Squeezebox Receiver - first impressions

[Pale Blue Ego]

...but first a couple questions about smaller issues:

1 - what does it mean when the wireless indicator icon on the SBC is red?

2 - at one point in my troubleshooting yesterday, it seemed like the SBR showed up as a wireless access point for the SBC. The SBR was connected via ethernet. When connected by wire, does the SBR become a wi-fi TRANSMITTER?

[Mark Lanctot]

2 - at one point in my troubleshooting yesterday, it seemed like the SBR showed up as a wireless access point for the SBC. The SBR was connected via ethernet. When connected by wire, does the SBR become a wi-fi TRANSMITTER?

Apparently yes. However it's only for the SBC, it's not a full-fledged AP (yet!)

It would be really cool to have it function as a basic AP. It would nicely compliment the wireless bridge functionality.

[Pale Blue Ego]

Summing up the Duet audition

I feel the Duet system, when working properly, is a fantastic interface into my music library. The SB Receiver is a phenomenal little performer and an unbelievable value at $149. I will say right now that I think it sounds better than the SB3, through both the analog and digital outputs. That may be because of a different circuit layout, the lack of a VFD display, changes to the power supply, the Wolfson DAC (in the case of the analog sound), or some other factor. Or I may simply be insane, which is always a distinct possibility.

The SB Controller is also impressive. The resolution of the screen is excellent - album covers look great and menu text is very legible. I like how the cover of the new song snaps into place as you switch tracks. The wi-fi reception seems to work pretty well, considering my house has inside walls of plaster, brick, and/or concrete block.

Complaints about the SBC? The battery seems to drain pretty quickly - of course, I'm also using it extensively to experiment and audition. In normal use it should do better, but it seems prudent to dump it in the charger every so often. If I was throwing a party and letting people pick tracks via the controller, I would want to have another SBC charging in another room to use when the first one goes drain-o.

Also, the scroll wheel on the SBC isn't very smooth or very pleasing to work with. It's usable, but too rough. I understand a later SBC hardware version has an improved wheel, correct? I hope so.

Also, the SBC seems to get hung when I take it out of the charger. The Now Playing screen doesn't want to change. Switching the SBC off & on fixes this, but the issue needs to be addressed. Maybe I should power it off before putting in the charger...

SqueezeCenter7 - it's a really nice interface. Very slick. It doesn't run worth a damn on my 5-year-old Windows PC, though (P4 2.26 GHz with 1GB RAM). Too often SC7 and Firefox are locked in a deadly battle for CPU cycles. This results in actual interruption of the music. If I kill the webUI and just use the Controller, everything's fine. Better bump up the horsepower requirements for SC7.

I'm sure SC7 will run much faster on my Linux server. Things seem to slow down when one PC has to do both the perl/database end and the html rendering. But my desktop PC is not really a proper test environment, since it is old and I rely on it for so much else. At this time, I'm not willing to use SC7b on my production server. The previous time I tried 7.x on the server I was unable to roll it back to 6.x and actually had to wipe the drive.

Congrats on the SB Receiver! I think discriminating listeners will be very happy with the sound quality of this unit. The SB Controller is quite good but still needs a few tweaks. The SC7/Duet system is gonna be a winner.

[Mark Lanctot]

It doesn't run worth a damn on my 5-year-old Windows PC, though (P4 2.26 GHz with 1GB RAM). Too often SC7 and Firefox are locked in a deadly battle for CPU cycles. This results in actual interruption of the music. If I kill the webUI and just use the Controller, everything's fine. Better bump up the horsepower requirements for SC7.

The latest SC7 runs pretty well on my AMD Duron 1.2 GHz, 512 KB machine, but that's using Ubuntu Linux 7.10 as an OS.

Player menus are snappy and rescans are reasonably fast especially considering that my library is in my "production" machine across the network. The initial page loading is taking longer and longer as more features and eye candy are added, however - the initial web UI page loading takes about 10-15 seconds for me.

[Pale Blue Ego]

I think the difference is Windows and the fact that I'm running a bunch of other junk on this PC. As I said, it's not a fair test. Clicking on an element with a long sub-list (like Artists or Albums) was painful on the webUI. It essentially froze the server for a few minutes while the page tried to render. To its credit, the server did not crash; in fact I've not been able to crash 7.0b so it's pretty stable in that aspect.

[mflint]

SqueezeCenter7... It doesn't run worth a damn on my 5-year-old Windows PC, though (P4 2.26 GHz with 1GB RAM).

*cough* mine's a NAS, 266 MHz with 128Mb RAM!

Yeah it runs Linux, and doesn't have a load of other stuff installed... but (as a software engineer and frequent anti-Microsoft zealot) I still find it amazing that the choice of O/S can make so much of a difference in perceived performance.

Matthew

[Pale Blue Ego]

Windows has so much overhead, it makes a big difference. And Linux, besides being faster, is even faster if it's a server version with no GUI. ClarkConnect is extremely lean, as is Ubuntu server.

