Logitech Squeezebox Duet Wi-Fi Internet Radio by Logitech
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Digital camera reviews of Logitech Squeezebox Duet Wi-Fi Internet Radio
Digital camera Review: A Remarkable Device with a Remarkable Limitation
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm not going to go on about how "cool" this product is or about its ease of use. I bought this device primarily to listen to an online subscription radio service, MOJA Radio, a modern-jazz radio station that used to be the Beyond Jazz channel on XM radio.
MOJA Radio requires a user name and password which works fine with WinAmp and Windows Media Player on my PC. Well guess what... The Duet offers no way of entering such information, so now I'm stuck with only the free stations or those for which an application has been written. These apps are available on the Squeezebox Web site and include Sirius Radio, Napster some two-dozen others. I learned this, of course, from Logitech's phone support who didn't understand my question then finally came back with the "download the app" solution. There is no app!
Really, for a device as sophisticated as this to not have the ability to access secure streams is "remarkable." Please, Logitech, fix this issue via a software update and I promise to up this product's rating.
Digital camera Review: A fabulous product . . . for the right kind of person
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had the Duet for about 3 weeks, and I love it. It is - - eventually - - going to truly fulfill the vision of replacing all those messy shelves of CD cases with an invisible online library of all my music, elegantly accessible throughout the house. All the 5-star reviews here are well-deserved. I honestly think the controller and its display are as elegant (in their own way) as the iPod Classic, and that's saying a lot.
That said, you MUST - - repeat MUST - - be the kind of person who enjoys sorting out technical problems, finding the answers in the world of online forums and Wikis or you will HATE Squeezebox and the people who created it. Do you enjoy digging into your software to find new features? Have you installed a bunch of 3rd party add-ons on your computer to make the UI more capable? Can you go into the web control panel of your router to check or change some settings without breaking into a cold sweat? Then you'll love Squeezebox (after you finish swearing at it.)
Read these reviews carefully. The product comes in a classy box, but there is no documentation in that box - - NONE. You have to go online to find the PDF of the installation manual, which covers only the basics. So, right at the beginning, you also want to find and bookmark the Squeezebox user forum and the excellent user-created online Wiki knowledge base. Then you have to download and install the Squeezebox server software on your computer and configure it to catalog your music collection. (I downloaded this and spent about a month learning my way around it before I even ordered the hardware.)
Only when you have your computer set up as a Squeezebox server are you ready to take the controller and receiver out of the box and start setting them up. The process is largely automated, but you WILL encounter at least a hiccup or two. In my case, everything seemed to be working right, but the Duet couldn't see the music collection on my computer, even though it was displaying its name. A couple of hours bashing around online, and I found that I needed to open up a couple of ports in my computer's firewall, after which the Duet started to work as advertised.
Since then, I've been back to the online world 3 or 4 times to understand how to get a feature to work or solve a problem. For example, just tonight I spent 2 hours figuring out how to get the headphone jack on the controller working. That ultimately required finding and downloading a 3rd party applet to activate the port and manually entering the IP of my computer before that port could see my music. you get the picture.
As I said, some people enjoy this kind of fiddling and problem-solving. Others hate it and/or feel they are aren't capable of doing it. If you're in the latter camp. . . If you're looking for a plug n play solution . . . you should probably spend the extra bucks for a Sonos.
One more thing: If, like me, you originally loaded your music into your computer using iTunes, be prepared to do a lot of fiddle-y housekeeping before that collection displays as elegantly on the Squeezebox as it does on your iPod. (This is especially true if your collection includes much classical music.) The info tags on CD tracks are full of various inconsistencies and ambiguities. iTunes intelligently ignores many of these and gives you lots of ways to easily work around others. Squeezebox doesn't. A bunch of tracks from a single album (in iTunes) will appear as 2 or 3 different albums in Squeezebox. Some album artwork that appears in iTunes/iPod won't make the transition to Squeezebox (though a lot will) and on and on. All these things can be fixed but it's a fussy, tedious process.
My sense, however, is that this problem is not specific to Squeezebox. I think it applies to any non-Apple software accessing an iTunes library, so it would apply to Sonos, too. At least with Squeezebox, you have that active, involved user community to help you work through it, and in the end you have a system that truly defines state of the art in displaying and controlling an online music collection.
Digital camera Review: A few months of frustration later...
Summary: 1 Stars
Look, I gave this product a heroic try. After first easily setting it up on my wireless road runner high speed cable (which works flawlessly for Roku, etc.) it started disconnecting every few minutes. On hour on phone with nice help from the states we rebooted everything. Worked ok for a day. Then the darn thing disconnects from internet 3 to 10 times an hour or more. Then you have to click a few times to get it to reconnect and you have to find the station you were listening to all over again which is not an easy task clicking though submenus. I was so excited when I first hooked it up! No I am feeling so duped!! Do NOT buy this until you hear that they have fixed this LONG TERM issue (we are talking years here, and I was a fool enough not to listen).Digital camera Review: A great product, serves it's purpose perfectly
Summary: 5 Stars
So, I will make this quick since there are already lots of reviews about this product.
I LOVE this product it works great most of the time. Here are some key points
1. I ended up purchasing from Amazon because there was a rebate and free shipping but the price fluctuates all over the web
2. Internet radio works perfectly, I have 20,000 MP3 files but I still listen to online radio for something I wouldn't normally buy
3. The remote battery lasts a long time
4. Occasionally it needs to be rebooted to find the music again, very easy to do, just shut down the remote, restart the squeeze server and all is well
5. Wireless works great, anything you read about wireless problems are the customer's router and NOT this product. I had a very flaky Linksys router that would drop my iPhone connection ALL the time but once I upgraded my router, I no longer have any problems.
6. It's very small, don't be surprised when you get this tiny little box in the package. I was looking through the box for something bigger.
7. Setup to a receiver is very easy. I currently have mine hooked up to the AUX jack on my downstairs receiver with speakers running upstairs
Overall after a few months use I am very happy, rarely is something worth the price lately, but this is.
Digital camera Review: A lesson in frustration
Summary: 1 Stars
I now own over $300 of unusable plastic...After being on tech support for close to 2 hours I am waiting for a call from a higher level person to help set this up. Check out the questions online and you'll see all sorts of people with very strong networking backgrounds and computer geeks who could not get the Squeezebox working properly. Plus they had me completely uninstall all antivirus and pop-up blocking software...I get to hunt thouse down again to re-install also. What a waste of time.
Sounds like a great idea but they need to make it simple to install, until then I would not recommend buying a Squeezebox unless you want to experience the frustration of a 2 hour tech support call that ends with you leaving a message on a Tier 2 answering machine.
My background - fairly adept at electronics and setting up PCs. Never had issues like this with other pieces of equipment.
I'll just get the BlackBerry remote control function that lets you control all stereo equipment and stream mp3s from your BlackBerry to the home stereo - half the price and you have everything at your fingertips in one device (add a few 8GB microSD cards and you can have your entire song collection available on BlackBerry easily).