Logitech Squeezebox Wi-Fi Internet Radio and Wireless Music Player Review

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(More customer reviews)Pros:
-Amazing sound quality
-Burr-Brown DAC (pretty much the best around)
-Easy to configure
-Great interface
-Rock-solid performance (no waiting when you hit play, and no network issues)
-Created for IT people by IT people, but doesn't require a lot of IT literacy to get up and running (and their documentation is great).
-Price
Cons:
-The only thing I can think of is that it would be cool to have a USB port with USB Mass Storage Device support so you can plug a USB HDD directly in to this puppy and rock and roll. But, this is just nit-picking, and they probably didn't include USB because it would increase the price and wouldn't offer a lot of performance to a lot of people.Details:
Every once in a while there is a product so genius that it reminds me why I love technology. I had read up about the Squeezebox and I figured it would be really cool. When I picked it up I immediately noticed that it was small. Smaller and sleeker than I expected. It seems to be made of high-quality materials, and at this point I'm feeling pretty unimpressed about the whole thing (since I figured the sound quality would let me down like most digital audio devices... *cough* *cough* *iPod* *cough* *cough*).
My brother and I plug it in to his Denon receiver and B&W speakers, and we power it on. I immediately notice that I like the interface. It's snappy, and the slide transitions actually look pretty cool. The screen is also pretty nice, so I'm starting to feel good about things at this point.
The configuration of this device was a breeze. It auto-detects networks (with broadcast SSID turned on) and I was able to get it on the network in a matter of minutes without reading the manual. The SlimServer software for the PC is also pretty easy to install and configure, and I noticed that they released the source code for the server software.
I first listened to some streaming radio, and I have to say: I was impressed with the quality of the radio stations. I hate MP3 compression (I use FLAC), but the classical stations actually sounded pretty good to my ears. The best part is that the radio stations just work. No problems. No weird network timeouts. Just on-demand radio by Genre, City, Etc.
After playing around with the radio, I decided to listen to some FLAC that I am really familiar with to get an idea of the DAC and the fidelity of the player. My brother and I were blown away by the sound quality of my FLAC files. It sounds about as good as his Denon CD player, and it puts every other digital audio player I have ever heard to complete and utter shame.
There are a lot of things I like about this product. The fact that they release the source and allow you to create custom plug-ins is cool. Everything about this seems like it's created by some friggin' good engineers that want other IT people to appreciate it.
This thing is simply amazing. For price-to-performance, you can't beat it!

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The Logitech Squeezebox enables you to stream your favorite music to your stereo--even when your computer is off. You'll be able to tune in to thousands of Internet radio stations as well as listen to online music services such as Pandora and Rhapsody when connected to your home's wireless network. Additionally, you can play songs from your personal library stored on your computer.

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Cambridge Audio DacMagic Digital-to-Analog Converter with USB, Silver Review

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(More customer reviews)I recently purchased a Logitech Squeezebox to stream my music collection to my HIFI and have been pretty happy with it. The sound quality from the Squeezebox's DAC did however not impress me, compared to my old rather cheepish Denon CD player, it was dull, lacked attack and was generally uninspiring. So when I discovered that Cambridge Audio had made this little (and cheap) gem I immediately bought it.
So how good is it ? - In my opinion its the cheapest thing I have ever bought that made so clear a difference; the music is now warm, organic, detailed and full of attack. It is sturdy build and has a very cool and professional look. The device itself has a ton of nice features (such as being able to remember different settings based on input channels) yet is still very easy to use. It comes with three different high quality filters: "linear", "minimum" and "steep" which can alter the audio experience to your personal taste. Of these I have found the "minimum" filter to provide the best audiophile experience.
To sum up, if you have a Squeezebox or a similar device, but feel that its analog output is somewhat lacking, then get this brilliant little device.

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Enjoy digital music like never before...Adapted Time Filtering (ATF) asynchronous upsampling technology might sound complicated but the benefits are instantly audible. Essentially it converts 16-24 bit audio to 24 bit/192kHz so you hear so much more from compressed material. Meanwhile a 32 bit Digital Signal Processor (DSP) eradicates jitter which is especially effective with hard disk playback from PCs or Macintosh computers. Whether your digital music collection is stored on a PC or you use a network music client - SqueezeboxTM, SoundBridgeTM, SonosTM etc - the difference in audible quality is incredible! Games just explode into lifeGaming isn't just about the moving image. By connecting your games console - PlayStations(PS2 and PS3TM), XboxTM and Xbox 360sTM to your hi-fi via DacMagic, dramatically improved soundtracks and special effects are immediately apparent. DacMagic is an audiophile tour de force!DacMagic sports a range of components you'd never dream could be crammed into such a compact case. These include a 32-bit Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processor (DSP), dual Differential Virtual Earth balanced filter topology and twin Wolfson WM8740 high quality DACs in dual differential mode for excellent stereo imaging. Other features include a choice of digital filters - linear phase/minimum phase/steep filter - and an incoming sampling rate indicator which shows the original source quality. You can experiment with different filters for each source connected but DacMagic always remembers the last one assigned to that source. It's flexible and easy to set-upUp to two digital sources - network music devices, games consoles, CD/DVD players etc. can be connected concurrently using S/PDIF or Toslink inputs. Additionally, you can connect DacMagic directly to your PC using a USB connection (no drivers needed) and dramatically improve the quality of your digital music.

