Squeezebox 2 Digital Music Player
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Company Info: Slim Devices Category: Gadgets Supported OS: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP; Linux/Unix Price: $249 wired / $299 wireless Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
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Reviewer: Wayne Eggert
Date: February 26, 2006
Background
I fell in love with the first generation Squeezebox (reviewed here) in February 2004 and when the Squeezebox 2 debuted I had to upgrade immediately. I've been a little lazy in getting this review up.. I actually purchased my Squeezebox 2 immediately after they announced them on their website (early-2005?), but I can definitely say the new generations of Squeezeboxes are worth the upgrade. At the time of writing this review, the Squeezebox 3 is also available on Slim Devices site. The Squeezebox 3 is functionally identical to the Squeezebox 2, the only difference is the form factor which looks more at home on a nightstand or end table in a living room.
From the Slim Devices Website - http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_faq.html#about2-difference
The third-generation Squeezebox has a completely redesigned form factor and is functionally identical to Squeezebox2. Features that distinguish them from the first-generation Squeezebox include:
- True 802.11g networking, with support for new encryption standards and throughput up to 54Mbps
- New greyscale vacuum fluorescent display with more than twice the resolution (320x32 pixels).
- Stunning animations, transitions and visualizers, including a full screen, 64-channel, 30 frame-per-second stereo spectrum analyzer.
- Wireless bridging - plug other wired ethernet devices in to the wireless Squeezebox, and they're on your network
- New SlimDSP™ pure software architecture for all audio format decoding and signal processing functionality.
- Native FLAC support; allows pure lossless CD audio transmission with reduced storage and bandwidth.
- Native WMA support; provides playback capability not only for WMA files, but also many internet radio stations
- High fidelity 24 bit Burr-Brown™ DAC
- High precision dedicated crystal clocks and separate linear power supplies for the audio stages
- Huge 64 megabit buffer for extreme resilience to adverse wireless network conditions.
- SqueezeNetwork - allows access to your favorite internet radio stations, alarms, and more without a computer being on
- Crossfading between songs
- Faster 100Mbps wired ethernet interface
Since I've already reviewed the first-generation Squeezebox I will focus only on some of the improvements listed above that I have found useful. True 802.11g networking
First up is an upgrade to the wireless card (if you choose the wireless option). As anyone who owned a first-generation Squeezebox knows, there were often buffer issues with operating on an 802.11b network. If you were not downloading or transferring anything else on your network, you could maintain a nice stream from wirelessly connected jukebox PC.. however the network quickly became saturated if you added any other data transmissions to the mix. The 802.11g card solves that dilema perfectly and was a much welcome addition to the Squeezebox 2. I personally still use a wired connection to my jukebox since it was already in place from my first-generation unit, but it's nice to know there won't be buffer issues if in the future I move the jukebox PC out of proximity of the Squeezebox.
New greyscale vacuum flourescent display
Beautiful display. The first-generation unit had only two text sizes to choose from, but the new unit has many more sizes available and supports great looking fonts. This was definitely one of the features that sold me on the upgrade and it did not disappoint.
Stunning animations, transition and visuals, spectrum analyzer
I gotta say, now that I've had a Squeezebox with a spectrum analyzer I would not want to go back to one without it. It definitely adds to the cool factor and since I've been a long-time Winamp user I'm used to seeing the spectrum analyzer at all times. The animations are neat, but I think are more for games and screensavers which I don't use very often. Obviously the display is much more capable in terms of resolution and refresh rate than the first-generation units.
Wireless bridging
This is a great addition for anyone that has a video game console or some other device that is right next to the Squeezebox 2. It allows you to hook a device up to the wired port on the Squeezebox and share the Squeezebox's wireless connection with that device. With the way I have setup my network I don't have a need to bridge the connection like this, but it is definitely a great idea that would save some people money and my hats off to Slim Devices for thinking of building something like this into the firmware.
SqueezeNetwork
The SqueezeNetwork is still in its early-phases as of the date of this review, but essentially it's an always-on network you connect your Squeezebox to and can use it independent of your jukebox PC. You can connect to online radio streams, use the alarm clock feature and connect to RSS feeds without having to leave your jukebox PC on all the time.
Crossfading between songs
Yet another feature from Winamp that I was definitely missing. Crossfading allows you to customize the overlap of the current song and next song so there's a more professional DJ-esque quality when songs change. It works wonderfully well and allows you to customize crossfad settings or turn it completely off.
Faster 100Mbps wired ethernet interface
The 100Mbps wired interface seems like it would come in handy for large uncompressed or lightly-compressed audio files.
Audiophile Features
There are many audiophile features that Slim Devices has added into the newest generation units, but I cannot comment on these since I'm not much of an audiophile. I still use the RCA jacks, since most of the music I had converted from CDs on the previous unit was compressed. Sometime when I have some extra time to kill I'll try ripping some of my CDs to FLAC or a similar low-compression audio format and see how much of a difference the digital outputs make over the analog outputs.. but for compressed music I was not noticing any difference on my system.
Overall
Wow. Every gripe I had with the first-generation unit has been taken care of. Slim Devices has definitely listened to their customers and it's great to have an open-source project where your opinions actually mean something to the developers. I am very impressed with the 2nd and 3rd generation units, they are definitely an improvement over the SlimMP3 and first-generation Squeezeboxes. It's not an absolute necessity to upgrade if you have an older unit, but if you're wishing you had more text options or a nicer looking font -- or really want a cool-looking spectrum analyzer and crossfading, then it definitely warrants the purchase. Sell your old one on eBay or put them in different rooms of the house and synchronize the players. These are great devices and the software is backed by a huge community of open source developers. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they come up with in the future.
Final Rating: 5.0/5.0
