Squeezebox Duet
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Wow! That’s the first thing that came to mind after my new Squeezebox Duet connected and played it’s first song from my iTunes library on a laptop up in the kitchen. Yes, I’m in the basement with this nifty little hand held controller (it’s shame to call this thing a ‘remote’) browsing through my catalog of 200+ gb of music that resides on an external drive connected to my laptop on another floor. Everything is here in my hand, and it reacts quickly as I jump around from artist to artist, switching through different albums, songs and playlists. I am a lifelong tech guy whose tech related interests focus on A/V and computers. For my adult life, the past 25 years, Ive always been on top of the cutting edge in these areas. Now that I have all but abandoned my 2,000+ CD collection, my listening has been iPod based. I update the ipod from my ever growing itunes library and use dock in the house and in the car. The Logitech Squeezebox Duet is exactly what the doctor ordered. I told my wife after hooking it up last night that it is one of the most impressive pieces of tech geek equipment I’ve come across.
Logitech Squeezebox Controller
The little puppy sits in its cradle next to the Harmony 890 (another great device) waiting for me to take control of an incredible amount of music. Not only is my entire iTunes library on the palm of my hand when holding this, but full access to online music services as well as 100′s of internet radio stations, pre-configured and categorized from the jump! I was scrolling through over 50 stations in the “Christmas” category alone! I click on one and bam! Rudolph is blasting through the room in “all channel stereo”. I found west coast sports stations, band-specific stations, all the stuff I recall from being a satellite radio subscriber. The neat thing is, it’s all organized, in the palm of your hand, and connected to your systems.
squeezebox duet controller
Flipping through my iTunes on the Squeezebox Controller
What is really cool about this thing is on the first screen I chose the basement system. I can now connect receivers in the living room, kitchen, and on the deck. From this controller, I can control all of them, just choosing what room I,m dealing with first! I can play a different song in each room or have the same song synched to multiple rooms.
With each song selection, the controller pictured above is sending a wifi signal up to my PC and telling it to shoot the tunes down to the squeezebox reciever, also wifi, which is attached to the Onkyo806 in behind the rack:
Squeezebox Receiver Behind Rack
The squeezebox receiver gets the signal and feeds it to the a/v receiver via digital coax:
squeezbox receiver digital connection
Notice there is also an ethernet port if you’re not doing wireless. For setup, I downloaded some software (squeezeserver) and let it scan my iTunes over night. I did this while awaited delivery of the hardware. When the hardware arrived, I plugged my WEP wifi key into the controller when it asked and it connected wifi pretty quickly. I hooked up the receiver and the control knew that right away. A few minutes later I was jamming.
The Squeezebox Duet has been an incredible addition to this basement system!