The Logitech Squeezebox Duet: A Powerful But Quirky Network Audio Player [Archive]

Jason Dunn

03-10-2010, 04:00 PM

<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1265952370.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /><h6>Product Category: Wireless streaming audio player</h6><h6>Manufacturer: <a href="http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speakers_audio/wireless_music_systems/devices/3817&cl=ca,en" target="_blank">Logitech</a></h6><h6>Where to Buy: <a href="http://astore.amazon.com/digitalhomethoughts-20/detail/B0013IWYHU" target="_blank">Amazon.com</a> [Affiliate]</h6><h6>Price: $333.99 USD</h6><h6>System Requirements: 802.11b/g network or hard-wired Ethernet, and a computer (Windows or Mac OS X) to host the Squeebox software.</h6><h6>Specifications: Available at the <a href="http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speakers_audio/wireless_music_systems/devices/3817&cl=ca,en" target="_blank">Logitech Web site</a>.</h6>Pros:<ul><li>Powerful audio streaming system capable of many tasks;</li><li>Attractive design, small shelf footprint with multiple audio outputs;</li><li>Excellent audio quality.</li></ul>Cons:<ul><li>Expensive;</li><li>Total reliance on WiFi makes for a bumpy experience;</li><li>Incompatible with some (most?) 802.11n routers;</li><li>Complex setup and overall operation make it for experienced users only.</li></ul>Summary: The Logitech Squeezebox Duet is a potent combo that makes for a powerful home audio solution for music, podcasts, streaming radio, and more. Unfortunately, because it's such a complex product, it's not overly user friendly. In the many months I've been using it, I've felt like I've had to fix problems with it every other week. It's more like a computer and less like an appliance, with all the dubious reliability implications that statement implies. Still, it has great potential and when it works, it works really well.<MORE /><h1>I Had It Easy Before</h1>My first experience with a streaming home audio solution was a <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-audio-receivers-dars/roku-soundbridge-m2000/4505-6470_7-30794497.html" target="_blank">Roku Soundbridge M2000</a>. I used that product for years, and it was amazingly fast and easy to set up and start using. It detected the music on my network without requiring any extra software. The remote control was a simple tool that used infrared, so changing the volume or pausing the music was immediate - even if it was only line of sight. The remote would run on two AA batteries for six months at a time. The M2000 was as reliable as the clock radio in my bedroom, and I would have kept using it if the shelves I had built for my <a href="http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/93858/the-digital-wall-project-an-epic-tale.html" target="_blank">digital wall project</a> could accommodate it. Unfortunately, it was a very wide piece of hardware and I needed to replace it. I looked at a few different options, and thought that the Logitech Squeebox Duet looked like a compelling alternative. Little did I know I was in for quite the adventure with this product!<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1267112894.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" />Figure 1: My first network music player, the Roku M2000.When trying to find a solution to some of the troubles I'd have with this product, I <a href="http://www.ademiller.com/blogs/tech/2008/09/windows-home-server-and-squeezebox/" target="_blank">came across a quote</a> that summed up my experiences with it perfectly: "...this is not an appliance, it's a science project, albeit a really good one." This couldn't be more true. The Squeezebox is like a buying a chemistry set - you have all the tools to create some really interesting things, but you have to put in some serious work to get what you want...and things might just blow up in your face if you're not careful.<PAGE /><h1>Getting It Set Up</h1>Logitech really went the extra mile with this product from a packaging perspective. The unboxing experience was great; it had high-quality packaging, with nice presentation of the hardware. I unpacked it, then connected the Squeezebox receiver to power, and saw a red light blinking on the front of it. Now's a good time to explain that the product consists of two parts: the Squeezebox controller, and the Squeezebox receiver. The controller has a 2.4-inch color LCD TFT display with backlight, a rechargeable Li-ion battery, and built-in 802.11b/g wireless. It has several front buttons, including volume up, volume down, next, previous, and pause.There's also an iPod-style scroll wheel surrounded by four buttons; home, back, play, and add. The scroll wheel is every bit as twitchy as it is on an iPod - it's easy to move quickly through a long list of items, but it takes effort to precisely select an item as it's easy to overshoot. I'd have preferred a Zune 120-style control pad. The back of the remote is a high-gloss black material that's unfortunately prone to scratching - between the scroll wheel and the easily-scratched back, it's like Logitech tried to make it as iPod-like as possible. The back of my remote looked pretty beat up after only a week, and I was gentle with it.On the top next to the headphone jack there's an infrared port - unfortunately there's nothing about the software that uses it, which is a shame. It does give me hope that at some point they'll start using it, which might fix the biggest problem with this product (see below). The remote also has a built-in speaker on the back. For the most part, it's only used for sound effects from the remote - thankfully the sound effects can be toggled off and on individually.