Squeezebox 2 Digital Music Player Review

Company Info: Slim Devices Category: Gadgets Supported OS: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP; Linux/Unix Price: $249 wired / $299 wireless Rating: 5.0/5.0

Reviewer: Wayne Eggert
Date: February 26, 2006

Background
I fell in love with the first generation Squeezebox (reviewed here) in February 2004 and when the Squeezebox 2 debuted I had to upgrade immediately. I've been a little lazy in getting this review up.. I actually purchased my Squeezebox 2 immediately after they announced them on their website (early-2005?), but I can definitely say the new generations of Squeezeboxes are worth the upgrade. At the time of writing this review, the Squeezebox 3 is also available on Slim Devices site. The Squeezebox 3 is functionally identical to the Squeezebox 2, the only difference is the form factor which looks more at home on a nightstand or end table in a living room.

Differences Between First-Generation and Second/Third-Generations
From the Slim Devices Website - http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_faq.html#about2-difference

The third-generation Squeezebox has a completely redesigned form factor and is functionally identical to Squeezebox2. Features that distinguish them from the first-generation Squeezebox include:

• True 802.11g networking, with support for new encryption standards and throughput up to 54Mbps
• New greyscale vacuum fluorescent display with more than twice the resolution (320x32 pixels).
• Stunning animations, transitions and visualizers, including a full screen, 64-channel, 30 frame-per-second stereo spectrum analyzer.
• Wireless bridging - plug other wired ethernet devices in to the wireless Squeezebox, and they're on your network
• New SlimDSP™ pure software architecture for all audio format decoding and signal processing functionality.
• Native FLAC support; allows pure lossless CD audio transmission with reduced storage and bandwidth.
• Native WMA support; provides playback capability not only for WMA files, but also many internet radio stations
• High fidelity 24 bit Burr-Brown™ DAC
• High precision dedicated crystal clocks and separate linear power supplies for the audio stages
• Huge 64 megabit buffer for extreme resilience to adverse wireless network conditions.
• SqueezeNetwork - allows access to your favorite internet radio stations, alarms, and more without a computer being on
• Crossfading between songs
• Faster 100Mbps wired ethernet interface