One of the best things I’ve picked up from my recent Picnic08 sourjourn has been a Squeezebox. It arrived today from a local internet wholesaler and I set it up this morning.
This all came about because I had a lovely meal at a house in Amsterdam where I was shown an odd device with VU meters bouncing up and down near a hifi system. It turned out to a be a Squeezebox and the music we were listening to was coming streaming from a radio station on the otherside of the world. A bit of scrolling and we dialled up FBI and 2SER, even Radio Skid Row – the first radio station I did a show on, before settling on an Afghani radio station.
The Squeezebox, it turns out, does a whole lot more than just connect to thousands of terrestrial and internet radio stations. It now connects to the digital music files on hard disks on the network meaning no more plugging in music players with minijack-RCA cables (it plays OGGs and FLACs and everything else). It scrobbles my plays to my Last.FM account. And, with a bit of tweaking I’ve been able to get it to play Last.FM radio! And all of this is through my ‘proper’ hi-fi – at original bitrate.
My ancient component-sized tuner can now be turfed, along with a bunch of useless cables and adaptors. And finally I don’t have to rely on the cheap DACs that my music player has to play 320s through my hi-fi.
Why didn’t I see this when it first came out?
4 replies on “Squeezebox”
cool… my airport’s been a bit up and down and i’ve never been able to get non-itunes audio streaming. might mark it down for replacement!
try and get one locally before they double in price!
Dude! I am totally sold. I just put in an order for one.
I’ve had one of these things for about three years .. from before logitech bought the company … they totally rock! There is a more advanced model and even a more “portable” radio version with speakers. The latest version of the software is really quite good too.
Although my power supply died a couple of weeks ago and I had to go to a trip to jaycar to get a replacement.