[mr_bill]

I'm using the SB3 into a Benchmark Dac1 and am really satisfied.  I compared the SB3 as a transport with D60 illuminati digital interconnect and linear PS and found that it sounded very similiar to a Sony DVP 7000 used as a transport also into the Benchmark Dac.

Others that are using the SB3 as a transport - what have you found in your use? The convenience factor is one thing, but I'm commenting on audio performance.

It is a cute little device!  SB4 on the way soon?

Bill

[tanchiro58]

SB4 on the way soon?

Do you know how soon? I do have two modded SB3 and they sound way better than the stock one. I am excited to wait to purchase the SB4. 

[1000a]

SB4           when

[cytocycle]

I use my modified Bolder SB3 and Bolder Ultimate powersupply into my Theta Gen VII via a Transparent Reference digital cable.. pretty amazing playing flac ripped from a Plextor... about 90% of using my Theta Compli Universal player playing the CD. 

Convenience of using my tablet PC to control my collection...

Priceless!!

[1000a]

my getting a SB3 has changed my entire relationship to my music, Fantastic.
listening to stuff I didn't even know I had, once my quanity of CDs got pretty large some music just seemed to get over looked.  The easy access to my entire collection has changed the way I listen now.  I don't even want to put a CD in a CDP.  Per session I listen to rock from 2-3 artists, jazz from 2-3 artists and classical the same.

with a CDP that just did not happen, period.  I have not been this excited about my collection of music since I was 18yrs old.    fun factor 10x.  I am not going back, try it folks.  A little bit of effort and you can make these things sound dam good.

[Rocket]

Hi,

I've been considering purchasing an SB3 for quite some time but i have been put off by some of the problems that some users have experienced.  I'm not really that technically inclined and i'm wondering how easy is it to set up?

Regards

Rod

[denjo]

Rod
Like you, I was concerned that the SB3 technical stuff was beyond me and hesitated for a while before biting the bullet. What I did try was Softsqueeze which was a desktop version of the SB3 which allowed me to rip my CDs and try them out via my pc speakers. The simulated remote control allowed me the feel of what to expect should I decide to get the SB3. I discovered that the SB3 was a lot simpler than what I had read or feared. Give it a try!

Best Regards
Dennis

[cathor]

I'm not really that technically inclined and i'm wondering how easy is it to set up?

Very easy. About 10 minutes to install Slimserver and hardware. Using DHCP to assign IP addres (most ISPs do). Best user experience I had in a while in regards to set-up.

[ctviggen]

I think the Squeezebox itself is very easy to use, but the slimserver software can be at times frustrating.  For instance, trying to set up a playlist is not easy, when you want to freely add and delete songs/albums from the list.  That is, compared to iTunes, which makes setting up a playlist child's play, slimserver is like getting a Master's in advanced "it doesn't make sense".  You can use iTunes and then Slimserver will also use iTunes, but I want iTunes to have a highly compressed version of songs while Slimserver does not.  I'm currently keeping iTunes and Slimserver separate.

The other thing you might want to do is set up your network using fixed IP addresses.  While this typically is not a problem, when my computer reboots, sometimes my router will assign the IP addresses so that the music server no longer has the same IP address as it did before the reboot.  This means that the Squeezboxes "lose" the server, and have to be reset.  That's not a big deal, but sometimes it's a pain, when you have multiple Squeezeboxes. 

[cytocycle]

I think the Squeezebox itself is very easy to use, but the slimserver software can be at times frustrating. 

The other thing you might want to do is set up your network using fixed IP addresses.  While this typically is not a problem, when my computer reboots, sometimes my router will assign the IP addresses so that the music server no longer has the same IP address as it did before the reboot.  This means that the Squeezboxes "lose" the server, and have to be reset.  That's not a big deal, but sometimes it's a pain, when you have multiple Squeezeboxes. 

Look the easy way to deal with this is to go into your router and assign a fixed IP in the DHCP range to the MAC address of your Slimserver (machine running slimserver) this way everytime that PC boots it gets the same address, so you never have to change your squeezeboxes.

I don't use playlists as I pick what I want to hear with the + button so I've never had that problem

[AphileEarlyAdopter]

I use my modified Bolder SB3 and Bolder Ultimate powersupply into my Theta Gen VII via a Transparent Reference digital cable.. pretty amazing playing flac ripped from a Plextor... about 90% of using my Theta Compli Universal player playing the CD. 

Convenience of using my tablet PC to control my collection...

Priceless!!

Great, I guess even after mods the oscillator in the SB3 is not that high a quality to keep up with highend transports.
Have you tried, Flac-to-Wav  streaming ? I feel it makes some difference, relieving the processor in the SB3 of any decoding. Also, the response to the remote is better. But you should also have enough wireless bandwidth or a wired connection. After I got a new processor and motherboard (Intel Core 2 Duo) and Flac-to-Wav setting, my collection sounds much better.

[cytocycle]

I use my modified Bolder SB3 and Bolder Ultimate powersupply into my Theta Gen VII via a Transparent Reference digital cable.. pretty amazing playing flac ripped from a Plextor... about 90% of using my Theta Compli Universal player playing the CD.

Great, I guess even after mods the oscillator in the SB3 is not that high a quality to keep up with highend transports.
Have you tried, Flac-to-Wav  streaming ? I feel it makes some difference, relieving the processor in the SB3 of any decoding. Also, the response to the remote is better. But you should also have enough wireless bandwidth or a wired connection. After I got a new processor and motherboard (Intel Core 2 Duo) and Flac-to-Wav setting, my collection sounds much better.