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VortexBox 1TB Automatic CD ripping NAS Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought this gadget after a considerable amount of frustration with a Netgear ReadyNAs I had expected to use as a server for my Logitech Squeezebox Duet. The ReadyNAS supposedly performs this function but with a large collection of files it is simply too slow to keep up with indexing and searching etc. Plus ripping my 2,000+ CDs was a real chore. I read about this product and jumped on it.
Well, within a week of getting my Vortexbox appliance, all my CDs are in my mini storage, my Levinson 31.5 transport sold on eBay, and my entire CD collection is now available to me throughout my home without the slightest issues, disappointments or problems.
I initially corresponded with the manufacturer a few times with questions about configuring this device to suit my particular needs I got immediate, understanding an useful help. I cannot speak more highly of the builder. In fact, I sent a modest voluntary donation to them as I felt the help I got was above-and-beyond. Since I became familiar with this gadget, I have had zero issues, it has been up and running for over sixty days without a reboot, issue, glitch etc. You just pop a CD in the slot and it will rip it to flac and/or any almost any other format you care to have.
Useful tip: if you are ripping a large collection disable the creation of MP3 copies (the system rips to both flac and mp3 by default). This will speed up the tedious job of ripping enormously and you can go back later on and create MP3 versions of any or all of your stuff as a background task when you're done transcribing your collection. Info on how this is done is on the manufacturer's simple but very useful web site.
Anyway, this is a great product from nice people and if anything happened to it I'd buy another in a flash.

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Your entire music collection, available anywhere in your home! VortexBox is designed to store your entire CD and Media collection in one easy to access location. With an integrated CD ripping engine and a huge amount of storage, the VortexBox is a single device connected to your home network, allowing blissful music management. It really couldn't be any easier - simply insert an audio CD into the DVD/CD burn drive. The CD is converted within a few minutes, added to the media library, shared on your network. You can then access your music from your Logitech SqueezeBox , iTunes, Windows Media Player, or other Media Player. VortexBox is easy to configure: just plug it into your home router and browse to the easy to use interface through your favorite web browser. Available in 500 GB or 1 TB (1000 GB) capacities, VortexBox distributes your entire collection throughout your home and has plenty of room to grow. Watch anything, anywhere at home. VortexBox doesn't only stream music. Add movies, TV Shows, and other content to its storage to stream to any part of your house. Works with Logitech Squeezebox, Sonos, XBMC or ReQuest server. VortexBox includes Slimserver for media serving to any network connected audio device.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased my Squeezebox Touch directly from Logitech, and have enjoyed it enough over the first few days of ownership to write a quick review.
To understand where I'm coming from, it may help to know I enjoy classical music, especially when its reproduced by a traditional stereo system with high quality discrete components. I own a British designed and built integrated amplifier and some tall floor-standing speakers from a Canadian manufacturer. Sound quality matters a whole lot to my enjoyment of music, and that shows in the care with which I select the components in my audio system.
I have owned a number of Logitech's previous Squeezebox WiFi streamers, including the Squeezebox Classic and some Duet receivers, so I am not new to the Squeezebox ecosystem. I keep my music collection as a large library of FLAC-encoded files, so as to avoid any potential losses due to codec compression artifacts.
On receiving my new Squeezebox Touch, I swapped out an existing "Slimdevices" branded classic Squeezebox in my main HiFi system for the new device. The Squeezebox Touch first discovered MySqueezebox.com as its source of music and asked me to provide login credentials, which caused it to upgrade its firmware from that site. After that, it rebooted and was able to connect to my local Squeezebox Server that I have running to serve music around the house. After that, I was able to browse my music collection and navigate to internet radio stations either using the touch interface or by using the supplied remote control.
I noticed that the interface automatically uses bigger fonts if you are controlling it from the IR remote and smaller ones if it finds you are controlling it via the touchscreen, which obviously makes sense when you are within an arm's length of the display.
As a first test, I played back a 96kHz, 24-bit high resolution copy of Marianne Thorsen on violin with the TrondheimSolistene playing Mozart's D-major Violin Concerto. At first I played the tracks via a Benchmark DAC1, which is a studio-quality monitoring DAC for use by mixing engineers. The sound was detailed, rich with a deep stereo image and musically involving. Next, I removed the Benchmark DAC from the signal path and tried again. Once again the sound was clearly better than a CD could provide and very close to that rendered through the Benchmark DAC. There has clearly been an improvement to the quality of the analog stereo outputs compared to previous Squeezebox versions, which was already pretty good.
I then went on to listen to Emanuel Ax, Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma playing some Mendelssohn Piano Trios. This recording was "only" in 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality audio, nevertheless I was soon captivated by the musicality of the performance, and could find no significant short comings of the quality as rendered by the built-in DACs compared to the external, studio quality Benchmark DAC1.
Someone starting to use this system without prior experience of Squeezebox Servers or software might face something of a learning curve to begin with. I can't speak to that, but I appreciate that I was able to drop this new device into an existing system and, within a few minutes, start to enjoy some very high quality reproduction of my music library.
The advantages over the previous Squeezebox Classic are:
* Color, touch-controlled user interface and display
* Ability to play back high resolution music without loss of quality
* Excellent audio quality from the analog outputs; significantly better than previous versions.
Another possible advantage is to use the Squeezebox Touch as a music server as well as a client, by attaching a USB hard drive to the supplied USB port. I have not tested this functionality, so I can't comment on how well it works. This review was mainly focussed on sound quality.
Based on my short experience, I recommend this device highly. I think it is a worthy successor to the Squeezebox Classic, as it provides significantly more in terms user interface and sound quality for the same retail price as the older player.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch. The color touch-screen Wi-Fi music player that lets you discover a world of music—all through your stereo.

