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| Search for the Squeezebox Receiver | The Squeezebox Receiver was powered on. |
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| After about 2 minutes the Squeezebox Reciever indicated it was ready with a blue light. |
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The setup so far of taking the duet out of the box and plugging everything in has been very basic and took all of about 10 minutes of finding the correct RCA ports on my home theater system and running a RJ45 cable to the Duet. The Duet does have the ability to be completely wireless, so if you plan on using wireless rather than RJ45 be sure to reset the devices to factory defaults in order to connect both to wireless.
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| Once the Squeezebox Reciever was detected by the Squeezebox Controller I was directed to a website to enter the PIN above. |
After the website instructions and software was installed and configured I was able to play music from any of my online music web sites. |
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| After I stopped the system and let it sit idle the Squeezebox Controller displayed a clock and later went to a sleep mode. |
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This part of the configuration you will need a PC to assist with the initial configuration of the squeezebox duet. After this, initial setup you will not “need” the PC as you should be able to add additional online radio streams to your duet via the remote. Though I did find using the PC to be much quicker to add stations and select the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on Pandora’s radio stations.
Installing the Squeezebox Duet software on the PC was again very easy and to the point.
The one let down so far with the Squeezebox Duet is with the SqueezeCenter software itself. The software prompts you to navigate to your local music folder. The setup of my home network consists of a Synology NAS which has a share that holds all of my music collection. I was unable to point the SqueezeCenter software to this share. There was another option to point the SqueezeCenter to a server, but this did not allow me to enter in an folder share.
Review Time frame is about a month at the time of this review:
Pros:
– 1. Once configured you are able to listen to online radio via any service without the need of a computer running.
– 2. The remote which comes with the Duet connects back to the controller via your hom’s wireless, allowing you to go anywhere in the house and be able to control the duet.
– 3. With the choice of either RCA Coax or Digital optical out, you can connect the Duet controller to a large array of home theater tuners, and boomboxes without special cables or ports.
Cons:
– 1. The battery life on a single charge is very short. Roughly one day without the remote sitting on the cradle. I left the remote on the couch one evening and the next morning it was dead. Since the remote is using your house wireless connection to pull the artist name and alblum art or simply in an ON state the battery does not last very long.
-2. While using the duet for about 8+ hours one Sunday and the remote on the cradle during the period the remote was still getting the updates of the songs that were playing and etc. but when I went to turn off the controller via the remote, the controller was not responding. I was though able to turn off the remote via the power button, but the controller kept on playing until I pulled its power cord.
-3. Since you are able to login to www.squeezebox.com and remote control your Duet via the website, flipping back the remote seems to be a little more difficult. With the remote in hand, I had to search for my controller and for a lack of a better term “take ownership” of the controller with the remote to take over. This troubleshooting did take a while to figure out resulting in power-cycleing the controller and remote until I figured out how to “take ownership” of the controller again.
Agreed the price is a little much, and you can use your PC to connect to your home stereo and play your music source. The duet is for the consumer who doesn’t want to commit their PC to their home stereo (one possible reason). The Duet also comes with an awesome remote that connects via your wireless access point so you don’t have to be in the room to change settings/songs etc. So if you have the money, it is worth it. I have been using mine ever since this review was posted and it has been very handy. If I had the extra money, I’d likely build a media PC and connect that to my home stereo. The media PC wouldn’t have a remote like the squeezebox duet that I could use in other rooms of the house, but if the price of the duet was cheaper than a media PC and all I was looking to just play music, I would favor the Duet.
i dont get it – you can get a laptop with i tunes on it and do the same thing
get a bluetooth audio link – no?
400$ is way too much
Correct. The controller is wireless 802.11b/g, and it has an RJ45 also. Wireless is the way to go.
“The controller requires a RJ45 network connection”
No it doesn’t. Neither does the receiver. It’s all wireless.