I thought the Squeezeboxes were native FLAC, and that it converted everything to flac before playing, one of the reasons I went with FLAC.  Interesting about your experience upgrading computer parts.. I did notice a load on my old P4 2.4Ghz box with 1gig of ram.. I have a new AMD 5000+ that I'm building with 2.5TB, so it will be cool to see if that helps or changes the sound.

[lcrim]

Flac is a compression format, in order to play it must be uncompressed back to wav.  What was suggested is to do the uncompression step at the server rather than at the Squeeze Box, relieving it of some resource usage.
This is the way my system is configured but I don't think there is any agreement regarding whether this can be heard by all.

[cytocycle]

Flac is a compression format, in order to play it must be uncompressed back to wav.  What was suggested is to do the uncompression step at the server rather than at the Squeeze Box, relieving it of some resource usage.
This is the way my system is configured but I don't think there is any agreement regarding whether this can be heard by all.

My understanding was that the Slimserver sends everything FLAC (after converting it)to the Squeezebox for the compression and the SB3 decompresses it on the other end...

[1000a]

1-SB plays strait WAVE files without problem (I have done this)

2-my understanding is SB plays the FLAC files (how most of mine are) as FLAC and does not alter them. (pretty sure this is what happens)

3-my understanding is you can set the SB to play FLAC files as WAVE files. (I am far less clear on this) experts where are you?

PS. not to be difficult but was this PC improvement thing AB ed, I am not saying it wouldn't help but it seems very unlikely from my limited understanding? 

[ctviggen]

1-SB plays strait WAVE files without problem (I have done this)

2-my understanding is SB plays the FLAC files (how most of mine are) as FLAC and does not alter them. (pretty sure this is what happens)

3-my understanding is you can set the SB to play FLAC files as WAVE files. (I am far less clear on this) experts where are you?

PS. not to be difficult but was this PC improvement thing AB ed, I am not saying it wouldn't help but it seems very unlikely from my limited understanding? 

FLAC is a compressed version of the song.  In order for the SB to play FLAC compressed data, it (or Slimserver) has to decompress the data.  Some people think that having Slimserver perform the decompression is better than having the SB perform the decompression.  I've not tried this test.  Where in Slimserver is the option to decompress FLAC prior to sending it to the SB?

[1000a]

Where in Slimserver is the option to decompress FLAC prior to sending it to the SB?

that I do not know I have not looked for it only heard others speak about it, it all seems pretty confusing to get a good handel on - but

For the new comers its not necessary to understand it.  The little beast can sound quite good with a few upgrades.  So don't let our questions change your minds, jump on the bus its great.

others of us are in the - Hmm can I make even better stage, I need to know all my options, most of us are finding very little differences for the effort.

[DSK]

I use my modified Bolder SB3 and Bolder Ultimate powersupply into my Theta Gen VII via a Transparent Reference digital cable.. pretty amazing playing flac ripped from a Plextor... about 90% of using my Theta Compli Universal player playing the CD.

Great, I guess even after mods the oscillator in the SB3 is not that high a quality to keep up with highend transports.
Have you tried, Flac-to-Wav  streaming ? I feel it makes some difference, relieving the processor in the SB3 of any decoding. Also, the response to the remote is better. But you should also have enough wireless bandwidth or a wired connection. After I got a new processor and motherboard (Intel Core 2 Duo) and Flac-to-Wav setting, my collection sounds much better.

I thought the Squeezeboxes were native FLAC, and that it converted everything to flac before playing, one of the reasons I went with FLAC.  Interesting about your experience upgrading computer parts.. I did notice a load on my old P4 2.4Ghz box with 1gig of ram.. I have a new AMD 5000+ that I'm building with 2.5TB, so it will be cool to see if that helps or changes the sound.

I use my former PC (XP, P4 2ghz, 533mhz FSB, 512mb RAM) as my dedicated music server running SlimServer and converting the '.flac' files to '.wav' before sending on to the Bolder modded SqueezeBox2. Task Manager shows that there are 2 processes running to make this happen .... flac.exe and slim.exe ... both of these stay between 0% and 6% CPU usage while playing. So, I can't see how a more powerful PC is going to make any audible differences as this PC is already way overkill for the job.

To decode flac to wav on the pc side, go into slimserver, click on Server Settings, then File Types, untick the flac->flac box, tick the flac->wav box, then click on Change (at the bottom).

[crooner]

I have tried server side FLAC decoding on my setup. Made virtually no difference at all. Actually I think the sound became a little brighter or more "hi-fi" if you will. Changed it back to native FLAC decoding.

The oscillator inside the SB is more than adequate for the task. Actually, since there's a quite large buffer, performance should be superior to virtually any transport. There's no data interpolation or generated jitter in this step. Totally bit perfect.

A transport is, by necessity, restricted to the ancient Red Book specifications. The Squeezebox has the ability to use a 64 megabit buffer, giving it the edge, IMHO.

Also there's little mention of the fact that no subcode information is transmitted via SPDIF to the DAC. This eliminates another source of jitter.

In all, the Squeezebox is the best thing that has happened to digital in 20 years, IMHO.

[Daygloworange]

In all, the Squeezebox is the best thing that has happened to digital in 20 years, IMHO.

What he said.

Cheers