Squeezebox

Well, it's been a little over a month since J bought me a Squeezebox. I have to admit, I'm vastly impressed. There are more capabilities to the device that I have yet to finish exploring, but for now I'm very happy.

Nowadays, the box and the software emulator on my desktop run more often than not. It runs through the 6,179 songs, playing whatever it's random heart desires. The remote control works perfectly, and adds yet another layer of volume control into the system. At this point, I should be able to infinitely adjust the volume to a tiny portion of a decibel. Sound quality is excellent, but I'm using FLAC for everything I rip myself. I guessing a low-quality rip will still sound like crap, but I don't know. There's a few mp3 files that have snuck in somehow, but they're mainly humor and samples from obscure artists that we don't have discs from yet.

The only issues so far have been software related. The server software has some interesting glitches. I recently discovered that if, for any reason, you run two copies of the server software on the same box, you're hosed. Nothing works. Likewise, occasionally the tracks don't play. Forwarding to the next track seems to fix that most days. Every so often I have to reboot the wireless access point.

On the plus side, we are doing the “rediscovering” our music collection thing. There's a lot of moments when one or both of us will look at the other and say “We have this?” Much less frequent are the moments where neither of us can identify what's playing. Fortunately, the display works quite well for that.

I've read other whole-house solutions that involve radio broadcasts throughout the house. These, based on my carcasting experiences with the Belkin Tunecast, are not likely to be nearly as successful. Right now, the Squeezebox works for us. With a computer in the office running SoftSqueeze and the hard box in the living room, we can blanket the interior of the house with music. I have done something bizarre* with the inputs and outputs on the receiver, so I can't play the Squeezebox on the outside speakers yet. Once I get that nailed down, we should be good. I may have to revisit this when we move, but for now I'm okay. Although a way to get the tunes to the garage would be nice...

*Seriously, from looking at what I did before to make the CD changer player both inside and outside, I must be nuts. I have outputs cross-connected and cables connected in places that make no logical sense. Yet, I get sound of of everything when I use the CD player. I must have been really hammered when I hooked it all up. At least that's the excuse I'm using right now...