There are a number of things that have already been recounted in this thread that make the SB2/SB3 superior to the SB1. Some others are the geekport, more advanced wireless support (wireless G, WPA, etc.), support for visualizations, and bit-perfect pass-through (important if you want to stream WAV-encoded DTS). And the significance of SB2/SB3's hardware support of more audio formats goes beyond simply helping alleviate bandwidth usage--ffw/rev doesn't work on any formats that aren't supported in hardware. There are also some quirks with the SB1's digital output section like the fact that it sometimes, under certain circumstances, swaps the left and right channels (I don't recall the exact circumstances, it has to do with switching between mp3 decoding and wav).
This being said, I happen to have an SB1 and I have no problem living without any of those improvements. My squeezebox still does what I bought it to do and it does it wonderfully. I've never personally run into the channel-swapping issue (or maybe I have and didn't know it!) and since I only stream 320kbps MP3 and my squeezebox sits on a wired network I wouldn't currently get any benefit from the new formats or the larger buffer. This all just goes to say that you can still certainly get a great and satisfying experience from an SB1. HOWEVER: the main reason I have never, and will probably not in the near future, consider replacing my SB1 is RHAPSODY SUPPORT. The SB1 will run under Slimserver 5.4 and the RealSlim plugin allows me to interact fully with Rhapsody. This, to me, is the "killer app" for the Squeezebox. I have heard some rumors of folks getting RealSlim to work on version 6 of the server but I tried it briefly with no success--I would think the rather fluid nature of the 6.x server development makes this a delicate solution at best. Also, there have been some rumblings on these forums that perhaps Squeezebox 2/3 may support the appropriate DRM to allow playback of Rhapsody/Napster/Yahoo music. But until then, if you're looking to use Rhapsody the SB1 is the best option in the Slim world (the SLIMP3 would work, too). _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
