980H.
Last night I was at a Circuit City and saw that they had the Squeezebox Duet for $349. So I decided to check it out. I was stunned by the super tiny footprint of the receiver, and it seemed tailor made for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of available space and doesn't want to change racks or expand its size. I thought my phono preamp was small, but the Squeezebox Duet receiver is about half its size. Here's a picture of it in my rack, inside the red rectangle. The TC-760LC phono preamp is to the right.
I love the tiny footprint of this device. My feeling was that if it delivered satisfying sound quality then I could forget about buying the Transporter and think about replacing the Denon 3910 with a used Esoteric DV-50 -- something I had ruled out a few weeks earlier because I didn't have room for both a Transporter and the DV-50.
I'm not sure what people aren't liking about the remote.
Here it is next to the cordless phone on my desk. I find that it fits very comfortably in the hand, and the controls are somewhat similar to the i-Pod. You rotate the wheel to scroll up and down through lists, and the center button is used to select your choices. The arrow buttons allow you to navigate forward and backward through menu choices. It's very intuitive and easy to use.
Setting up the Squeezebox Duet wasn't quite as simple as the instructions that came in the box made it out to be. I wanted to connect my receiver to my wired ethernet network. I also have wireless 802.11G, but that network is reseved for computers. The issue I was having is that the Squeezebox Duet seemed to want to default to a wireless network setup, and did not give me the option to configure it for ethernet. I reset the receiver five or so times and then suddenly the option to do an ethernet setup was presented on the remote. So I quickly set the IP configuration of the receiver and all was fine. Part of the problem is that the included documentation is very thin, amounting to nothing more than a quick setup guide. There is no software or other documentation in the package. If you buy the Squeezebox Duet then I recommend that you download the full user's guide from the Slim Devices support site before doing anything.
Once the hardware was configured I created a SqueezeNetwork account and downloaded the SqueezeCenter software. While that was taking place the remote notified me that new firmware was available and asked me if I wanted to download and install it. So I did that while I was working on getting the SqueezeCenter software configured.
I decided to buy a Western Digital My Book 1TB external USB 2.0 hard disk. I have several smaller drives that I could use, but it too was on sale at Circuit City for $179. I have a mountain of FLAC files scattered across several smaller drives, and this was a good opportunity to consolidate all of that stuff onto a single drive.
I found the SqueezeCenter software to be pretty effective, though it isn't without its quirks. For example, I don't care for how it deals with multi-disc sets. But that is really a minor complaint. Once I got the hang of the software I was able to get it tweaked more or less to my liking.
I gave a few albums that I ripped to FLAC a listen that I know came from excellent masters. I was very much surprised by how good this little box sounds. It wasn't a critical listening session mind you, as I was doing some work on a report for a customer. But I have to say that it sounded very good. I am listening to it now as I write this post, so I have had a day with it and have listened to everything from Lionel Hampton to Frank Sinatra to Beethoven to Liszt to the Beatles....and so far so good. I am very impressed wtih the sound quality. Forgive me for not saying it is just "passable" or "tolerable" so as not to offend the sensibilities of the "money's no object" crowd. I am sure there are many better sounding digital sources out there, and a few of them might even justify their high prices. But I find that the Squeezebox Duet delivers a lot of terrific sound in exchange for its meager asking price.
As attractive as all of this is, to me the package becomes a killer deal because it gives you access to internet radio and some subscription based online digital music services such as Rhapsody and Pandora. Of course, it's easy to like services such as these when they are free for 30 days. There is also access to several free services, but the quality of those are all over the map. For most the bitrates are pretty respectable: 128kbps WMA or 192kbps variable bitrate MP3. But there were several internet radio stations streaming 96kbps mp3. IIRC Rhapsody is 256kbs MP3, and I generally found the sound quality on this service to be superb. I won't keep all of the paid services when the trials run out, but I will probably keep two: Rhapsody and Sirius Internet Radio as both have a lot of content in musical genres that I listen to a great deal.
If you've been sitting on the fence with the Squeezebox Duet then I suggest you jump off. The product delivers tons of value for the money, is easy and intuitive to use, and will provide many hours of listening enjoyment. Highly recommended.
--Jerome
