reviews: network-music-players
Posted on | June 2, 2006 | 4 Comments
I just finished my third review on network-music-players for PLAY.FM. so far I’ve examined the Terratec Noxon Audio 2, the SlimDevices SqueezeBox and the Roku/Pinnacle SoundBridge. while the noxon and the soundbridge are mediocre devices which basically just fulfill the minimal requirements, the squeezebox stands out with it’s opensource server-software and impressive extensibility. here are the links to my past reviews:
SlimDevices SqueezeBox
Roku/Pinnacle SoundBridge M1001 (click to win the review-unit!)
if everything goes o.k., I’ll receive the Sonos Digital Music System next week. having read many positive things about it, plus considering the high price-tag, I’m quite excited getting this one under the lens.
Comments
4 Responses to “reviews: network-music-players”
Leave a Reply
July 15th, 2006 @ 7:10 pm
[...] I just finished my review of the Sonos Digital Music System for PLAY.FM, definitely the most amazing network audio player I’ve reviewed so far. the Sonos is a modular multi-room-system, streaming all sorts of audio-data from a PC/Mac or any SMB-fileshare (f.e. a fileserver or a stand-alone NAS-box) to a home stereo or (in case of the ZP100) any pair of speakers. A Sonos setup can connect up to 32 receivers (think of one receiver for every room of your apartment/house) which are managed by a neat handheld-controller. the controller features a great 3.5″ color-LCD and an iPod-like click-wheel – a great tool to navigate large media-collections. I’ve tried other systems like the Squeezebox or the Terratec Noxon before, and while both offer basically the same functionality, it just isn’t fun to browse through thousands of mp3s with a simple plastic-remote control and a tiny display you can’t decipher when being more than 2 meters away from the device. of course, all that shiny technology has its price: a basic setup for streaming music to one room costs about 800,- USD, additional receiver-units go for 350,- USD (ZP80, hooking up to an existing stereo-amplifier) and 500,- USD (ZP100, integrated amplifier). [...]
July 25th, 2006 @ 4:18 pm
Why are the Noxon and Soundbridge considered to be ‘mediocre’ ?
Your own reviews don’t mention anything like that …
btw : you should try the UPnP-server called TVersity ( http://www.tversity.com ) with either the Noxon or the Soundbridge.
The last version also supports ‘odd’ devices like the Sony PSP and Nokia 770
July 25th, 2006 @ 4:37 pm
well, both devices do their job!, but compared to the squeezebox they definitely offer less features. this is mainly due the opensource-nature of squeezebox’ slim-server software, but also because of additional services like the pandora-integration, which make the squeezebox more interesting. maybe ‘mediocre’ was a bit too harsh
thx for your comment and the link, I’ll give tversity a try!
September 10th, 2006 @ 12:16 am
[...] flashback: earlier this year, Slim Devices announced their new product Transporter to launch, with a pricetag of $2.000 USD clearly aimed at the hifi-enthusiast. if you want to go in-depth, check out my review of the Squeezebox and other network audio-players. [...]