All your music in one place. Ability to send your music to any room in house. Decently designed interface and good useability. Strong user community.

You need to be at least a little "tech friendly" in order to get everything to work. Additional expense required to adequately backup your files on harddrive and setup a wireless network.

I'd been looking at ripping all of my CD's and playing them wirelessly over my audio system for a year or so. I discovered the Squeezebox in 2005 and spent a lot of time researching it and reading reviews/user reports. I finally pulled the trigger and purchased two of them (special price from Slim Devices) so I could have streaming music on each of our two systems.

I've been using them for about eight months now and am very glad I took the leap into wireless music. There was a bit of work involved in getting all my CD's (300 so far) ripped and stored on a network HD. I converted the files into the FLAC lossless format. Right now I am using the analog outputs to send the signal to my amplifiers (Cambridge 540A v2 and Yamaha home theatre receiver). To my ears the sound quality is very good, no complaints at all. There are a lot of people who have added expensive outboard DAC's with supposed fantastic results. I am not a "golden ear" audiophile by any means but I do enjoy my music. I will be upgrading my older bookshelf speakers within the next few months so that should give me an improvement in sound quality.

I think the Squeezebox is a great value if you want to take advantage of the benefits of streaning music. If you are tech friendly, have a decent computer and wireless network, and thinking about replacing a CD player or changer, take some time to consider the Squeezebox.

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Integration with Slim Server - great software running this show
wide variety of usable music formats
WiFi access
Remote control features
general ease of use

Provided DC power supply
Plastic box construction
Analog audio output is discernibly not comparable to a respectable CD player

I have spent quite a bit of time during the last month playing with version 3 of the Squeezebox (SB), and thought I should write a review while it is still on my mind, before I move onto another project. I have ripped about 200 CDs using Exact Audio Copy (the EAC/FLAC combination) on a Windows platform and I recommend that combination to others for generating files that will be sent to the SB. I use a NetGear wireless router (using WPA) to stream these music files from my PC to the SB - and that works flawlessly. I have streamed music in the form of lossless FLAC files for days on end without a single hiccup. My universal remote (Home Theater Master MX-800) controls the SB even better than the provided remote and controlling the SB is a charm. I have been streaming FLAC, Apple Lossless, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 formats to the thing, often all mixed up together - and it doesn't care. The thing also looks very nice sitting on top of my Headroom Max headphone amp - they are exactly the same width. Sound quality: people have remarked how wonderful it is, but I consider it's analog output only acceptable. I have been comparing it against my NAD C542 CD player, and it generally falls short in that comparison. I have not gone the route yet of purchasing an outboard DAC. Taking a recommendation from a user's forum, I found that leaving the digital gain fixed at max and then turning down the SB's analog stage gain to about half-way (23 on a scale of 40) does improve the analog output quality - but that drops the output by at least 10 dB. This is a danger when changing to another source later, forgetting to lower my preamp gain, and getting blasted! Power supply issues: when I first started my SB up, I immediately found the AM band on my tuner completely wiped out, the DC supply puts out a terrific amount of RF noise. I replaced the tiny supply that was provided with a much larger 5 VDC 4 amp-rated switching supply, and that cleared up the noise problem. Build quality: it is a very pretty-looking device, but it is still a plastic box. I found that when pushing my Outlaw Audio PCA cables onto the RCA connectors - that those jacks are attached to a PC board inside, with no real bracing. Pushing on the cables causes the PC board inside to flex quite a bit - that feels cheap. Display Screen: I like the screen, despite being monochromatic, but I found that at its second-to-lowest brightness point, (lowest being off) that it is rasterizing the display in vertical columns. I can see vertical stripes as a slight flicker - not a big deal, but I can see it if I look for it when the room is darkened. Streaming internet radio: works wonderfully, but the sound quality of internet radio streams is so abysmal to my head - that I simply cannot stand listening to them - not the SB's fault. In summary, the Squeezebox is a wonderful device and forms one part of a good music server. There is a learning curve however to setting something like this up so that it works properly. The other half of the equation of course is the device holding all your music and running the Slim Server software.

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iTunes driving an M-Audio USB DAC through a long USB cable

Sound, looks (so pretty), features, need I say more?

Doesn't have a physical power button.

Can't believe there aren't more reviews. I bought the SqueezeBox3 (SB3) in December, and have used it now for a few months. It sounds great and has caused me to get the upgrade bug. Since I've had it, I've bought a new DAC, amp, and subwoofer, and got rid of my CD player and preamp. The SB3 does so much for so little, and it sounds tremendous through either the analog or digital outputs. It can get anyone started on the road to audio nirvana. Get one today!

Customer Service

Amazing, and the Slim Devices forums are eminently helpful.

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There ain't nothin' like it.

Flexibility of software, great sound, simplicity of use.

Looks like a clock radio. Can be involved to get set up, but online and telephone support is great.

The Squeezebox has changed how I listen to music. It is amazingly versatile, and sounds really good. I would buy it for the Internet radio features alone (I live in the DC area, and there is _NO_ decent radio here). That said, I have ripped (using EAC) the majority of my CD collection to portable drives in FLAC, and enjoy bit-perfect playback, playlists and control from any computer on the Net. The software is open source, and there are lots of talented programer types constantly adding features. For the money, this is by far the most statisfying Hi-Fi purchase I have ever made.

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I just setup a Pluto Home system (smarthome + media server). It’s really cool and works great with SqueezeBoxes. Just plug the squeeze box into an Ethernet jack. When it sees the squeezebox request an IP address it automatically installs the slimserver and sets everything up on its own. There’s no software to install at all. And if you have a Bluetooth mobile phone, that turns into the remote control—complete with cover art, access to playlists, etc. Plus, it knows how to control all the other stuff too—so when I start playing music on my squeeze box it automatically turns on the stereo and sets it to the right input. There’s only 1 problem… They have these interactive maps so I can see what’s playing around the house and make the same thing play in multiple destinations. If all the destinations are squeezeboxes, it’s great. But if some are squeezeboxes and some are media PC’s, Pluto uses slimserver to go to the squeeze boxes, and videolan to stream to the PC’s—and the 2 ‘groups’ are not in sync. They say it’s because the only slimp3 player that emulates squeezebox2 and runs under Linux requires Java. Pluto sends a network boot image to all the media pc’s in the house—that’s how it turns your other PC’s into set top boxes. They don’t want to add the whole java runtime to the net boot image and bloat it just to get a slimp3 player. There are 2 open source C++ slimp3 players that are small and lean, but they are old and don’t support the new protocols. So, is anybody out there working on a C++ squeezebox2 player? This is the only small piece that’s missing. With that piece this would be a total sonos killer. You would still have a cool GUI with cover art. But it’s even better than Sonos’ because it uses your existing mobile phone—one less thing to lose—and your music follows you automatically as you move throughout the house. Plus it does movies—not just music. And controls a/v equipment and home automation too. And costs 1/10 the price.