Duet - some questions

[davidcotton]

Hi

Thinking about setting up a modest system in the back "office"

Thought up several options. One that does appeal is using a squeezebox duet with active speakers.

I've been a happy sb3 user for a while now. What I guess I'm asking is do I need the controller to setup the duet part or can I just use the remote that came with the sb3 in the first place? Also would I need to point the duet at the slimserver install on just the one machine (I have two mac mini's one running as a dedicated media server with squeezecentre on, the other in the back room which acts as the house computer), would be using the duet to listen mainly to internet radio.

Cheers

[tcutting]

As for SqueezeBox Receiver (SBR) [NOTE: Duet = SBR + SqueezeBox Controller (SBC)] with active speakers, should work just fine.
Officially you still need SBC to initially setup the receiver BUT there is third part application that can do that un-officially.
Unfortunately you CAN'T use the SB3 remote with the SBR - this remote is IR, and the SBR doesn't have an IR port to listen to this remote - your options are controlling with the SBC (if you actually get Duet and not just SBR), or you can control by accessing the SqueezeCenter via the web interface from any of the computers on your network.
As for which computer to point to, multiple SqueezeBoxes can be connected to a single SqueezeCenter - so you would typically connect to your dedicated media server for your second squeezebox as well (but you should be able to control either squeezebox from web interface from either and/or both of the mac minis).
Hope that helps!

Tom