There has been alot of talk about streamed music of late, what with the sonos system squeezebox and now he squeezebox duet and many others.
People seem to think this is the way of the future and will take over cd.

Well i took the plunge yesterday and purchsed a squeezebox duet to try.
I have read on how it has a good DAC and sound good out of the box. A better power supply helps and no doubt an even better outboard dac will help also.

I have only used it for a couple of hours and in my brief experiance with it this is what i have found so far.

Setup was easy enough.
I had already ripped most of my cd's to my HDD in flac format.
So it was a matter of installing some software, connecting to my home network, telling the device were my music and artwork is stoed and it did the rest.

Now for the big test.
How does it sound

well in a word, TERRIBLE
I think a cheap $300 cd player will outperform this thing.
Now i am not sure if it is user error with the way i have been ripping my music to flac, but as far as i was aware, flac is a lossless format, and using EAC was straight forward enough.
So at this point i can only put it down to the device.

The sound is lifeless, there are no dynamics at all.

Next i hooked it up to the rotel 1098 via digital coax to see if there was an improvement using a different dac and comparing with my xe-1,

first fired up the duet, and things did improve slightly, but compared to even the hd dvd player it is lacking alot in detail around the midrange
So for me, this is a device purely for background music or for other areas of the house just to stream music were sound quality is of no importance.

Now of course using a higher end stand alone dac could change this, maybe also the upgraded power supply could change this, but i'm not convinced i want to spending this sort of money on it

Finally hooked up via rca to cd input on rotel 1098 with bypass selected
also left the digital connection so it was just a matter of switching inputs.

the duet on its own again was dissapointing, improved slightly using he rotels dac

so in conclusion what i have found are the following

the duet on its own is not very good
the duet with an outboard dac is better then on its own
BUT
not as good as the other player i used with the same dac

Want your $2,500 CD player back?!

Hi John,

Thanks for sharing your results.

Not surprised about the analogue outputs, as I came to similar conclusions under blind test conditions against my old rotel 1072 cdp.

With regards to the digital out differences all I can think of is that your settings might be a little off. Have you turned off the digital volume control, and the a few of the other settings. ? When I tested the digital out of the SB3 against the Consonance droplet digital out to my stello dac there was absolutely no difference i could detect under blind conditions. (2 other people also could not detect the difference under blind conditions - unwilling family members got dragged in .) - Interestingly I also prefered the stello DAC over the Droplet 3.0 DAC outputs. (So the stello has enough resolution to perform such tests.)


I have attached a picture of some of the settings that might be affecting the digital output of unit.

Unit settings to disable! - Click Here

Some good points Drizt.

In all honesty I find it strange if the Duet doesn't have the same audio quality as the SB3, and I found the SB3 audio to be fine.

no as i will be replacing that with something else

That good as somewhere else the suggestion was that the Squeezebox was the replacement 'something else'.

yes have it set up like that

There is a comparison review here

Thanks for that link Spearmint

obviously his tests are flawed though as

his system is not revealing enough

As i said, i may just be expecting way too much out of this little sucker, just when you read people like Hugh think it sounds great out of the box you do tend to expect more then lifeless no dynamic sound

But i think at the end of the day, it does what it set out to do, and dare i say it, you want one with good sound, maybe get the transporter, DAMN you would hope it sounded very good for almost $4k

Maybe one day when we catch up either at my place or Norpus' we can do a comparison with the Sonos.

I find it strange that some of these guys have only talked up the Duet, said how they’re getting one or have one, but have posted little else about it.

yes, very strange, but then some people are just talk. and here is me searching high and low all around Melbourne to find one.......

as for the comparison with the sonos, will definately be interesting to do that

dacs and decent analog stages cost money I guess. you wonder why they wouldnt build a unit of the same quality of say your average budget cd player which by the sounds has better sound quality.

not sure on the $4k transporter, but the krell ipod doc at $1,200 US looks impressive

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/expensive/up-cl...dock-259821.php

http://blog.stereophile.com/he2007/051307ikid/

not sure how good the wadia is but its only $349US !

http://www.stereophile.com/news/010408wadia/

only problem with thos Al is they are limited for ipod use only by the looks of things.
Ipod is good for certain things and sure they are getting bigger capacity storage, but i think units like he sonos and squeezebox offer alot more.
Now if those ipod docks also had a digital input to be used as a dac also, then it could be money well spent

If you are not familiar with ripping CD's to FLAC using EAC, i'd check the setting used to see if something was wrong. I'm currently using an SB3 with a Benchmark DAC1pre with good results, possibly the encoding of the FLAC might be the issue?

