MattB;251612 Wrote:
> I am new to the Squeezebox. I bought two recently as Christmas gifts.
> After setting them up and demoing them for the recipients, I am not
> happy with the performance. Perhaps I am doing something wrong.
The Squeezboxes and Slimserver take a bit of a context shift in your
brain to get used to. Relax, don't worry and it gets easier.
Do remember this is not a "support forum".. it is a "user forum," and
though support people wander through here from time to time that is
mainly because they happen to also be users... I don't think their job
description says to come here... they come here because they want to.
So most if not all the support you get here will be from other SB
users, who of course are under no obligation to help you at all... so
be nice and calm and you'll get far.
>
> 1) The remote stinks. Is there a cheap remote that I can buy that has
> individual letter buttons on it? Pressing the 7 button four times to
> enter an S is horrible.
You must not text message much? Those of us with tiny phones (I hate
how fat blackberries are.. ewww) are used to the cycling. (And
actually I do very little searching any more.. not much text entry at
all.)
That said there is a "LazySearch" plugin that you may find helpful: it
is sort of like the spelling software on many cell phones... as you
"type" a word it tries to figure out what you mean based on the
contents of your library.
You can get it from the Plugins page.
>
> 2) Why do search results in Rhapsody come back unsorted? Unless I
> enter the entire name of a band, I get back 100 hits. Then I have to
> search through all 100 to see if the band I am looking for is even
> available because they are unsorted. Ugh. Otherwise, I have to enter
> the whole name and press 20 buttons (on average) for a band with 10
> letters in its name.
Almost certainly an issue with how Rhapsody implements their API.. My
guess is they come back in some order Rhapsody thought was useful
(closest match first? or most popular first? dunno, i don't do
rhapsody).
>
> 3) Why is the Squeeze Network so slow? When I press buttons on the
> remote, I have to wait several seconds or more between presses for the
> display to respond. Is this for real? Are users supposed to be
> accepting of this? I was using the system on FIOS, with WEP encryption
> (I heard about the WPA problems) and 802.11(g). There was no difference
> when I hooked up via an ethernet cable.
That sounds like a latency issue. Speed and latency are related
sometimes, but not quite the same thing. An eighteen wheeler moving
50,000 DVD's across the country is high speed (moving 200 terabits in
just a couple days), but very high latency. That first disc takes a
long time to get there. (Or if you have ever had the extreme
displeasure of talking on a satelitte link, that 2-3 seconds of latency
when you speak is enough to make conversations stutter like mad.)
SN is working on opening some new data centers to be "closer" (at least
network-topology-wise) but you really shouldn't see that problem in the
US, the current center is pretty well connected....
>
> 4) Why can't the Squeezebox simply pull songs from a NAS without a
> server installed on it (or a computer)? Sonos can, so I know it is not
> a technological problem.
Because that is not how it is designed...
Very few things in the world are "technological problems". In order to
access a drive it would take more CPU and RAM on the SB than currently
exists, as the SB would need to at least perfom some mild indexes (even
for 'Browse Music Folder' functionality... some people are weird and
have thousands of items in folders...), and for the flexibility of what
the SB can do (I abuse erland's plugins so I can have a "Random Mix of
Music Suitable for Work" where I exclude some genres like Christmas and
Explicit) a PC based server with a flexible plugin structure gives you a
ton of power...
In this case, I think that was the deciding factor: you could throw
more CPU and memory at the SB but you would still lose out on
functionality unless you basically made the SB into a PC..... which
would mean noisy fans, electricial noise, etc... By keeping as much
of the heavy stuff outside of the SB itself, you not only keep the cost
down, the extensibility of the product goes way up. PC's are cheap, get
faster all the time, etc.
So, yeah, Sonos has an internal OS (actually Linux as I recall).. but
you still can't modifiy the server core, and you lose out on all the
plugins (some of which you may find silly, but some of which I find
essential... I would be -so- lost without
Trackstat/DynamicPlaylist/SQLPlaylist etc these days...)
If you are at least semi technically inclined there are some easy
solutions: Dell for example sells Linux PC's (you have to look in their
Small Business section, they seem to think consumers would never want
them) pretty cheap. Since you're not paying for Windows, you save some
money.
Use one of those with a copy of one of the CD-Rom based servers (I
think there is one based on Debian Linux and one based one FreeBSD) and
hide it in a closet somewhere. Use SMB ("Windows Filesharing") to get
your music onto the machine. (And of course use an external USB drive
for backups.. be paranoid! One power belch and you could lose a drive
which.. sucks.)
Do-it-yourself-NAS for a lot less than most commerical NAS boxes, and
plenty of power. All for less than the cost of a single Sonos
remote...
--
snarlydwarf
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