Dogberry2 wrote: > Good luck with your new music solution, Autopilot. I hope it works out > well for your needs. > > As for me, I don't really have any "maintenance" issues, but since I'm > the only one who puts new music into the system, that does simplify > things. I know my wife would never want to have to bother with that side > of it; she just wants to play the music, not maintain the database. And > that suits me, because I'm pretty fussy about tagging, and prefer to do > it myself anyway. > > But as for the system itself, in my house there is no maintenance, > really. Our WiFi is rock solid, and I haven't had to do anything with > LMS in a long time. I'm a couple releases behind, but even when I do get > around to updating, it won't take me more than fifteen minutes; it isn't > painful. > > Everybody has to make his own choices, of course, and I know not > everybody's SB experience has been smooth and easy sailing. I do see > that the Squeezebox line is somewhat of a niche system, but I happen to > be in that niche. My requirements when I started were: > > 1. Music throughout a multi-level house > 2. A large, lossless personal music library > 3. Easily controlled from anywhere in the house > 4. Ability to synchronize any combination of rooms > > The SB system does all those things, and does them well. As far as I'm > aware, no other system really meets all those requirements, at least > within the same price range. Although there were some glitches over the > years, they were really quite minor, and I can't recall the last time > there was even a minor problem. There are now 8 players (Duets, Touches, > Booms and Radios) in addition to a couple computers using SqueezePlay, > and that covers most of the house quite well (though I might pick up > another Radio or Boom for the basement workshop and/or garage). Among > the hardware players there are frequently anywhere from two to six > playing in sync. The majority of our listening is still from our own > library, but we also have started using Sirius/XM and Pandora quite a > bit. > > As a bonus, we get access to our personal music collection when we > travel. Last month we spent a week in a secluded cabin in the woods. > There was no cell phone reception, but the place did have Internet > access (via satellite dish) and WiFi, so I took one of the Booms along. > I connected it to the IP address of the home system, set the bitrate > limiting, and we had our music -- all our music -- with us on vacation, > using SqueezeCommander on our phones to control it, just like at home. > That's not a primary requirement for me, but it's a nice extra feature. > > I don't fret much over the fact that official support is now coming to > an end. If I lose the ability to put Sirius/XM on the Squeezebox > players, that will be a bummer, but it isn't the end of the world. Other > than that, I don't really need anything from Logitech or MSB.com anyway. > I figure the hardware is good for a long time (barring physical > accident), and by the time the devices start failing I'm hopeful that > there will be adequate replacements available. But that's far enough in > the future that I just don't worry about it. I'm in no hurry to > liquidate the SB system and start over. > > But regardless of what system anyone decides to go with, we can all > agree that what matters most is what the Doobie Brothers told us: > "Listen to the music!"
This is very similar to me, a few years back when I first got into SB's I was living on my own in my flat and time wasn't a problem, fast forward a few years and I live with my partner and have a young family so time and money is limited so my main focus is being able to listen to music to relax - my Sb system is rock solid, I have a HP micro server with vortexbox which automates a lot of processes (cd/DVD ripping etc.), then from that 4-5 SB players, listening to mainly my lossless collection & spotify with the odd bit of internet radio, there is the occasional bit of work but nothing too taxing, I have no reason to change it or not considering leaving. My dad recently bought a sonos setup and it works well for him, only one room currently and he uses an old phone as controller, however I don't see any gain in functionality to want to leave SB ------------------------------------------------------------------------ socistep's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=18860 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=100307 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
