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Squeezebox Touch Review
Thanks to its combination of flexibility and affordability, this Squeezebox Touch Review will tell you that the Squeezebox Touch devise is the most impressive member of the range yet. Like the its cousin Squeezebox Duet before it, this is a media streamer that connects to your router using ethernet or built-in wi-fi, accesses all the digital music on your computer, then pumps it out to your existing amp or receiver via analogue, optical or coaxial connections. Unlike the Duet, it has a 4.3in touchscreen and is clear, colourful and responsive. The Squeezebox Touch’s build quality is excellent. The device is made up of mostly lastic but the bottom section at the front is metal, adding a tasteful elegance to the overall aesthetic, and the stand is metal too. This all helps make the Squeezebox Touch feel more like a high-end sound system than if it were all plastic. The touch-screen interface is much better than initially expected. No doubt thanks to the use of a capacitive display, presses and swipes are registered perfectly – even the on-screen keyboard works well. The menu system remains responsive at all times, even when playing audio in the background – a feat some earlier Squeezeboxes couldn’t quite muster – and there are a number of gesture-based shortcuts (swiping, press-and-hold et cetera) that can be user-customised, adding even more versatility. Obviously there will be times when getting up and walking over to the Squeezebox Touch to fiddle with it would be an annoying inconvenience. Thus Logitech has bundled a remote control with the Touch. This is again well designed, right down to details like the notch at the rear, which pulls in your index finger and by extension places the main buttons right under your thumb – awesome! The remote puts the Touch’s interface into a ‘large text’ mode, which makes it much easier to use from a distance. You can disable this if you don’t like it, but it proved a definite help during our usage. This Squeezebox Touch Review will tell you that other multiroom system like the Sonos’ equivalent unit, the ZP90, has no display or remote. In action, the Squeezebox Touch Beats Sonos for price and features which is pretty impressive. One thing worth bearing in mind is that you must have Logitech’s Squeezebox Server running on the PC that your music’s stored on. Alternatively, there are a handful of network-attached storage devices with it pre-installed (try Netgear), but installing it yourself is tricky. Still, that’s only likely to put off a few people and, besides, streaming your own music is only one string to the Touch’s bow: it can also access internet radio, Last.fm, MP3 tunes and the brilliant Napster, which offers direct streaming of thousands of tracks for just a fiver a month. Another possible advantage is to use the Squeezebox Touch as a music server as well as a client, by attaching a USB hard drive to the supplied USB port. I have not tested this functionality, so I can’t comment on how well it works. This Squeezebox Touch Review is mainly focused on sound quality. Someone starting to use this system without prior experience of Squeezebox Servers or software might face something of a learning curve to begin with. I can’t speak to that, but I appreciate that I was able to drop this new device into an existing system and, within a few minutes, start to enjoy some very high quality reproduction of my music library. Thus, I recommend this device highly. I think it is a worthy successor to the Squeezebox Classic, as it provides significantly more in terms user interface and sound quality for the same retail price as the older player. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Author from indonesia |
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