<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1265954343.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" />Figure 2: The Squeezebox Remote.The receiver has digital optical, digital SPDIF, and analog connectors for audio output. It uses a high-fidelity 24-bit Wolfson DAC to play MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless, and WAV music files - as long as there's no DRM involved. It also has built-in 802.11b/g wireless and a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port on the back. And somewhere on the front of the receiver is an infrared receiver...I think. The remote has an infrared port, so it stands to reason that the receiver would as well.<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1265954117.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" />Figure 3: The front and back of the Squeezebox Receiver. <img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1265954380.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" />Figure 4: The charging cradle for the Squeezebox Remote.Getting the whole thing set up took a bit of effort. First I put the battery in, and the remote powered up and started a start up wizard - it was easy to follow the steps required. The remote found my 802.11n network, so I entered my WPA key, and it logged on successfully. It then tried to find the receiver, but was unable to. I fought with it for a while, and then switched my Linksys WRT310N (with the latest firmware) from 802.11n mixed mode to forced 802.11b/g mode. Surprisingly, it worked. Once the remote found the network, it gave me a PIN number and directed me to go to www.squeezenetwork.com where I registered a free account on my desktop PC. Now that both pieces of the Squeezebox hardware were connected to WiFi, I could use it for streaming radio, etc. But what about my music?Unfortunately, the Squeezebox system doesn't work any of the music sharing protocols that modern Windows computers or Windows Home Servers use. This means there's an additional software install required, and if you've got your music on a NAS drive, you're out of luck (unless the Squeezebox Server software happens to support it). Initially when I first set this product up months ago, they didn't have a version of the software for Windows Home Server, so I <a href="https://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/321" target="_blank">found a 30-step tutorial</a> that walked me through the process. It was frustrating and hard to get it working. Thankfully, Logitech now has a version of the Squeezebox Server software that installs easily and quickly onto Windows Home Server. Unfortunately the version I'm currently using has a bug where, if the Windows Home Server is rebooted, the Squeezebox Server software will not automatically re-start, even if the check-box for that feature is checked. And since my Windows Home Server reboots itself after patches after week or two, the Squeezebox setup will stop working until I log into my Windows Home Server and start up the service. That's as frustrating as it sounds, especially with the wife factor. "Honey, why won't the music work?" "Hold on, I need to log into my Windows Home Server and re-start the Squeezebox service." I've recently (as of last week) installed a Squeezebox software update on the Windows Home Server that might fix this problem - only time will tell.Once I had the software installed and working, it kicked off a scan of all my music. The initial scan took 26 minutes, which was followed by an "artwork scan" that took another 12 minutes. Total time for it to scan my 13,016 tracks was about 39 minutes. Not bad, but while the scan is happening you can't play any of your music via the remote control.So now that I had it all set up, how did the Squeezebox Duet work? Quite well - but not without some glitches here and there.<PAGE /><h1>Using the Squeezebox Duet</h1>Like I mentioned earlier, the Squeezebox Duet is a powerful system capable of some pretty impressive things. After your music has been indexed, you can access every album and song from the remote. If you want to add something to the queue, pressing the plus sign on the remote will add it. This means you can build a playlist as you listen to music, which is great. The screen on the remote shows you the album art of the song that's playing, though I noticed the album art sometimes looked pretty bad - whether this was a result of the screen being limited to 256 colours or compression artifacts of the album art being re-saved, I can't tell.<img height="399" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1238876124.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" width="600" />Figure 5: The Squeezebox receiver is on the shelf on the right, just to the left of the Audioengine A5 speaker. It's nice and small and blends in easily.<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1267941465.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" />Figure 6: The Now Playing view; album art, album name, track number, song name, song progress, time, battery life, WiFi connection, play/pause status, and repeat on/off...a lot of information at a glance!On the remote, you can browse to Internet Radio > Local and, impressively, it will present you a list of local radio stations that are streaming their signal. They must do an IP address lookup and pull from a database. Unfortunately for me all the radio stations in my city seem to broadcast at between 24kbps and 32kbps, so the quality is atrocious, but the feature is still impressive. The remote also has a number of applications, some of which are useful and some of which seem to be there because it's technically possible. On the useful side of things, there's a Napster app that allows you to access your Napster subscription music account, and a Podcast Player app that allows you to directly play back your favourite podcasts after you've added them via www.mysqueezebox.com. There's an Amazon app that will let you tag music and have it add it to your shopping cart via a Squeezebox Web service. Useful? Perhaps for some.