Intuitive hand-held controller with color screen for easy access to all your digital music
High-fidelity 24-bit DAC for crystal-clear audio
Support for all major digital music formats for playing all your favorite songs
No need to run wires - wireless technology for clean, clutter-free installation
Rechargeable lithium-ion battery with sleek recharging stand
Rating: - excellent progress with the Duet
I've had the Squeezebox players since the product line began. I have had two 1st generation Squeezeboxes, and two 3rd generation. Currently I have 4 Squeezeboxes counting the Squeezebox Duet. This iteration of the Squeezebox sounds fantastic and is the perfect way to get my Lossless Non-DRM FLAC and WAV files played through my stereo system. I connected the Squeezebox duet to my Bel Canto DAC3 and in about 10 minutes (after the firmware updates) I was on my way to an experience which to my system is the flawless execution of having all of my music I ripped from my over 2,000 cd collection in every room of my house.
The sound is better than the 3rd generation squeezebox (possibly due to the upgraded power supply and lack of screen noise). You can connect the controller directly to the Duet base station or through your whole house wi-fi to control all of your players (even the older players which are connected to Squeezecenter). This makes having house parties a breeze with different music in the bar in the basement, the living room, pool area and bedrooms. Excellent. Also this device works flawlessly with Amazon.com's mp3 store files as well as files downloaded in many other formats which aren't locked down by useless DRM. The future is here (although this is nothing new to me because I've been using the earlier Squeezebox products over 5 years now). I use the Linux version of the Squeezecenter software, I've had the server system going for over 2 years now with no problems, just lock that server in your closet away from sight and you have all your music at your fingertips through these things.
Highly recommended.
Rating: - 7 Months In
This product is absolutely amazing. I have been searching for something like this for YEARS, and then BOOM! Here's the DUET, a sleek, wireless, home entertainment system.
First, I should address network issues. They happen. There are complaints of network issues. I personally am in the beta program and run the latest software available, and I would like to mention that typical network issues are usually issues with your router. I personally replaced my old linksys and watched ALL my wireless problems dissapear. While the network setup isn't always painless- it's a good start for a product in this price range. You certainly don't need to be a computer geek to get this going. The setup is simple, and troubleshooting is generally simple as well. If you're having network problems or frequent drop-outs, I find that unplugging your router and plugging it back in will fix the issue. Make sure to change your wireless channel so you're not conflicting with the neighbors or your telephone. Watch your microwave as well. (My Microwave kills my wireless network).
The community. The software is open- and there's a community at slim device's website (now rebranded to logitech) that will discuss problems, troubleshooting, and best yet- feature ideas.
The programmers that work full time on the software for all the squeezeboxes frequent the forum, and discussing ideas directly with the developers is common, and easy. I personally have seen an idea that I suggested become implimented in the latest beta (soon to be released, next month I believe)- Party Mode (Playlist setting). Although, thanks to the community, after I posted my initial ideas, everybody joined on and a full discussion was launched. After that, it was a matter of time before the developers added the feaure and there you go! Amazing!
It's great to join and interact with the community, but it's not a must. This player stands on it's own. If you're looking for any easy-to-do plug in and turn on solution, this will definitely get you going. But, if you love to tinker, set things up just right for yourself, this is also a perfect addition to your collection. The software is very customizable, and if you don't like it, you can make changes yourself! Write your own plugins, download the source and change it! With a very open standard that they've created, you can easily write software to interact with your squeezeboxes.
New features are added ALL THE TIME! They've added sirius stations, for anybody who's a subscriber, which is awesome. They've got Rhapsody, which is awesome. They've added synced crossfading. You can sync different players, or keep them seperate. It's a full home audio solution, and when your friends see it, they're gonna want one.
I very highly recommend this product. It's a fraction of the cost of the SONOS, and it's open. Even if the sonos was the same price, I'd go the open route ANY day.
Rating: - Excellent product, but some tech knowledge required
So as not to bury the lede, I'll state up front: I really like this product. It works well for me, and meets exactly the need for which I purchased it, which was: to make my entire CD collection easily and conveniently available throughout my house, in a way that was simple enough for family and friends to use without lengthy tutoring. I wanted a way to get my music from a central source to different parts of the house, wirelessly, without having to go back to a central location every time I wanted to change the music. And the Duet delivers, beautifully.
