Category: Music

Oh, the fun and frustration of technology in the home. We now have thirteen(!) devices in the house that depend upon, or use, the Internet.

I’ve come across another quirk with playback from Logitech’s Squeezebox music server. The good news is that Logitech has a PC client called SqueezePlay. The bad new is it’s beta code, and it shows. Squeezeplay lets you choose which Wi-Fi radio in your home network you want to control. The player called Neptune is the Chumby One in the kitchen.

The interface is a slightly modified Squeezebox Radio screen, which is very nice…

… but if it plays on the PC — and that’s a big if — it sometimes sounds almost like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music!

When you don’t hear anything, that probably means control has reverted to the Squeezebox Radio. I assume Logitech can fix this, and I’d be delighted if they would help Chumby develop a Squeezebox UI, because their products really don’t compete directly with one another.

As Wally Cleaver would say, I’ve been goofing around. The Logitech Squeezebox Radio is so good I was inspired to make a video to show how I have it set up. There’s no remote yet, so you get to see my hairy arm working the controls.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/DEC/Logitech.flv 512 384]

As I said in the video, turn it up and it gets loud. How loud? The meter shows 108 dB, and the sound is clear and solid.

Something else I mentioned is the music server that’s in the basement. Logitech’s Squeezebox server is running on my spare computer, bought on the day Windows XP was released — October 25, 2001. The music is on a 160 GB USB drive that I outgrew on my primary Windows desktop.

CD ripping is done with Windows Media Player 11. It’s set up for Carol’s convenience, so that all she has to do is open the tray and insert the disc. It rips and ejects automatically.