I'm reusing this thread to also document my first impressions on the SBR/SBC.
When I first opened the box the first impression was that the SBR was really small compared to the SB3. The SBC looked pretty much exactly the same as the earlier beta unit. When starting the SBC I had the same problem as I had with the beta unit earlier, it couldn't connect to the Wifi access point since I have MAC filtering enabled in the access point. In this situation it isn't intuitive how you would present the MAC address of the SBC, I found it by looking in the log files of the access point. I suppose this really isn't a major problem for most users, because most people probably use WEP/WPA instead of MAC address filtering and won't have this problem. People using MAC address filtering probably knows how to deal with the issue. However, it would have helped a lot if the MAC address actually was shown on the screen when it tries to connect to the Wifi access point. When I had connected the SBC it found the SBR right away and the configuration was very easy and then everything was working and I could start playing music. My receiver and speakers are in the middle range and doesn't reach the quality of real high end hifi equipment. The receiver is a Sherwood RVD9090-RDS and the front speakers are Warfedale Modus One Six. First I was running SqueezeCenter against a MP3 library while SlimServer 6.5 which the SB3 was connected to was running against FLAC library. In this scenario the audio from the SB3 was clearly better than the SBR, the obvious reason is of course MP3 vs FLAC. It really doesn't mean anything, I just wanted to try it to make sure that I at least could hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC. The next thing I tried was to upgrade my SlimServer to SqueezeCenter so now both the SB3 and SBR was connected towards te same FLAC library. The audio cables connected to the SB3 is high end Linn cables while the SBR was connected with the bundled cables. To make sure the cables wasn't the cause of any difference in sound quality I tried to switch the cables a few times during the listening session so the Linn cables were used for the SBR and vice versa. Anyway as far as I can hear, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to hear any difference between the SBR and the SB3 in a real blind test in my setup. One thing that complicated the comparison a bit is that the audio levels sent from the SB3 and SBR is a bit different, so you will have to remember to adjust the volume when comparing. This only means that if you have a middle range priced equipment you are probably not going to hear any difference between them, but if you have a real high end hifi equipment there might still be a difference that is noticeable. However, in a real hifi setup I suppose the Transponder or an external DAC probably is a more interesting setup anyway. As already said, the SBC looks very similar to my old beta unit. The wheel on the real SBC feels more sensitive and has less "scraping" sound than the beta unit, I'm not sure if the cause for this is just that the beta unit has been used more or if the quality really has been improved. I'm also imagining that the screen differs a bit, the brightness setting is set the same on both but it feels like the contrast on the real SBC is a bit better. The Wifi range of the SBC also seems to be better, I had no problem connecting the SBC to my access point in another room. With the beta unit I had to move the access point in the same room to get a good connection. -- erland Erland Isaksson 'My homepage' (http://erland.homeip.net) 'My download page' (http://erland.homeip.net/download) (Developer of 'TrackStat, SQLPlayList, DynamicPlayList, Custom Browse, Custom Scan, Custom Skip, Multi Library and Database Query plugins' (http://wiki.erland.homeip.net/index.php/Category:SlimServer)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=42570 _______________________________________________ jive mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/jive