Maybe you should try encoding the same track with different settings and see if it makes any difference to sound quality.

JDH.

JDH, i have no doubt with a GOOD quality external dac it will sound good,
i was reviewing it as stand alone unit.
Only plugged it into the rotel 1098 to do a little test, the dac in the rotel wouldn't even come close to any external dac

JohnA.

I'm not sure how you ripped your CD's and generated your flac files, but some software has a feature known as "volumn normalisation". Basically it adjusts the volume of all tracks to be consistent, which basically means screwing around with the dynamic range of the track.

Double check that this was not switched on, or any other post processing in your ripping software.

Cheers,
Craig

so whats the consensus re software for ripping cd's to lossless files then chaps? Any recommendations or ones to steer clear of?

appreciate the tips.

no, i definately know i didn't do that

but here is a guide i followed to setup EAC for flac
http://www.calonet.org/eac-ripping-guide/

Thanks for that link John.

I’ll give it a try over the weekend.

no problem spearmint

every guide i found was identical in setting up the compression side of things

I found EAC to be a pain, so I always use dbpoweramp. For file naming I have a thread somewhere that shows you what settings I use.

disclaimer: not saying you have to do it, just asking if you did.

JohnA, did you do a blind test between the:
1. Duet (digital out) -> Rotel (used as DAC)
2. XE1 (digital out) -> Rotel (used as a DAC)

i found eac to be simple as pie
not a single problem using it

as for blind testing, sorry i don't drink anymore

but seriously i have nothing to gain or loose, nor do i need to justify a $20k purchase to say my mind is playing tricks on me, so no, no blind testing was conducted as i wanted to switch off the awfull noise s quickly as i could and get out of the room

must say the remote works a treat though, anywere in the house with no problem.

Hmmmm, interesting. I have to say I'm extremely happy with my SB3 > DAC > Amp combo. Doing a blind test I couldn't tell the difference between the streamed flac file and the cd. I'm pretty keen on getting the Duet so I can access my music from an additional room. The only thing holding me back are some performance issues I've read about with the controller if music is stored on a NAS drive.

haven't tried a nas drive mate, but yea i hear there are a few issues.
I will purchase more receivers to zone up the house and as i will only be using it through in ceiling speakers most of the time couldn't care about sound quality.
the times it gets played through he main system will be during parties an again, not fussed on sq.

for quality listening there will be something else

Hmmm wonder what the prices of the remote is individually ?

The Controller by itself costs US$300, but is not available alone in Australia at this point (you have to buy the Controller (remote) + Receiver (player) bundle). It's not clear if the Controller and Receiver will be available locally, although you'll probably be able to get them from the US via ebay. Also, I'm not sure if the stand-alone controller is actually available yet. I believe Logitech/Slim Devices were trying to ensure adequate supply of the Duet bundle before they made the individual items available.

Cheers.

At that price I won't bother.. hehe

I dunno if I have a dud or my comp is stuffed but I cant even get this thing to work on a fully wired network connection?

any help appreciated. I setup the upstairs xbox for online play fine on the wired connection but this duet wont play ball with me.?

I take it you’ve downloaded the server software and have it running on your computer.

Have you got a firewall installed on your computer?

install the software and the setup to your network is all configurable through the remote
took me a whole 5 minutes and i was up and running

when you first put the remote in to charge and it fies up it should come up with the full step by step setup

yeh thanks chaps...thats why i think i might have a dud. I have setup networks both wired and wireless before no probs. This thing can see the network name but just will not connect. Its painfully slow as well. I think I might have to delete my ethernet adapter again and let winblows re-install after a reboot.

silly question, it sees the network, so does it then ask you if its 64 or 128 bit wep encrypted and for you to type in your wep key?

yep asks that and I supply the ssid name and wep key and its spits the dummy.


I have recently bought a very nice Pio lx70a Blu Ray player and am going to use that for straming music to the HT area over a wired network. But I think my wirelees router might be on the fritz...I'll get to the bottom of this thats for sure. Its one thing I hate is when a machine thinks it can give me the poo's and get away with it@!

good tangential thinking there psy, I should give that a go too, was going to try the avp for streaming audio as a radio substitute. but might try the lx70a as well to see what thats like in that role. I think either can browse pictures etc. which might be nice for viewing photo albums etc. ps you might want to pm franin re the lx70a's media capabilities as pretty sure remember him posting that he was either using it or given it a go

john you mentioned the transporter, noticed this comment in the avp thread over on avs.

