Review of Squeezebox music player and Aego M speakers

Updated with full write up 11th June. I’ve finally got round to writing the promised review of my new Slimdevices Squeezebox and Acoustic Energy Aego M speakers; I’ve had them for two weeks now, and I’m still thoroughly impressed by both products.

I took this photo them the day they arrived - I included my G2 iPod Nano for scale (excuse the poor quality of the pic, but I couldn’t be bothered with setting up the tripod or stobe). It’s quite a long review, purely because the Squeezebox does so much - I hope it helps if you’re considering getting one.

So what is a Squeezebox?

The Squeezebox Classic is a digital audio receiver made by a company called Slim Devices (although it’s now been re-badged as Logitech, who recently bought Slim Devices); in other words it’s a standalone device that allows you to stream music stored on your computer to a hi-fi located in a different part of the house.

The Squeezebox connects to your stereo using a choice of standard analogue red/white RCA connections, headphone minijack, or digital optical or coaxial connections. It then uses your existing wired (Ethernet) or wireless (802.11g) network to stream your music on demand from the network-connected computer holding your music. The computer holding your audio files can be a Mac, Linux or Windows PC, or even certain NAS drives (swanky hard drives that can be accessed on a network without needing a computer).

The Squeezebox itself is a very sleek looking thing, about 20cm wide and 10cm tall, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a spot for it next to your hi-fi or under the TV. It sits upright, and half of its front is taken up with the 320×32 pixel, vacuum-fluorescent, cyan-on-black display, which is large enough to read from across the room (unless, say, you live in Buckingham Palace).

It comes with a nice-quality remote control (seems different to some older pictures I’ve seen, which showed a rather cheap looking remote), which allows you to browse and play your music, change settings and adjust the volume and so on.

Setting up the Squeezebox

Setting up the Squeezebox was an absolute doddle. First you install the SqueezeCenter software on the computer hosting your music. You point the SqueezeCenter to the directory holding your music, and it scans the audio files for tags (apparently it also plays nicely with iTunes).

When you plug the Squeezebox into the mains for the first time, it steps you through the setup process. You enter your network information using the remote’s left, right, up, and down buttons, and the alphanumeric keypad (much like on a mobile phone).

First you choose whether it’s a wired or wireless network; if it’s wireless, you scroll through the list of the wireless networks it’s detected (it spotted mine straight away), or enter the name of the network if your SSID is hidden. You then choose your country and enter your network password - WEP, WPA and WPA2 are supported - before deciding whether to assign the Squeezebox a static IP address or use DHCP. I chose DHCP and it had no problems connecting to my Netgear router via my Netgear wireless access point. Finally, you choose the computer where the SqueezeCenter is installed from the list of computers on your network. And that’s it, you’re good to go.

Playing music

The SqueezeCenter software supports a wide range of audio formats, including MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, FLAC and WMA, but it doesn’t handle DRM files, if that’s important to you (not an issue for me - I refuse to purchase DRM protected tracks).

You can browse your music collection through the SqueezeCenter via your browser (so you could also use a PDA, web-enabled mobile or another laptop as a remote control), or more likely using the supplied remote control. All the standard player options are present - browse by artist, album, genre, date or directory structure, search, shuffle, add and edit playlists etc. Playback and browsing is very responsive, and I’ve not experienced any stutters or delays.

More than just your MP3 collection

Of course you can only listen to your music collection if the computer they’re on is running; however, even when your computer’s off, the Squeezebox still has plenty to offer. The Squeezebox can connect to Slim Devices’ servers so you can access the services offered by their SqueezeNetwork, which include:

• Internet Radio - you can choose from hundreds of Interent radio stations that are listed, and stream them direct to your Squeezebox. If you don’t like the stations on offer, you can add your own favourites.
• RSS News Ticker - by default the list of feeds to choose from includes BBC World News and CNN, but again you can add your favourite feeds. The feeds can be used as a screensaver, and slowly scroll across the Squeezebox’s display.
• Last.fm, Pandora and Rhapsody - if you’ve got an account with one of these third-party services, you can have the music they pick for you streamed to the Squeezebox. I’m not sure about Rhapsody, but Pandora is no longer available to those of us outside the US. (I haven’t hooked up to my Last.fm account yet, but you can tell the SqueezeCenter to tell AudioScrobbler what you’re playing).
• Sound Effects - fancy listening to heavy rain and thunder, or perhaps chirruping crickets? No problem, the Squeezebox has quite a number of sound effects to choose from. I did try out the heartbeat effect to see if my friends’ babies would be taken to a state of womb-like tranquillity, but they didn’t seem that impressed. I love the thunderstorm though.