<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1267941543.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" />Figure 7: The menu options from the home screen. This can be completely customized; items can be added or removed.<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1267941602.usr1.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" />Figure 8: Browsing into the My Music menu item. There are many ways to access your music.From the remote you can select Turn Off Squeezebox, and the logo on the Squeezebox will fade to black. I was able to turn the Squeezebox back on and be listening to a streaming music station within only a few seconds, so the Squeezebox has a very rapid resume sequence and also re-establishes its WiFi connection very quickly. The remote itself can be turned off as well by pressing and holding on the Home button. Turning the remote back on takes about 45 seconds, so this isn't something you'll likely be doing very often. The remote is designed to be left on. It has two suspend states: the first is when the screen turns off, which happens in about one minute. When you pick up the remote from this state, the motion sensor kicks in and the screen will come back on immediately. You'll have instant control over your music. The second state is when the remote goes into a deeper suspend state, which seems to be after about 30 minutes or so of not using it. It takes a good 20 seconds or so to come out of this state and re-connect to the WiFi network, which presents a host of problems I'll dig into below.Pressing pause fades the music out, pressing pause again fades the music back in. There's a slight warble when this happens, but it's still a nice touch. When you pause the music playback, and leave it paused for perhaps 15 minutes, it will cause a speaker crackle as it powers down the amp on the receiver - at least it did with my <a href="http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/31342/the-sweet-sound-of-audioengine-a5-speakers.html" target="_blank">AudioEngine A5 speakers</a>. This is a conversation stopper every time it happens and is quite irritating.How does the Squeezebox sound? I'm not audiophile, but to my ears, it sounds great. When I connected the Squeezebox to my AudioEngine A5 speakers and S8 sub-woofer, I spent some time tuning the subwoofer volume and frequency cross-over. I listened to a lot of different music at high volumes, and the Squeezebox delivered great-sounding audio.<PAGE /><h1>WiFi: Weakness and Strength, All Wrapped Into One</h1>By using WiFi, Logitech makes the Squeezebox a non line-of-sight solution, which has some great advantages over infrared. WiFi is also the greatest weakness in this solution though, because WiFi simply isn't as reliable as consumer technologies such as infrared. A perfect example of this occurred when I was testing the system at high volume, then wanted to reduce the volume rapidly - I held down the reduce volume button, and while the remote indicated that the volume was going down, it didn't change the volume on the Squeezebox for at least 20 seconds. That's with the Squeezebox saying it was already connected to the network.The more frustrating problem is when you've been listening to music for a while, and the remote goes into the deep sleep mode. If you want to change anything about the music playback, you have to pick up the remote and wait as it wakes up and re-connects to WiFi. You can probably imagine this scenario in your own household: you're listening to music, the phone rings (or your spouse walks into the room and wants to talk to you), and you need to pause the music before you pick up the phone...but you have to wait 20 seconds until you can do so. It feels like an eternity. Or, if something happens to your WiFi connection or router (and it will), be prepared to pull the plug on the Squeezebox in order to stop the sound from coming out of your speakers. Sounds really irritating, right? It is. To me, that's a significant problem because WiFi simply isn't as reliable as infrared or a dedicated RF signal.Sometimes there's serious lag in the connection - several times I've picked up the remote, started a song, then tried to adjust the volume and waited a good ten seconds before the volume changes. Pressing play or pause sometimes takes so long to be executed you'll think it didn't send the command, so you'll press the button again - and 15 seconds later the music will pause. And sometimes the volume indicator will be out of sync with the volume level on the Squeezebox - the volume level will be all the way down, but the speakers are still kicking out sound.Other weirdness abounds: you'll press play after looking up an album, and there will be 10 to 20 seconds of silence - the track progression is going along on the remote, but no audio is coming from the receiver. Then suddenly the song will be heard through the speakers - and you'll have to use the back arrows to re-start the song to hear it again.Ultimately one of the problems then is that you have a remote control