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TS200V - Server - Tower - 1 - Pentium - G6950 - 2.8 Ghz - 2 Gb - 250 Gb - 1 Year Review

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(More customer reviews)I recently needed to replace an aging Linux-based SOHO server. This system is actually used in a hybrid server/desktop role, with the desktop duties being limited to use as a light-duty secondary workstation mostly for web browsing and guest access. Thus it is important that an X server run reliably without affecting the overall stability of the system. On the server side of things, in addition to the usual file/print/DNS services, the primary function is to act as a media server for several networked Logitech SqueeezeBox audio devices throughout the house.
The Lenovo TS200v (model: 0981-12U) fit my needs almost perfectly: a reputable manufacturer, a reasonable base price, low power usage, enterprise-class HDD, ECC memory, and best of all, sold without an OS! I really dislike being forced to pay for an OS I'm never going to use.
As good as the TS200v looked on paper, I could find absolutely no firsthand information on how non-enterprise Linux distributions run on these boxes. They use a relatively new Intel 3450 chipset and Clarkdale processors with integrated graphics, so I was mildly concerned about hardware support in non-bleeding-edge Linux distributions.
For "production" systems that I don't want to worry much about, I prefer to run Debian stable. On laptops, or other machines with newer/less-supported hardware, my second choice is generally the current Ubuntu LTS. Since the TS200v has all Intel-based hardware, I was hopeful that, at the very least, I could find a Linux distribution that would run on it until either Debian or Ubuntu caught-up with the new hardware.
After the machine arrived, I was very relieved when my first attempt to boot it from a USB flash drive using RIPLinuX 9.8 (a lightweight system recovery distro) was fully successful.
However an attempt to install Debian 5.0.3 (lenny) met with issues due to the debian-installer's e1000e driver not recognizing the specific rev in the TS100v, a 82578DM. However I worked around this by temporarily installing an old e100 PCI card. After the install completed, the e1000e was recognized by the current lenny kernel. The real showstopper for Debian was that the Xorg server that comes with Lenny is too old to deal with the Clarkdale graphics. So at least for now, Debian stable wasn't going to be an option unless I wanted to run it in a non-GUI server-only mode. Some cursory research indicates that the next version of Debian, 6.0 (squeeze) may have better support for the hardware in the TS200v.
Next I tried Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx). This install went very well and all the main devices, including the integrated graphics, sound, and network card work fine under Lucid. However access to ECC correction data via the Linux EDAC drivers doesn't appear to be working yet, but hopefully support will come in the future. (Note that the ECC memory does still provide some benefit even without being able to see the correction notifications in the OS.)
I then installed two additional 1TB Caviar Black drives, for a total of three drives in the machine. The third is in the spare 5.25" bay using some custom modified drive adapter rails. (Note that one additional 3.5" HDD is the most you can install this system without taking special measures.) I also replaced the read-only DVD drive with an Lite-On IHAS424-98 DVD writer and installed a 2 port eSATA PCIe card for use with an external SATA dock.
Using a kill-a-watt device I measured the idle power (with 3x7200rpm drives) at 49W, PF of 0.95. This is with the 'ondemand' CPU governor, which appears to be the default for Ubuntu 10.04. At full CPU load (using mprime) on both cores, the power usage peaks around 89W, PF 0.96. I'm running this machine in a room with an ambient temp of 67F (19C) and whether loaded or not, the fan speed does not seem to change. With the three drives, the sound produced is only just above the threshold of audibility in a quiet room. It would be safe to assume in hotter environments the fans might increase in speed and noise level.
Regarding the Intel Advanced Management Technology (AMT), I've only played with it a bit. This particular model only comes with the "Standard" AMT, the higher end i5-based models apparently have additional features enabled. Since it is not required in my situation I have disabled AMT after my initial experimentation.
I've had the machine several weeks now and it has been completely stable. Performance-wise it is a huge improvement over the previous machine which had a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 and comparatively sluggish PC133 memory. I am very happy with the value provided by this inexpensive server-class machine.
NOTE: At the time of this review was written the Amazon photograph is *not* of a TS200v 098112U.


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ThinkServer TS200v Tower server with Intel Pentium G6950; 2 GB; 250GB HDD;DVD; RAID 0, 1; No OS; 1 YR Warranty.

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