Now for the "however": this is still new technology, and for people lacking experience, knowledge and vocabulary of the technology involved, it could possibly be troublesome to set up, get working, and keep working. Many advocates of the SqueezeBox line of products (or other networked streaming music systems) seem to forget that not everybody is as savvy as they are regarding ripping; configuring router ports and DNS options; IP and MAC addresses; audio compression formats (lossy or lossless) and codecs; ID3v1, ID3v2, APEv2, and VORBIS tags; or the vast array of computer programs and tools available for handling these things.
If the list of geek-jargon terms in the preceding paragraph are unfamiliar or intimidating to you, you should still be able to use this system once it's set up, but to get it all set up and working, you will probably have to spend some time on the Internet researching and learning about those things. If the prospect of that scares you off, perhaps you can get a tech-ish friend to help you get going. But to think that a technical novice can get full use out of this system without having to learn some of the computer-networking-techie arcana is probably overly optimistic. I found it relatively painless to set the system up and get it working, but I'm a computer geek by profession; I wouldn't suggest that my parents tackle the project without assistance.
Fortunately, there is a lot of excellent information available to help the novice along, much of it in the SlimDevices Wiki at http://wiki.slimdevices.com. There is also a good support forum available at http://forums.slimdevices.com. If you are reading this review trying to evaluate the product and decide whether to purchase one, you would do well to explore the Wiki first (the Beginners Guide is excellent), and then perhaps skim through the support forum. (Remember, though, that the support forum, by its nature, gets a lot of questions and complaints from people having problems. Take that with a grain of salt, because most of the people who don't have problems don't spend time posting messages saying "I'm not having any problems.")
As for the product itself: it works very well, the sound quality is excellent, and the controller is terrific. It offers just the sort of interface I was looking for: portable, convenient, easy to use; it allows me to browse through my music collection quickly and select music in a variety of ways, including by artist, by album name, and by genre. I can also search for songs or albums by title, though it is true that entering the letters of a title via the controller can be tedious. However, I personally don't take that approach very often; I generally know what album I want to put on, and get at it by scrolling quickly through the albums or artists in my collection. The browsing/scrolling wheel works very well; I can go through over 500 albums from A to Z in seconds. The design of the interface might not be completely perfect (what in life is?) but it's very, very good, and very flexible to use.
Another feature I really like is Playlists, which should be familiar to any user of media players. Essentially, this is just a collection of songs, as many or as few as you like, which you put together and give a name, for future access. Playing a predefined playlist is very simple, quick and easy. Putting together an extensive playlist using the controller, however, can be quite tedious and time-consuming. But the good news is, you can (if you have some slight technical know-how which isn't difficult to learn) put together a playlist using any one of dozens of media-player applications on your computer, and then make it a part of the playlist collection available to your Duet.
One aspect of the Duet I hadn't given any consideration before buying is the use of Internet radio. However, after getting my own collection of music up and running, I started playing with this feature, and found several stations and services that suit me, and Internet radio (particularly the free Pandora service) is now a common source of music in my house. There are also many other options and features (too numerous to go into here), either built-in or available as "Add-Ons" from the SlimDevices website.
In summary, I'm extremely happy with my Duets, and use them to bring music (not only my own personal CD collection, but also Internet radio) to different parts of my house, with a controller that makes it easy and convenient to select what I want to listen to, and where. But people who are unfamiliar with the world of CD ripping, audio codecs, network administration and other computer-technical jabber should approach it with open eyes and a willingness to do some reading and learning, rather than just assuming it's as easy to install as an old-fashioned record player.
Rating: - Logitech Squeezebox Duet
I am generally happy with the Duet when it works correctly. I have had two issues with it: 1.) It has gotten into a locked up mode where it was stuck "connecting to squeezebox"; I fixed it by unplugging / rebooting everything and 2.) the XM add-in does not work. Overall, the sound is great, especially with FLACs, and unlike some reviews I read, I have not had any trouble with delays on playback.
Logitech Squeezebox Duet Network Music System Reviews
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