Porschefan;570709 Wrote: > > I bought a Squeezebox Radio a few weeks ago as a replacement for my > bedside radio/alarm in our new home. We moved from Los Angeles to > Albuquerque and I found myself missing the wide variety of radio > stations I had in L.A. Well, the SBR opened my eyes up to a whole new > world of staggering possibilities/variety....now I'm hooked. The SBR > works great except that I find its audio quality even less than the > $100 Boston Acoustics radio I had before. So I ordered a Boom. The > Boom is a lot better than the Radio, but still just about on a par with > my previous radio--maybe a bit better. >
Odd: the Radio and Boom both have great sound. Perhaps the stations you're listening to are using a small bitrate to keep bandwidth down? A ton of stations are at 64kbps, and talk radio can often be even lower. Pandora should be 128kbps and sound much better -- but it's still not at all "cd quality" The usual response I get when people hear mine is "how the heck does something so small sound so good?" > > So...is the "Touch" just a controller and doesn't have any way to hook > up to an A/V receiver? If that's the case I guess the only choice I > would have is the "Duet"? (Ruling out the Transporter.) How does the > Duet (and/or Touch) connect to an A/V receiver? I have a Yamaha > HTR-6160 receiver on my main system and I'm thinking of moving that to > the bedroom, with appropriate speakers and getting that hooked up with > the Duet. It has only 3 HDMI connections--all used, but all the other > connectors are not being used. > The Touch is a controller. It is also a player. It is also a server. Ie, you can use it to control other devices if you want, hence it's a controller. It can also control itself... It is a player: it has both analog and digital outputs. It can be controlled by itself, with an IR remote, with a web browser, or with the SB Controller... It is also a server: you can attach a USB hard drive and have it share music to other players, including itself. The duet is two parts: a controller and a player. It can't be a server, but it's sort of like a Touch ripped in half function wise. (Ie, the Controller can control the Receiver.. or any other SB device... and the player can be controlled by the Controller or Web Browser or even a Touch.. gets confusing, no?) Both connect to your audio system using standard connectors for analog or digital. > > As must be apparent I have a very low-level confusion going on which > could be summarized as "what's the difference between the Duet and the > Touch," and "how do these interface with an existing A/V setup"? Also > whether the combination of the Touch with the powered speakers on sale > might be a good interim solution. I've got $200 into the Boom and I'd > rather spend a bit more to get some decent audio for when I'm playing > music. > Check the bitrates of the stations and music you're listening too: the Boom has great sound quality, but it can't make netradio sound good if they insist on serving 64kbps streams. Try Pandora or Slacker for somewhat better sound, or a local server with some high quality rips (mp3 of at least 200kbps or better still, flac). -- snarlydwarf ------------------------------------------------------------------------ snarlydwarf's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1179 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81374 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