that's essentially the same as an MP3 player - it has to stay powered up for you to control anything. Unfortunately, it's an MP3 player with fairly poor battery life. I find that I have to place it back onto the charging cradle daily if I've been listening to music, and I've had it happen more than once when I'll be listening to music, I'll grab the remote to pause it, and find the remote is dead. I'll then need to drop it in the cradle, wait for it to boot up, and finally be able to pause my music. Quite the hassle!My last thought about WiFi is that the Squeezebox doesn't seem to be very compatible with many WiFi routers. I had a fair amount of success using it with my Linksys WRT54G, only getting the occasional disconnect. I had nothing but headaches when trying to connect it to a Linksys WRT310N, a Linksys WRT610N, and a D-Link router I no longer own. I'd get dozens of disconnects, but only with the receiver, not with the remote. Ultimately I grew weary of having to fight with it, so I hard-wired the receiver with Ethernet and everything has been working perfectly since. I moved back to the WRT610N and have had no issues. It seems like the remote has a stronger WiFi connection back to the router than the receiver does.<h1>Slightly Screwy Software</h1>Sometimes the Squeezebox Server software doesn't find new music - I put a new album on my Windows Home Server after downloading it from Amazon.com's MP3 store, and more than 24 hours later, the Squeezebox wasn't showing it to me as a listening option. I had to log into my Windows Home Server and initiate a manual re-scan of all my music (which took 10+ minutes) using the Squeezebox software before I could see the new album on the Squeezebox remote. When I pick up the Squeezebox remote I'm never entirely sure if my newly purchased music is going to show up on it. The lack of confidence in the product is a problem.The Squeezebox software is also a bit peculiar when it comes to processing metadata - for instance, I browsed via Artist and selected Third Eye Blind, expecting to hear songs only by that artist. I was surprised to hear an A Capella cover of a Third Eye Blind song. Looking at the metadata for that song, the only place it says Third Eye Blind is in the composer field. I wasn't browsing by composer, I was browsing by artist - so why would the Squeezebox software add it to my playlist? Another mystery. There's an issue where it splits up albums - it doesn't seem to read album and artist metadata the way other applications do. I'm a metadata Nazi, having poured over every song (all 13,000+) I own to ensure that the metadata is correct. I never see any of these metadata problems in the Zune software or Windows Media Center, but I routinely mutter the words "Huh?" when browsing music on the Squeezebox remote when I see music being displayed in strange ways.The software on the remote is also a bit problematic. Sometimes the remote will just reboot - once I picked it up, it said "Please Wait" as if it was waking up from the sleep mode, then I saw the Logitech logo and watched it do a complete reboot. For a while there was a firmware version for the remote that would reboot it every few days and congratulate me on installing the 7.4 firmware. Eventually this was fixed with another firmware update. It wasn't much of a bother to me, but for a less experienced user, it would be disconcerting to say the least.On the plus side, new features get added to the Squeezebox remote from the firmware updates; the current firmware has a nice large digital clock view that's better than what it had when I first set it up.<h1>Wrapping It Up</h1>As you can tell, I'm a bit conflicted about this product. It's a powerful, versatile network music player. It's capable of some impressive things, yet when it comes right down to it, the things I want the most from the Squeezebox Duet are the same things my old Roku M2000 delivered: fast, easy networked music playback. If a future firmware update can enable that infrared port on the Squeezebox remote to allow instant pause/play to work even when the remote is in the deep sleep mode, it would go a long way toward addressing my chief complaint with this product. And if the client-side software can be improved to accurately and reliably find new music and display the metadata properly, it would address my second main complaint. I'd also like to see the price come down - at over $330, it seems expensive for the hardware you get since there's no local storage. $249 or $199 would be a more natural price point for a product like this.All the pieces are there for this product, but it needs to mature before I'd recommend it to anyone other than geeks who like to experiment with gadgets. Keep working on it Logitech; you're close...Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com/" target="_blank">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys <a href="http://photos.jasondunn.com/" target="_blank">photography</a>, mobile devices, <a href="http://www.jasondunn.com/" target="_blank">blogging</a>, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his son Logan, and his sometimes obedient dog. He wishes companies thought more about ease-of-use and less about cool-awesome features.<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//ppct/auto/1240336793.usr1.gif" />Do you enjoy using new hardware, <a class="iAs" href="http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/93798/dell-s-inspiron-mini-10-reviewed.html" target="_blank">software</a> and accessories, then sharing your experience with others? 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