Logitech Squeezebox Touch Review

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(More customer reviews)I purchased my Squeezebox Touch directly from Logitech, and have enjoyed it enough over the first few days of ownership to write a quick review.
To understand where I'm coming from, it may help to know I enjoy classical music, especially when its reproduced by a traditional stereo system with high quality discrete components. I own a British designed and built integrated amplifier and some tall floor-standing speakers from a Canadian manufacturer. Sound quality matters a whole lot to my enjoyment of music, and that shows in the care with which I select the components in my audio system.
I have owned a number of Logitech's previous Squeezebox WiFi streamers, including the Squeezebox Classic and some Duet receivers, so I am not new to the Squeezebox ecosystem. I keep my music collection as a large library of FLAC-encoded files, so as to avoid any potential losses due to codec compression artifacts.
On receiving my new Squeezebox Touch, I swapped out an existing "Slimdevices" branded classic Squeezebox in my main HiFi system for the new device. The Squeezebox Touch first discovered MySqueezebox.com as its source of music and asked me to provide login credentials, which caused it to upgrade its firmware from that site. After that, it rebooted and was able to connect to my local Squeezebox Server that I have running to serve music around the house. After that, I was able to browse my music collection and navigate to internet radio stations either using the touch interface or by using the supplied remote control.
I noticed that the interface automatically uses bigger fonts if you are controlling it from the IR remote and smaller ones if it finds you are controlling it via the touchscreen, which obviously makes sense when you are within an arm's length of the display.
As a first test, I played back a 96kHz, 24-bit high resolution copy of Marianne Thorsen on violin with the TrondheimSolistene playing Mozart's D-major Violin Concerto. At first I played the tracks via a Benchmark DAC1, which is a studio-quality monitoring DAC for use by mixing engineers. The sound was detailed, rich with a deep stereo image and musically involving. Next, I removed the Benchmark DAC from the signal path and tried again. Once again the sound was clearly better than a CD could provide and very close to that rendered through the Benchmark DAC. There has clearly been an improvement to the quality of the analog stereo outputs compared to previous Squeezebox versions, which was already pretty good.
I then went on to listen to Emanuel Ax, Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma playing some Mendelssohn Piano Trios. This recording was "only" in 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality audio, nevertheless I was soon captivated by the musicality of the performance, and could find no significant short comings of the quality as rendered by the built-in DACs compared to the external, studio quality Benchmark DAC1.
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.
The advantages over the previous Squeezebox Classic are:
* Color, touch-controlled user interface and display
* Ability to play back high resolution music without loss of quality
* Excellent audio quality from the analog outputs; significantly better than previous versions.
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 review was mainly focussed on sound quality.
Based on my short experience, 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.

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Logitech Squeezebox Touch. The color touch-screen Wi-Fi music player that lets you discover a world of music—all through your stereo.

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Denon ASD-3W Wifi Network iPod Dock (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)For the 1st couple of days I was feeling so-so on this product. The user interface is slow and clunky. So it took some getting used to. I don't know how many times I entered the wep key and ssid for wireless access. But after some time I have successfully used all the features and I'm quite happy with it.
I have a new ipod classic and this is my 1st experience with video on ipods. On the tiny screen, videos look quite good and (at least I) can watch a reasonable amount of them that way. I was hoping for a better video experience when using the ASD-3W. The video quality is just ok on my HD panasonic tv. Something just slightly below ordinary non-HD tv broadcasts. And some are better than others depending on the quality of the equipment used to shoot the video as well as any conversion software. So if you were looking to rip your DVD library to your ipod and enjoy those movies like you did from a DVD player, you will be disappointed. But for TV series and video podcasts, it's not too bad.
The best thing though is along with all the music/video on the ipod, you have access to internet radio and also pics and music you have stored on your pc through win media player. This really makes the deal on this device. There is just tons of great FREE music and podcasts out there and this product allows you access to all that. The higher res channels/stations sound quite good too. It's also cool to view your digital pics stored on the PC while listening to your favorite internet radio station.
I wish the video quality was better, but I think the start-of-the-art isn't quite there yet, but reasonably acceptable for now. I'm sure in several years we will have 1080p coming out of the ipods and devices like this will be the main AV entertainment device. I'm saving up for the next generation or the one after that. But I'm happy and pleased with this new addition to my AV system.

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The Denon ASD-3W iPod network client device now allows an iPod to be connected to a home network system either through an Ethernet port or by wireless connection.MP3 files and non-protected AAC Audio files from an iPod can then be streamed for listening over your home network.Additionally, viewing video pictures with video compatible iPods is also possible.The ASD-3W is DNLA certified and is PlaysForSure compliant for ease of setup and use.The standard D-dock port is also supplied for current model receiver integration and is compatible with previous receiver models that have the Denon D-dock port for command and control.The iPod will also stay charged while docked in the ASD-3W keeping it ready to go.A remote is also supplied with the ASD-3W for use with non-Denon systems.

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Olive O3HD 500GB Music Server (Silver) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'll bet there's a pretty limited pool of people willing to shell out a thousand bucks for what boils down to an IPod in a box. Well, not quite. The audio is CD quality rather than MP3 quality. And I've gotta admit, it's really nice to have all of your music available "on command."
BUT...getting all of your CD's loaded can be a major project. I've learned that the 03HD isn't very good at multi-tasking. I don't listen to music while I'm ripping it. And I'm very careful what I do with the Maestro software while I'm ripping. You have to be very patient with Maestro; it acts like a very slow dial-up connection to somewhere in Siberia. Don't try to do anything fast or it'll bite ya.
The album cover art that the 03HD finds on its own isn't very accurate; I found it better to search my albums on Amazon and then right-click and download the art to my PC. I upload the images to the 03HD's meta-data later.
Would I buy it again? Probably. But I'm a glutton for punishment. I will say that now that the uploading's over, it's pretty cool.

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Recording studio quality music. Guaranteed. At only $999, the Olive O3HD is Olive's entry model. However,with full HD capabilities, it delivers sound quality unlike anything you get from your computer, iPod or any MP3 player. In fact, it will sound just like the original music recording. We're so confident that you'll hear the difference, we will give your money back within 30 days of your purchase if you're not completely satisfied. Keep your entire music collection in one place. The Olive O3HD Music Server has a built-in, ultra-quiet hard drive with a storage capacity of 500GB. This means that the Olive O3HD can store your entire CD collection in a box the size of a standard CD Player. No longer will you have to sort through piles of CDs to find the music you want. Now you've got it all in one place, easy to find, and ready to be enjoyed! Easy to install. Easy to use. Easy to enjoy. Just plug it in and play. Setting up the Olive O3HD Music Server is as simple as connecting a standard CD player. It does not require a computer, network installation or virus protection to keep your music from harm. And, once installed, anything you want to do is easy: Find your favorite song. Search by artist, genre or album, or leaf through the album artwork. The high resolution color touch-screen display makes it fast, fun and easy.

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