Forget CDs: Distributed music is next

Gary Krakow Columnist • E-mail

Forget everything you know about home audio. It’s all about to change. First there were vinyl records, turntable and needles. Then reel-to-reel, cassette and 8-track tapes. Finally, in the 80’s, CDs became the next “big” thing. Now, it’s compressed music files and portable players that are all the rage.

But iPods and the like are very personal devices. For the most part, they’re designed for one person to listen at a time using headphones. What about a system that would allow you to distribute, control and listen to those same computerized music files throughout your home?

That’s why the engineers at Slim Devices devised a pair of network music devices. They call one Squeezebox and its bigger, more expensive brother, Transporter.

The premise is simple: You’re already storing your music files on your computer’s hard drive. So why not have a device that could stream those files via your home Wi-FI network? You could listen to your favorite songs on any hi-system in any room.

Squeezebox is a clever box that receives, converts and plays back your computer’s music files, distributing them to your stereo. The Squeezebox connects to your computer via an Ethernet cord or via your 802.11b/g wireless network and its audio outputs plug directly into your music playback system. There are also digital outputs if you prefer to listen through a separate DAC (digital-to-analog converter.)  There’s even a mini-headphone jack on the back.

The enclosure itself is a reasonable 7.6 by 3.7 by 3.1 inches in size. There’s a large, high resolution, 320 by 320 pixels vacuum fluorescent display which can show you song titles or what Slim Devices calls “full-screen visualizers,” which are amazing-looking digital representations of VU meters (digital or analog) or a whole lot more.

Squeezebox’s internal operating system is Flash upgradable, so the first time you plug it in, the system will search the Internet to see if there's a new version of its internal OS then automatically install it.

Slim Devices The backside features the headphone jack, analog audio outputs, optical and coax out, Ethernet jack and power supply.

Setup is a snap. In my case, I let Squeezebox find all the wireless networks in my neighborhood then entered the password for my Wi-Fi system.  Squeezebox did the rest. It was ready to rock within 60 seconds.

I store lots of music files on my computer. But the SlimServer controller software found all my music automatically and make it ready for playback. You'll need to download the server software, which runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, Solaris Web browsers, from the Slim Devices site.

SlimServer plays MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, MP2, MusicPack, AIFF, WAV, PCM, FLAC, Apple and WMA Lossless files. It can import files from your computer’s music player programs including iTunes, Windows Media and Winamp.  SlimServer and Squeezebox also let you listen to hundreds of Internet radio streams from all around the world. Some sound amazingly great.

Actually using Squeezebox to listen to music is easy. Let the SlimServer find your music files and then you choose the songs you want to hear. You can select by song, album, artist or shuffle. And all of Squeezebox’s functions are handled by the included remote control.

Think of Squeezebox system as a computerized, wireless jukebox. No discs to store, carry or load when you want to hear some tunes. If you have the bucks, you can place a Squeezebox in each room, plug them into amplifiers and speakers and you have an amazing multi-room distributed music system.

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