Nailed this sucker this morning. Connected it up to a wired network and to the Paradigms 6 Signatures. Didn't do any FLAC ripping just did a quick rip in WAV format of a single track to test it out. Ok so its not SACD quality but it I have to admit it was a lot better than I thought it would be.

I have the receiver going into the Elektra Pre amp (via the Phono input) and then onto the Power amp and its not too bad, very passable for entertainment music for sure.. I am going to try my hand at some lossless ripping and give it a bash.

The big problem I was having is apparently (and this is from Ben at Logitech in Pjoenix Arizona!) is that the firmware need to be updated big time. Once you get over that controller upgrade all its well, thats where mine was spitting the dummy. He got me to do a few factory resets and he activated my player from over in the US and all was sweet.

Not ever having used GUI's like this, not even itunes, can someone recommend a good users guide to the squeezcenter? I want to know how to sort the genres and artist ect.. and download the albums covers etc...or does it do it automatically like Gracenote?

cheers/

Congratulations Psycho, on getting it operational.

One of the main reasons for using FLAC is file tagging, plus attaching images, it’ll use this tagging information for sorting. I.e. album, genre, artists etc.

Cheers mate. I was wonderign why people opted for FLAC, when WAV is a lossless format anyways. You have answered that query for me before I posted it. keep up the good work!

I just did another quick rip of Queen 'A beautfil Day' and Freddy sounded pretty bloody good actually on the Sigs..I think Johns uber SGR's might be too revealing. The SB does sound quite good to me. It will be great for the wife once I get the album/artist covers up on the remote, she will love picking tunes that way. She also hates racks and racks of CD cases, so she is going to love this once I backup the collection onto a dedicated drive in the comp for her.

Squeezecenter can't tag your files or add cover art (as far as I know), it's basically just an interface to your database of music that will let you browse and play the music (via your Squeezeboxes). You'll need to find a 3rd party tagger and cover art downloader. I don't know if you're planning on converting your wavs to flac, but I used to use dbPowerAmp on Windows and that was pretty effective and I think may handle tagging as well. Alternatively, there's a program called MediaMonkey which claims to do tagging and album art and tagging and will convert between formats. Standard version is free, too, by the looks of it. I don't think dbpoweramp is any more. I haven't used MediaMonkey before, but if I was doing what you're doing now, I'd probably start with it.
In relation to actually using SqueezeCenter, I can't give you any suggestions for using the Duet Controller as I don't have one yet, but SqueezeCenter is reasonably straightforward. Open SqueezeCenter on your web browser and have a play around, selecting by Artist, Genre, Year, etc. As you become more familiar with the way that the basics work, you can start to explore other stuff, like internet radio, etc. The SlimDevices forum is extremely helpful if there's stuff that you can't work out.

Thanks Jakes for the pointer to MediaMonkey. I did see it on the FLAC homepage, but am glad you recomended it. It works a treat and is doing a good job. I am ripping my CD's fine and d/loading the album covers and info straight up. I have got to say the more I listen to the SB performance I am pretty impressed. OK, its not really high quality but its pretty damn good. My wife could not pick the difference between it and a RBCD. She picked a SACD when I played one, but its neck and neck for normal cd playback. I cant help but think that John might have got a setting in EAC out of skew? I have read its pretty difficult to set up correctly and there seems to be a number of 'user guides' with different views and such. I guess Mediamonkey is the right thing for a boof like me. And maybe also, I am running the SB on a wired connection? might that effect the sound reproduction? I know its extremely fast, even the wife commented on just how quickly the song started once you selected it...instantly.

Anyway for now I am happy with its performance for what its designed to do, its a keeper.

This is a worthwhile test to do John , dont worry about doing it blind.

Before lashing out on the Squeezebox, I wanted to do some testing first between ripped FLAC and playing back from CD.

I used MediaMonkey to rip 2 cd's to FLAC, using the default compression settings (and not using any normalisation).

I then tested:
1. Rotel RCD965BX (coaxial digital out), playing back original CD -> Onkyo 705 (used as a DAC)
2. Notebook (optical digital out), using MediaMonkey to playback FLAC rip -> Onkyo 705 (used as a DAC)

I couldnt tell the difference between them.

I'd like to do further testing on this down the track, with a quality DAC vs quality CDP. If/when I get a Squeezebox, I'll be using it's digital output.

dBpowerAmp seems very good too. Easier and quicker than EAC.

Forget the duets after buying them at www.gowirelessforever.com, I am glad they refunded my moneyback and gave me a trade in for a Sonos System. I think Sonos Rocks better than a Duet.