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: Changed how I experience music
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought the Squeezebox Duet a few weeks ago and waited to write the review.
Short background - I have a lot of experience with consumer electronics and love gadgets. I had messed with my brother-in-law's Sonos system and knew I wanted one. I just didn't want to spend the money on the Sonos. So, I took the plunge and tried the Duet. Right out of the box, I was pleasantly surprised at how small the receiver and controller were. In the same order, I bought 3 sets of decent Sony bookshelf speakers for 3 more rooms in the house. Setting up the Duet was simple. If you can get a computer on an encrypted wireless network, setting up the duet will also be a joke. Once online, the Duet was great. Before the Duet, I used iTunes for everything. In fact, I had about 1000 songs that I had bought from iTunes so those were DRM tracks. It is true that you CANNOT play those through the "My Library" on your Duet. HOWEVER, all I did was sign up for Rhapsody and it "subscribed" to all of the DRM protected music, so it was really pretty seamless. After that, I started looking through the duet menus and came across Slacker and Pandora. Slacker is fantastic and I use it about half the time with the duet. Sometimes the duet can take a while to respond - especially if you're trying to go through "my library" and you have thousands of songs. Battery is average, but the charging stand is very nice and you can operate the controller while it's on the stand which is very helpful.
All in all, the duet has changed the way we listen to music. After wiring the house with speakers, we're constantly listening to stuff. With Slacker and other playlists you can download from Rhapsody, I've found about 25 new bands that I really like. If I hear something good, I pick up the duet to see who the artist is, and then simply hit "more from artist." From the remote, I've instantly added those artist's albums to Rhapsody. Very cool.
Digital camera Review: Chosen over Sonos, and happy.
Summary: 4 Stars
We love this thing.
We went to see the Sonos system at a local store. It's nice, works well, sounds good...... and was rather pricey and, for what it matters, bulky and dated looking.
The Duet we could see at a local big box store.. but only see, they didn't have a working demo.
Took the chance, bought the Duet and haven't looked back.
It's small, almost sleek, and works great.
Setup was painless, and I'm running the software on a networked storage box (Synology 207+, which is fantastic), something definitely not officially supported.
This exemplifies one of the main reasons we gave Duet a try. It's running on open source software! Logitech develops and maintains the code but publishes the source for all to see.. and tweak. For the geeks among us, you can find all kinds of plugins and solutions, or help make changes yourself.
For everyone else, this means that development is dynamic, so if some new use is found or a new service comes along it's likely a solution will be incorporated into the software rather quickly.
We use Rhapsody, Pandora, and have about 900 ripped CDs. Adding in these sources was a breeze. And without them you still have access to all kinds of internet radio stations from around the world.
Everyone else has already covered all the positives about this little gem, so I'll through out a couple of minor non-gushing comments just to keep your expectations grounded:
The response on the controller isn't instant. It's not bad, but there is a perceptible lag between pressing a button and the response (even when no wireless communication is needed).
That wheel ya' see in the pic on the controller? It's not like the ring on an ipod, it's a plastic wheel that rotates. It works fine, just thought you should know.
The controller's charging station? It's a little thing, but dang it's nice; heavy, metal, with rubber padding on the bottom. (sorry, the gushing came back)
Oh.. my router is an old linksys wrt54g and has always been a bit flaky on the wireless side. We have had occasional dropouts while playing music on the Duet, but since our laptops lose connection at the same time I strongly suspect the router is the problem. Just food for thought if your still using an old "G" router that isn't rock solid.
On the sound side, our squeezebox feeds into an AudioSource Amp 200 which drives a pair of Canton 602s (heh, that'll make some audiophile shreak in horror!). It sounds fantastic.
( btw: allegedly in the latest update, 7.3 Dec2008, music can be played through the headphone jack on the controller, or even through the controllers itty bitty speaker... wow. )
Digital camera Review: Complete Disappointment: Spend Some More for the Real Deal, Sonos
Summary: 3 Stars
Bought over a year ago, was flaky from day one, every time I turned it off and on it had trouble connecting. I was so frustrated I just stopped using it. Finally, a couple of months ago, I thought I would give it a go with some updated firmware: absolutely zero improvement. EVER SINGLE TIME I TURN THIS THING OFF AND BACK ON SOMETHING GOES WRONG WITH THE CONNECTION AND I HAVE TO DIDDLE WITH IT TO GET IT TO WORK AGAIN: COMPLETE PIECE OF JUNK!
I have a co-worker that has the previous version of Sonos and it works perfectly for him every single time he uses it. With this technology, looks like you get what you pay for, and I paid low rent and got a low rent piece of garbage.
Update 2-22-10: I have backed off a bit from my initial opinion: part of the problem had to do with weak signal from the router, which caused occasional connection drops. However, connection drops seem to, on occasion, confuse the Duet, which is completely silly. In other words, it has trouble recovering from disconnects related to signal strength.
I still believe that the product has severe shortcomings, but is not as severely crippled as I initially stated.
I bought the Radio version of the Duet, and it is in many ways identical to the Duet, in both the Control interface and the device's weaknesses. An example: After securing my network with WEP I spent about 30 seconds programming in the passcode to my iphone, but I couldn't program in the code to the Duet or the Radio: I had to reset the devices to be able to modify the security settings of the network. So, essentially, my iphone was much easier to configure than the two Logitech devices. Think about that for a bit. I guess that says a lot about the designers of the iPhone, but it sure doesn't say much about Logitech designers. Other devices that needed upgrades were almost as easy as the iPhone (PS3, Win 7 PC and Laptop, and Vista PC). So the Logitech devices work OK, but there are some glaring shortcomings in the design.
Digital camera Review: Cool Product!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased the Squeezebox Duet and absolutely love it. The product is very simple to use and packed with features. Sound quality is excellent. Setup was a little bit of a challenge but Logitech's support was very simple to access and provided valuable information. I would highly recommend this product to anyone looking to acquire a music server.Digital camera Review: Could not be more satisfied
Summary: 5 Stars
This is exactly what I wanted; I have loaded a very large music collection (1000+ disks) on an external hard drive (backed to a second drive; I did not want to go through the ripping process again).
I will never handle a disk again except when I by a new one. There are highly modified versions of this product available on the net that are said to be better in sound replication; maybe but for my ears it sounds great.