Also I realize my desktop system is getting poky, even with a fresh install. Are the Core Duo CPUs that much faster? Most of them are around 2 GHz (x2)...wouldn't that be (only) about twice as fast as what I've got? That doesn't seem like much of a bump for 5 years.

[mherger]

[SlimDevices: Jive] Squeezebox Receiver - first impressions

> SqueezeCenter7 - it's a really nice interface. Very slick. It doesn't
> run worth a damn on my 5-year-old Windows PC, though (P4 2.26 GHz with
> 1GB RAM). Too often SC7 and Firefox are locked in a deadly battle for

Could you take a look at the task manager when you're in such a situation?
I'm pretty sure it's FF knocking SC down. We have had various reports
about FF fully loading the CPU in combination with some add-ons. See eg.
here:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40164#16

I see this myself when using Firebug (without which development would be
impossible). But other than that it should really run smoothly on a box of
your category. As others mentioned it's running fine on much slower
systems than yours. But then I'm also a Linux head... (Via C3/1GHz).

Michael

[Pale Blue Ego]

Could you take a look at the task manager when you're in such a situation? I'm pretty sure it's FF knocking SC down. We have had various reports about FF fully loading the CPU in combination with some add-ons.

Yes, it's FF consuming 90%-99% of the CPU, especially when trying to render a long list with cover art. I'm running FF3 beta2 with only a couple of add-ons. It's behaving a little better today, but I can still interrupt the music by attempting to scroll through a long list.

[radish]

*cough* mine's a NAS, 266 MHz with 128Mb RAM!

Yeah it runs Linux, and doesn't have a load of other stuff installed... but (as a software engineer and frequent anti-Microsoft zealot) I still find it amazing that the choice of O/S can make so much of a difference in perceived performance.

Matthew

I'm not really so sure it does make a huge difference. My server is an Athlon ~1Ghz, and it runs SC7 just fine on XP (with a few other server processes as well). Setups can very wildly, and I'd be cautious about taking any single experience as being representative

[radish]

Wanted to post my first impressions as well.

Physically a very nice little unit, reminds me of a netgear router Setup went smoothly - I'd love to know what all the colours meant as it went through white, yellow, red, flashing red, blue, various shades of pink, etc. Anyway, the controller told me when it was done so that was easy. Didn't see any option for it to use the wired port, but then I didn't have it connected. I'll probably try that later to see what happens.

Sound seems perfectly comparable to the SB3 in my office, which is hardly a great setup. I'll it side by side with the TP later in the weekend

Wireless strength seems great - it's currently showing 85% sitting right next to the SB3 which is giving 72%. Streaming flac over two wireless hops with the AP on another floor of the house is flawless - which it really has no right to be Overall very impressed.

One thing which amused me no end is that after all the protestations by SD that this _isn't_ the SB4, what does it ID itself as on the About screen? Made me chuckle...


EDIT: OK, this thing sounds amazing. Tried a few eclectic selections (Natasha Bedingfield, Baby D and Clapton!) and it's very, very nice.

[mherger]

[SlimDevices: Jive] Squeezebox Receiver - first impressions

> Yes, it's FF consuming 90%-99% of the CPU, especially when trying to
> render a long list with cover art. I'm running FF3 beta2 with only a
> couple of add-ons. It's behaving a little better today, but I can
> still interrupt the music by attempting to scroll through a long list.

I haven't tested FF3 yet. But one single add-on can be enough, if you pick the right one ;-). Firebug is known to hit the CPU hard. Adfilter or something has been reported, but not reproducable. Could you disable them all to give it another try? Is it possible to install FF3 parallel with FF2?

--

Michael

[mherger]

[SlimDevices: Jive] Squeezebox Receiver - first impressions

> Setup went smoothly - I'd love to know what all the colours meant as it
> went through white, yellow, red, flashing red, blue, various shades of
> pink, etc.

The wiki is your friend:

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?SBRFrontButtonAndLED

> One thing which amused me no end is that after all the protestations by
> SD that this _isn't_ the SB4, what does it ID itself as on the About
> screen? Made me chuckle...

Did it say "SqueezeBox 4" - then it might just be the fourth SB in your house?

--

Michael

[radish]

>
Did it say "SqueezeBox 4" - then it might just be the fourth SB in your house?

Actually at the time it was number 6, it named itself something random at first. What I was referring to was the about screen on the jive - it said "Model: Squeezebox 4". Of course, looks like someone fixed that in a firmware update as now it says Receiver.

[pichonCalavera]

Hi, I've been wondering, the SBR will need the SBC for initial setup at least for now, but since everything in the SBC is controlled by the Jive software arquitecture a.k.a. SqueezeOS, I guess one could run the Jive software arquitecture on a PC and setup the Receiver from there, isn't it?

Just some late night thinking here :P .