Today’s Show:

Logitech Squeezebox Radio Review

On Episode 386 we got into the details of Ara’s whole house music system based around Airport Express and iTunes.  Braden has a whole house audio system based on Logitech Squeezebox devices and their Squeezbox Server software.  Logitech let us play with a new Squeezebox Radio.  It’s pretty cool.

The existing system
The Squeezebox music system actually began before Logitech acquired the company with 2 of the classic Squeezebox players.  They’re so old-school you can’t even find them on the Logitech site anymore.  But they still rock, and you can still buy them online for about $265 each.

Later Logitech added a new pair of devices called the Squeezebox Controller and the Squeezebox Receiver and packaged them together as the Squeezebox Duet (buy now).  This added another zone of music and a slick remote to control it all.  You can already control every zone from any network connected device with a browser, but the Squeezebox Controller is a slick little unit.

To tie it all together, I have a dedicated XP computer running, among other things, Squeezebox Server to distribute music to every room in the house.  It’s a free piece of software that distributes music to each of the players.  For the iTunes lovers out there, it will import your iTunes library.

There’s also a software based player called Softsqueeze that will turn any computer into another music zone.  It’s free, open source and should run on pretty much any platform.  You can have synchronized music in every room with a computer absolutely free.

The Squeezebox Radio
One thing most Wi-Fi music players need is a pair of external speakers.  They require another power cord, speaker wire, and generally more mess and clutter.  It would be nice to have some self-contained, all-in-one players that just work right out of the box.  That’s what the Squeezebox Radio (buy now, $199) is all about.

Along with the speaker, the Squeezebox Radio has a built in color LCD screen and a few controls to allow you to view, browse and interact with all your music, view cover art, and see other visual goodies.  It’s all packaged together in one small and compact box that measures roughly 5.1″ x 8.5″ x 5″ (130mm x 220mm x 85mm).  When it’s off, the screen can turn into a clock.

It took literally 5 minutes to pull it out of the box, plug it into the wall and get it connected to the Squeezebox Server software.  Within another minute or so we had it playing music and about a minute later we had used it to synchronize every other zone in the house.  We were adding it to an existing system, so first time users should budget some more time to get the server software up and running first.

In addition to your local media collection, the Radio will connect to Internet Radio stations as well as other online music services like Rhapsody, Pandora, Napster and Slacker.  It can even connect to your Facebook account, so you can view and share music recommendations immediately, if that’s what you’re into.

Performance
Overall the system performed quite well.  The screen is bright and vivid, we had no problem reading text or working the controls.  Everything was very intuitive.  Music synchronization was perfect.  Even running the Radio in the same room as another squeezebox you couldn’t tell there were two separate devices playing the music.  The speaker itself works, but it isn’t audiophile quality.  You get what you’d expect from a 3/4 inch tweeter and a 3 inch woofer.

Conclusion
The Squeezebox Radio is a great way to add music to a room where you don’t want to fuss with wires all over the place.  It works really well in the kitchen, and I’ll be picking one up to use in the bedroom instead of the trusty old alarm clock.  That’s right, you can program the Squeezebox Radio to wake you up in the morning with music you actually like instead of some obnoxious commercial or wacky morning DJ.

Download Episode #397