Logitech Squeezebox Wi-Fi Internet Radio

After helping a neighbor buy and set up one of these a few years ago, I've been anxiously awaiting purchasing one myself. For many years, I've been using an Audiotron, which is a digital music player that was great for its time, but it was discontinued years ago, and the Squeezebox offered more features, including access to the excellent Pandora music service.

Adding to the attraction of its many features, it also has a stellar reputation for audio quality and an active support community on the Squeezebox forums. There are many instances where audiophiles are using Squeezebox devices to play lossless music files through high-end equipment; a situation that years ago would have been done through a dedicated and very expensive CD transport. Slim Devices (now purchased by Logitech) even designed the Squeezebox Transporter to cater to that crowd, offering a premium-priced product that was based upon this Squeezebox hardware.

When I had the chance to purchase the Squeezebox for a very good price, I didn't hesitate, and I'm very glad that I made the purchase!

A primary difference between the Audiotron and the Squeezebox is that the latter requires the SqueezeCenter software to be running on a host computer in order to provide anything more than Internet Radio. I wasn't thrilled about the idea of having something like that taking up computer resources, so I used this as an opportunity to purchase the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay (Diskless) Desktop Network Storage RND2000 that also provides the ability to run SqueezeCenter along with hosting the files. Now, I don't need to have a computer running 24/7 and I don't have to deal with a software package running on my primary PC.

The tradeoff is that the ReadyNAS is somewhat underpowered, and the response time of the web interface is a little slower than I'd like. Hopefully, a software update will improve that situation, even if just a little.

The Squeezebox is an audio-only device, so you will not find a video connection on its back panel. Control is in the form of a standard IR remote control and the vacuum flourescent display, which is very good quality. I actually prefer to the use the web interface, even if it's a little on the slow side through the ReadyNAS. I'm looking forward to trying the iPhone app for controlling it. The flexibility that there are so many different ways to control the Squeezebox is a testament to the technical prowess behind the designers of the product.

Even though I'm glad that I don't have to turn on my TV to control the Squeezebox, I have to admit that I'd really like to be able to use an on-screen GUI to navigate my music library, change settings, and see cover art and visualizations while music is playing. Such additions would likely make the player more expensive and out of reach for many people, though.

There are so many capabilities of this device, I haven't looked through them all and experimented with them. Tops among them are iTunes library integration, where it appears that I could access my iTunes playlists for a more seamless and integrated experience.

By far, I get the most use out of the Pandora music service. Pandora is an online service that allows you to specify an artist or a song that you like and it will go out and find similar artists and songs. You can create multiple stations, so that you can listen to music to match your mood, from Johnny Cash Country to 80's rock to relaxing piano music from the likes of Jim Brickman. You can access Pandora on your computer, but nothing beats the convenience being able to pipe that music throughout your house!

Pandora access was the primary reason I wanted a Squeezebox, and I'm very happy with it. The only thing I would like is a way to access "thumbs-up" and "thumbs-down" ratings more easily from the remote.

The advantage of having a centralized server software program is that you can add more Squeezebox devices and control them from the software and even synchronize them for simultaneous playback if you wish. I bought a used 1st generation Squeezebox and it works great to access my entire music collection as well as Pandora, etc.

Having the Squeezebox allows us to enjoy more music more often. We get more use from the music library we have, and listening to Pandora opens us up to artists and music we may not have heard otherwise. While you can attach an iPod to your stereo system to play your music, it's not the same as having a device dedicated to the task. The sound quality is fantastic, there are more features than most people will know what to do with, and it's a great addition to our entertainment system!

Highly recommended!

I've been using my Logitech Squeezebox for over a year and a half, and I have approx 18,000 music tracks on the server. It has worked well for me other than a few minor problems (e.g., occasionally I've had to have Squeezebox rescan the entire music library and rebuild it's database, but this could be caused by me and how I'm manipulating files on the PC). No network problems. I have an older series Linksys WRT54G router (historically one of the best) and the network signal is very strong where the Squeezebox is located.

And it's Windows 7 compatible. A few weeks ago, I updated the PC that is running the Squeezebox Server from XP 32 bit to Windows 7 64 bit. It has been working fine just as before.

As long as you have good WiFi network, this a great product. I stream most of my music using FLAC, the rest as MP3--the Squeezebox unit processes FLAC and MP3 natively with the Burr Brown DAC. Great sound quality on my B&W speaker & Denon receiver surround system. Except for people with a very high end audiophile system (hard to know for them), I think anyone would be very happy with the sound quality of this product. If you have a large music collection on a computer somewhere in your house away from your home stereo, this is a must have!!!!

I purchased this after buying the Logitech boombox. I have this in sunroom, connected to Bose Acoustic Wave system.
I use it all the time. If you are interested in internet radio, this unit will meet your desires. Set-up easy, the squeezecenter, and squeezenetwork were somewhat confusing.

The Squeezebox far exceeded my expectations. User interface was as good as can be expected on the Squeezebox and was supplemented by the PC client. Super easy to set up. I haven't purchased a CD since!

I purchased yesterday this little piece of crap. I am a standard user of Logitech products and, despite they are not top quality, there are some of them which are really good, like the Harmony 1100 remote control.

So, in this case, I thought I was buying a good product. Totally wrong!!! The product loses constantly the connection with my Netgear wireless router. I thought the problem was with my router, but it was not. I tested it with 2 different notebooks and with my PS3 and no problem at all. Also, my ADSL connection is stable and with a very good bandwidth. Hence, I discarded Internet issues as I could watch movies and listen radio in my computer with no issues at all.

So, next step was to update the firmware of the crappy Squeezebox. Tried many times via WiFi and all of them were unsuccessful (the device turned off always at the middle of the update and gave an error message which is not documented and is not self-explanatory), so I plugged it to the router with a Lan cable and it could finally upgrade the firmware. Tested again, and no solution: the connection with the router is lost as soon as an Internet Radio starts playing. And the device does not respond anymore to the remote control, so it must be unplugged and plugged again.

So, I was testing many different options, but nothing solved the problem. The support page from Logitech? A bad joke! The "troubleshooting" is like the ABC for kids in the kindergarten, but no real solutions. No e-mail to contact them, just phone numbers.

I suspected that the problem should be somewhere else, so I installed the SoftSqueeze and tried in my computer: some radios work, but when the stream takes longer to load, the software simply freezes. So, not even the "soft" solution works.

I am returning this piece of crap tomorrow and will purchase some real Internet Radio product.

My advice: spend your money smarter and not in this garbage.

My big question here is: is my device faulty? Because I can't believe so many positive feedbacks unless they are written by Logitech!