I'll add my thumbs-up to this. I installed a pair of Duets (well, technically one Duet and an additional Receiver) a year ago, and followed them up with a Boom, and have been tremendously satisfied, happy and impressed with the way everything works ever since. In a large, multi-storey house the problem we'd had was getting music to different parts of the house when and where we wanted it. The SqueezeBox line solved the problem far better than I had hoped.
At every party we've had people have noticed the music synchronized all through the place as they move around, and how it just plays continuously, without me having to change CDs or anything. When they comment on it, I take the opportunity to show off the Controller and explain how the system works (at least the basic idea), and everyone has been very (very!) impressed. The fact that I can also take song requests and slot them in to play next in the playlist floors them. (Of course, the fact that I have lots of great music to choose from has something to do with it. :) My wife and I have also gotten used to having music on all day long on weekends when we're working on projects around the house or yard. It makes everything more fun. And when I want to kick back and unwind after a long day, I can get comfortable pretty much anywhere (I also have the system set up to play through a set of wireless headphones, with the transmitter plugged in to a PC) and listen to whatever strikes my fancy, without ever having to get up to change the music. The SqueezeBoxes and SqueezeCenter have opened our music collection back up to us so dramatically it's hard to believe. Before, we had to be in the family room, where the stereo was, to listen to anything, and because it wasn't always convenient, we often didn't have music on at all. Selecting a specific album from the carousel CD player was a chore, and putting together good playlists was impossible. Now, music is available anywhere we want it, with anything we want to hear available in seconds. We use it outside when we're working on the yard, on the deck or patio when we're socializing with friends, and in the bedroom to go to sleep to, wake up to, and ... "enhance the mood." My wife can have Danny Gatton on in the kitchen while she's cooking, and I can be listening to Prokofiev in the living room. We have dozens of playlists ready to go if we just want a mix for a specific mood or a party. Our daughter was home for a visit recently and while we were at work she picked up the Controller and (without having been given any "training" on it) figured out how to put on a random mix of all the blues in our collection, so she could sample artists she wasn't familiar with; whenever she heard something she didn't know but really liked, she made note of who it was, so she could explore that artist in more depth at her leisure. We've also been discovering new artists by using Pandora and LastFM, and I've bought more new CDs in the past year than I had in the previous five, simply because I've been discovering new stuff and now have a great way to listen to it. Absolutely, totally perfect and flawless? No. But the glitches and problems we've had over the course of the year have been extremely rare, and quite minor. And I never expect absolute perfection from anything. But "The System" as we refer to the whole SB configuration we have in the house, has been a huge hit for me, my wife, our grown kids when they visit, and everybody else who's seen and heard it. No other new gadgetry we've ever bought has brought us as much pleasure. I'll be expanding the system soon, with at least one more receiver (either SBR or Classic; I haven't decided yet) and at least one more Boom, when we finish remodeling the library and one of the guest rooms. I'll probably also add another SBR and some outdoor speakers to feed the deck and patio, instead of having to carry a Boom out there. I agree with the OP: since these forums are here largely to help people who are having problems, it's natural that most of the posts are from people with problems, misunderstandings or complaints. But a thread like this now and then, for people to post their success stories, help to balance things out a little, and maybe let new users or potential buyers see that the SB products really do work, and really are amazingly cool. They've literally changed our lives. -- Dogberry2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dogberry2's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18883 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65545 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
