Reviewed by: John P. Falcone
Edited by: Matthew Moskovciak

Reviewed on 3/4/08

Digital audio is great--especially if you've got a multigigabyte music collection sitting on your computer or you subscribe to an "all you can eat" music service like Rhapsody. The problem, for a lot of people, is that they're stuck listening to all that great music on the tinny speakers of their computer--or perhaps patching the laptop into their living room stereo system. Dedicated audio streamers have helped somewhat, but they have tiny little screens, which--like docked iPods--aren't very useful if you're sitting on a sofa across the room. And the best solution to date--the excellent Sonos Digital Music System--costs a pricey $1,000 for a two-room bundle. Enter Logitech's new Squeezebox Duet: the $400 network digital audio streamer employs a winning handheld remote with a brilliant color screen (not unlike an iPod) that lets you navigate your entire music collection--including several online services and the majority of free Internet radio stations--from the palm of your hand, while you hear the music from the big speakers of your home stereo.

The Hardware

The Duet is so named because it's a two-part system: the Squeezebox Receiver base station and the Squeezebox Controller remote. The base station is a nondescript black brick that pulls audio from a networked PC (Windows, Mac, or Linux) or the Internet via your Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet home network. The single button on the front of the base station is used to sync it to manually sync it to the network during setup. In addition to the Ethernet jack, the rear panel boasts both analog stereo (red and white RCA jacks) and digital (coaxial or optical) jacks. That means you can output your music to pretty much anything you want--be it a high-end AV receiver, a lowly boombox, or a pair of PC speakers--so long as it has an auxiliary input jack. There's no power button, but you can shut it off via your computer (more on that later) or the remote.

The Squeezebox Controller includes a color screen and iPod-like controls, so you can dial up any song in your library--as well as myriad online music resources as well.

Features

The Squeezebox Duet can draw audio from two main sources: the Internet or a networked PC--Windows, Mac, or Linux. The breadth of the online sources is impressive and varied:

• Online music services: If you like online music services, chances are you'll love the Squeezebox Duet. Thus far, supported services include Rhapsody, Last.fm, Slacker, MP3tunes, Pandora, Live365, RadioIO, and RadioTime. (These are mostly premium services, but all of them offer a free trial period.) Also available is the complete catalog of the Live Music Archive, a free resource that includes thousands of live concert recordings.
• Internet radio: Prefer free online music? The full panoply of online radio is available. Either access Shoutcast servers (divided by region or genre), or add your own bookmarked favorites through the SqueezeNetwork interface (see below).
• Podcasts: As with the Internet radio bookmarks, you can add the feeds for your favorite podcasts on the SqueezeNetwork homepage.

  You'd think that controlling access to that wide range of online music sources would be a challenge, but Logitech and Slim Devices couldn't have made things simpler. All of the online music sources are aggregated under a single online location called SqueezeNetwork. Set up a free account (it takes about 30 seconds, and you don't need to give more than your e-mail address), and the SqueezeNetwork service provides a single location to coordinate everything: all of your account information for any of the premium online services to which your subscribed. (The Squeezebox generates a unique PIN code during setup that you input to the SqueezeNetwork page, linking the two together.) The SqueezeNetwork homepage is also where you add your Internet radio favorites and podcast RSS feeds (just cut and paste the appropriate URLs). You can even add text RSS feeds, for viewing Web clips on the Squeezebox Controller's screen.

  In all, the SqueezeNetwork site provides a quick and easy way to pull together all of the online assets available on the Squeezebox Duet. Anything we added was instantly available on the Squeezebox remote just a couple of seconds later. Moreover, because everything is accessed via the Web, it's effectively universally compatible, regardless of what browser you're using (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, whatever) or from what sort of computer (Windows, Mac, Linux--or even a portable device, for that matter). Of course, many of us have a multigigabyte library of music sitting on our computer's hard drive--and the Squeezebox can access that as well. Download and install the latest version of the SqueezeCenter software (7.0 or later). It was previously known as "SlimServer," but aside from the name change and added Duet support, it's largely the same great software that's been developed by the Squeezebox community for years. Thanks to its open source roots, the software is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines (it can even be installed on Infrant NAS drives). During installation, just point the software to the directories holding your music files and playlists, and the SqueezeCenter will make them available to your Squeezebox.

  The Squeezebox Duet also includes a few extras. Aside from the RSS news reader, there's built-in support for environmental sounds (babbling brook, crickets, thunderstorm, waves hitting the beach) and alarm clock functions. The background wallpapers for the remote screen can be set to a variety of colors, patterns, or photos. Default screensaver options include a simple clock (analog or digital) or you can even pull in Flickr photo streams.