Attention to detail

There are loads of other things that the Squeezebox and Slim Devices deserve credit for, including:

• As previously mentioned, the SqueezeCenter music server software is cross-platform, and is open source (it uses Perl and MySQL), which means users have developed plenty of plugins for it - plus I think it suggests a good ethos on the part of Slim Devices.
• One of these plugins allows you to listen to BBC radio - live or using their Listen Again service (don’t know if this is available to those outside the UK though).
• There’s an active community for support, with both forums and a comprehensive wiki.
• The packaging, Squeezebox and remote all ooze quality - there’s no cheap plastic here.
• The instructions - in the manual and during operation - are well written; they certainly don’t read like they’ve been translated through 4 different languages.
• There are loads of nice touches, such as a sleep facility and alarm clock. Just about every aspect of the Squeezebox can be adjusted, including what information is displayed during playback, the brightness of the display in its various states, and the size of the font.
• The Squeezebox can be set up to act as a wireless bridge.

Slim Devices recently released the Squeezebox Duet which performs a similar role as the Classic, except that the box (the Squeezebox Receiver) that plugs in to your hi-fi doesn’t have a display; it does however have a very swanky remote control (the Squeezebox Controller) with an iPod-like colour display with which to browse and control your music. I preferred the Classic to be honest. The Controller is compatible with the Classic though and can be bought separately, so I may add one at some point.

Squeezebox sound quality

The one thing I’ve not really mentioned is the sound quality. The Squeezebox uses a Burr-Brown DAC, which is meant to be very good, and I certainly can’t fault the sound quality. With decent speakers, I think the quality of your audio files is going to be your only concern.

For example, I ripped quite a few CDs to MP3 at 160kbps to cram them on my Nano, and I can easily hear the difference between them and ones ripped at 320kbps. In fact, I’m now considering the daunting task of ripping everything to lossless FLAC. Slowly.

What’s not to like?

Criticisms? I’m struggling to think of any…. Obviously the fact it won’t play DRM-hobbled files could be a deal-breaker for some. And sure, in some ways it would be great if it could handle video, but to be honest I’d rather have a device that does one thing and does it extremely well, than a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ box.

Otherwise, the only cons are the fact that you really need your music properly tagged, and that you will almost certainly start thinking about converting your music collection to a lossless format and moving it to a NAS drive.

To conclude, the Slim Devices Squeezebox Classic sounds great, looks great, is easy to set up, and totally intuitive to use. At around £180 it’s not particularly cheap, but I’d go as far as to say it’s possibly the most impressive gadget I’ve ever bought.

Acoustic Energy Aego M Speakers

I bought a set of AE Aego M 2.1 speakers to go with the Squeezebox, as I’d heard them in action and knew they produced a fantastic sound.

Despite the two satellite speakers being pretty tiny (68 x 103 x 90mm, supplied with 5m of cable each), they have no problem filling a decent size room without straining - they’re certainly more than just crappy computer speakers. What HiFi Sound and Vision had this to say about them:

Looks great, works superbly; real power and good integration make the Aego M one of the best-sounding speaker systems in its class

…sound big, and goes (very) loud. It’s not all about brash, in your face, tunes, though - the M-System delivers delicate music with detail and finesse.

As you’d expect from a company that makes serious hi-fi gear, the speaker system is fairly minimalist - just an on/off/volume control and three setting for bass level on the subwoofer unit.

The speakers are magnetically shielded, and the built-in amplification in the subwoofer made them the ideal partner for the Squeezebox, as I can just plug it straight into the RCA connection on the Aego Ms. For £130 they’re an absolute bargain.

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