Squeezebox 3 Out today.

chris, i'd be interested to know how much time you spend listening to the squeezebox compared to your arcam?

 

Currently it's about 10% Squeezebox, 90% Arcam.

I haven't yet done anything about improving the sound of the Squeezebox. It trails some way behind the Arcam. I'm not convinced that simply changing the power supply is going to make enough of a difference but I'll give it a try some time soon.

I found a couple that may do the trick:

http://www.stontronics.co.uk/productdetails.cfm?lproductid=3

http://www.lascarelectronics.com/PRODUCTS.CFM?STOCKNO=PSU 20105&CFID=13852724&CFTOKEN=62348064

Or should I build my own

 

The other option is to run it into a DAC. I'm planning on getting a SB to go into my BM DAC1 at some stage. You could try a NOS DAC - have heard of people getting great results with precisely that combination.

Lefty

 

Yep - that's the combination I get great results from.

Not sure about this dropout stuff. Went to back out to v6.1 of slimserver last night, but went to the 6.2.1 development branch instead. No improvemnt and its really starting to get to me this afternoon. Back to 6.1 shortly...

Stuart.

 

A colleague and I have set up a business, that amongst other things, modifies Sb's. We found that you needed to do quite a lot more than just change PSU to unleash the real potential.

Once you've found the right combination of mods however, I think you might find the Arcam collecting some dust.

Good Luck.

 

Not sure my electronic skills are up to the kind of mods needed

As for the drop-outs, are you using a wireless network? Try re-orienting your aerials. Keep wires and other obstacles away from the aerials. Since doing this I have had no problems. Signal strength is not the whole story. It won't tell you if you are suffering from interference.

I assume that if using WiFi, you are using a non-overlapping channel. The only ones that don't overlap are 1, 6 and 11. In other words you have to jump five channels to get to one with no overlap. Have a scan to see what your neighbours are using (if any).

 

how does it compare to airport express?

I use an airport express in my 'main' room feeding an MF A324dac via digital optical output and another in my kitchen/diner using it's analogue output
Sounds terific with the dac
i tend to stream listen again radio 3 and hijack with airfoil but i occassionally use it to play stuff from my music library(own ripped cds for pod use in car)and it's close to the cd originals when compared, side by side as it were, into the coax input of the dac
the analogue out is ok for the other room
airports can be had for £60 or so and airfoil is $25
is the sb any better really?

 

You don't have to use the computer to drive the Squeezebox. It has a remote and a nifty graphical interface through which you can browse your entire collection and build playlists. And the analogue VU meters are just so cute

 

when i need a remote i just use my ibook

 

Yep - using wireless. Tried playing with ariels to no avail.

I'm running the only wireless network I can detect in the area so no issue there either.

The only thing that appears to make a repeatable difference is is the Slimserver software itself. I've gone back to 6.1 and not had one dropout since. I can only assume that the 6.2 code still has a few bugs that are doing something untoward to the server itself. I believe that 6.2.1 will be out shortly, so I'll try that. If this still has a drop out sort of issue on my system I'll investigate Slim Device's bugzilla and raise something if its not already been done.

Regards,

Stuart.

 

6.2 was far worse than 6.1 in this respect. I downloaded the 6.2.1 beta and it's working just fine so may be worth a try. Now the music only stops if I ask SlimServer to do something really icky through the interface - like selecting an artist with lots of albums and then asking it to list all songs.

 

Cool - I'll give the latest 6.2.x a crack tomorrow.