[lcrim]

I don't listen to online services much and it appears that as long as I have a copy of LMS stored safely, I can listen to my local music for as long as my Touches survive.  Power supply caps or something of that sort may be the weak link, but my squeezebox .com for online services or new formats for same may be the reason to find a new solution but I don't see any reason to change things presently.
Larry

[totoro]

Online music services and cloud storage (Pandora, iTunes, Amazon) on wireless broadband (iPhone and Android) are what killed the Squeezebox.

As much as I would enjoy piling on Logitech for all the broken mice I have had to replace over the years, they did a halfway decent job with Squeezebox brand, considering they bought it after it was already obsolete. Slim sold out just in time. Logitech probably made some money on the tail end too.

As bandwidth continues to grow on portable devices to support HD video conferencing and entertainment,  online uncompressed music will become available everywhere. In twenty years or less we will be having this same conversation about any and all  hardware music players.  By then the vinyl loving baby boomers will be retiring from the hobby too and even more enticing virtual music services will be upon us.

What we really need for this portable music revolution is a decent sounding earbud that fits well and won't fall out!

Not sure it's really that obsolete yet. Lots of the music I listen to isn't available on Spotify or Mog. I do use spotify a lot, especially at work. But the classical and jazz coverage is pretty meh. I would bet that the same is true for pretty much any specialized musical interest. For those kinds of interests, you still need to acquire the music on your own. I often end up with playlists that are a mix of my own music and spotify.

Sure, this isn't the most common use case for music listening, but I'm pretty sure there is a large enough market for it to support something (witness the fact that Sonos is doing ok, even though their remote app kind of sucks, they have a limit on the number of indexed songs, won't index multiple tag values, etc).

[Phil A]

Actually my other alternative to SB Touch is to use my WD TV Live plus an  External DAC . In this case I will use Windows shares. However I am not sure how good the WDTV Live's internal DAC is for Audio ( it's fine for Movies ) . I guess it really does not matter if I use an ext DAC .

I have not listened to or followed the WD TV products.  I had the initial one from about three years back which I was horribly disappointed with the quality of what it could do streaming to my DAC (it said WMA compatible and I had a bunch of WMA lossless files from an old Zune player but all it gave was conversion software that would convert MP3s at 320bps but only play back at 128bps).  It took me a year to take it out of the box and after listening to 2 songs to my DAC and playing with vacation pictures on my 100 inch screen for a bit, I gave it away.  Really disappointed with the somewhat misleading claims on the WD box and what I got for $100 vs. $180 I paid for the SP Touch with a coupon a couple of years back.  I will be auditioning HAL's music server (along with a bunch of other people) at my house shortly - http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=98467.msg1126436#new

[audio-heaven]

Oh no  my SB Touch has been frustrating at times over the LAN but it sounds great for the money. To me a "more commercial product" sounds like yet another mp3 / streamer aimed at teens, time will tell but as far as I know nothing else on the market offers the same as the SB Touch for such a reasonable price.

[pmarun]

I have aa SB2 in my 2nd system. Connect it to my external benchmark DAC and plays the flac files I have ripped to my hard drive. Works perfectly every time. Very convenient to control from my iPad. And at a great price. Will be sorely missed if Logitech stops providing upgrades to the server software. Any recommendations to similar products in and around this price category ?

[Phil A]

Oh no  my SB Touch has been frustrating at times over the LAN but it sounds great for the money. To me a "more commercial product" sounds like yet another mp3 / streamer aimed at teens, time will tell but as far as I know nothing else on the market offers the same as the SB Touch for such a reasonable price.

I really like the sound for the price point and have not even tried at this point (depends on when I upgrade to something else) to do the 3rd party 24/192 App.  The upgraded power supply helped.  I really like the interface.  I don't want to sit there like some things require and put a 3rd party App on my smart phone and deal with another hardware/software issue (at this point some DACs have hardware software interace and some transports on unversals can require that too - so one less is appreciated).  I've never had a problem over my LAN with it other than probably a buffering thing that caused a momentary drop out a couple of times.

[dwk]

This is definitely a bit concerning. Unlike some, I've rarely had even a hint of a problem with any aspect of our SB setup - they've been great both for playing our collection as well as streaming XM. XM was a bit flakey in the past, but it's settled down.
 We have 3 that we use for whole-house audio, including a Boom that we use as our alarm clock. Replacing the whole-house audio can be done in a variety of ways, but finding another solution that would allow us to wake up to XM might be a bigger challenge.

Edit: looks like the new Smart Radio will actually preserve those features, and so could be a stand-in if/when the Boom dies, but it wouldn't be able to join into whole-house playback. blah.

[sonicboom]

I've had my Bolder modded SB2 for over 7 years now with hardly any problems during this period. Do these units have any sort of an average life?  I know from network routers - at least it's been my experience, that most don't last past a few short years.  I hope it's not the case with the squeezebox players since I am thinking of getting a Touch as a potential replacement for the SB2.

[saeyedoc]

I've had my Bolder modded SB2 for over 7 years now with hardly any problems during this period. Do these units have any sort of an average life?  I know from network routers - at least it's been my experience, that most don't last past a few short years.  I hope it's not the case with the squeezebox players since I am thinking of getting a Touch as a potential replacement for the SB2.

Someone asked a similar question on the slim forum just recently. The wifi cards are the weakest point, followed by the display. The older units are thought to have better parts than the newer ones. Advised to keep them on the cool side. If the wifi card goes, an ethernet to wifi adapter would work.

[sonicboom]

Someone asked a similar question on the slim forum just recently. The wifi cards are the weakest point, followed by the display. The older units are thought to have better parts than the newer ones. Advised to keep them on the cool side. If the wifi card goes, an ethernet to wifi adapter would work.

That's good to know - Thanks.

[joeriz]

While I would imagine that - as a percentage of their overall revenue - the $ generated for Logitech by the Sqeeze devices is small, I would think that a smaller, specialty audio company could make a nice go of it.  I'm wondering if this creates an opening for another company to enter the market or perhaps (even better?) buy the rights to the "squeeze" name and carry on.

There has to be any number of somewhat smaller, digital-savvy audio companies (e.g. Wadia, Peachtree, etc.) for whom this would be a suitable line of products.  Perhaps even one of the larger companies with audio interests (e.g. Lenbrook/NAD) would find it a good niche.

Joe

[bearman2]

I had a Duet for a few years with an upgraded power supply and it worked well. It was great sitting back with the remote and being able to control most functions with ease. I now went with a high end sound card with an optical to my dac and I have not looked back. I think the sound quality is as good or better.