We have been quietly riding Squeezeboxen for over a decade now, with Classics, Radios and Touches all over the house (never had a Boom though). Even have a Receiver in a basement closet tied into our Nutone intercom system -- and it plays nicely though a dozen stations when we don't want to burn tubes elsewhere. And I am the caretaker for five or six Classics and Touches installed at family member's homes. Even manage TinySBS on one of them with a USB thumb drive library for someone very space-challenged. And several Touches and Classics are still in the box as reserves. With the constant updates here with LMS (nee Slim Server, which I still call it) and super apps such as iPeng, we have never had a need to migrate away, even after Logitech clumsily killed it. LMS here manages over 75,000 audio tracks, from mp3 old time radio shows, up to the latest 24/96 high-res albums. The squeezeboxes play them all. Around times like Christmas, we will have as many as nine of them synchronized off of our server, shuffling over 3,500 Christmas tracks for sound everywhere, effortlessly, for days on end. No need for the 50 song radio stations around here. Except for the Radios, all are ethernet-wired -- maximum dependability, and it is. The entire setup will run flawlessly for many months on end. What's not to love about it.
Have done many hardware repairs and upgrades over the years. Fixed bad Classic displays and failed coupling caps, experimented and built all manner of PSUs for both Classics and Touches. Have figured out all the tricks to keep the displays and things like Radio speakers running as long as possible. And have tethered some very nice DACs to these old gems to coax some very compelling sounds out of them. Our top system runs a Touch at 24/96 pass-through, with a custom-modified PSU, to what was a $3,500 DAC 15 years ago. Sounds terrific even today and still competitive with the very best.
But today we did something special. We finally bought a 'new' Transporter SE. For under $500, brand new in the box (NOS actually, so not electronically new as capacitors go). I am very curious how it will stack up to what we have managed to achieve with the lesser models over a decade. I'm not so sure it can match the Touch/super DAC combo. But we will see. For under $500, that's what I would have spent on a decent new DAC alone.
But if it is close enough, at least we can reduce the chassis count for the digital front end from four boxes to one. And unlike the Touch, I will even be able to read what's playing from across the room again (lol).
But the Squeezebox experience has been a very good one for this aged audio listener. Might as well ride the greatest one off into the sunset. As long as LMS keeps getting tweaked here, I'm still aboard. As I said, there's no reason to abandon what still works so well.
Have done many hardware repairs and upgrades over the years. Fixed bad Classic displays and failed coupling caps, experimented and built all manner of PSUs for both Classics and Touches. Have figured out all the tricks to keep the displays and things like Radio speakers running as long as possible. And have tethered some very nice DACs to these old gems to coax some very compelling sounds out of them. Our top system runs a Touch at 24/96 pass-through, with a custom-modified PSU, to what was a $3,500 DAC 15 years ago. Sounds terrific even today and still competitive with the very best.
But today we did something special. We finally bought a 'new' Transporter SE. For under $500, brand new in the box (NOS actually, so not electronically new as capacitors go). I am very curious how it will stack up to what we have managed to achieve with the lesser models over a decade. I'm not so sure it can match the Touch/super DAC combo. But we will see. For under $500, that's what I would have spent on a decent new DAC alone.
But if it is close enough, at least we can reduce the chassis count for the digital front end from four boxes to one. And unlike the Touch, I will even be able to read what's playing from across the room again (lol).
But the Squeezebox experience has been a very good one for this aged audio listener. Might as well ride the greatest one off into the sunset. As long as LMS keeps getting tweaked here, I'm still aboard. As I said, there's no reason to abandon what still works so well.
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