I am getting lost with all the info. Here is what I have and want.

I have a WD external hard drive connected to a Dell laptop. My music is stored in wave format on the WD. I want to send the music digitally, uncompressed or altered. I want to access Pandora.com. I want to use the Windows Media playlists I have setup but do not want to play through WMP. My reciever is to do all DAC work (I am willing to set up new playlists if I have to).

The laptop will not be in the listening room. This is not an option.

This is my understanding of the products. (I am probally wrong)
--The Bridge takes the signal processed by WMP or iTunes and simply passes it to the reciever. Basically a digital out with a display screen.

--The Squeezebox is the player. It passes whatever file you have without altering the info like WMP would do. I can not find anything on playlist options. It sounds like I can only sort by Artist, Song or My filing system.

Any clarification would help.

I don't think the Roku unit will handle a Pandora logon.

no support for Pandora on Roku. The squeezbox works great with pandora. both are good boxes and have good support for a variety of formats... We know from Stereophile reviews that the Soundbridge wont muck with your music. JA did some comparisons full rounds trip and all the bits were not altered. Don't know about Roku as I have never seen this type of testing done. The DACs in the SB are also very good and it yields excellent sound quality from its analog outputs as well as its digital outputs...

Sean

I have used the SoundBridge for over two years now, and love the unit and all the free software upgrades they have sent out. I use the SB with windows media player as the server. I have access to all of my music stored on a PC that is out the the pool house, 50' from the main house. also have a second SB in the pool house. No problems with the network. You can also access tones of Internet radio stations. There is even a configuration to access your XM account.

You can access Pandora, but you need to setup icecast which can be cumbersome ... Basically, it's not built in since Roku is not a Pandora licensee.

Patrick S.

The Roku Soundbrige is a reverse engineering job on the Squeezebox 1. We're on our 3rd gen hardware.

You can sort your music by:

Album
Artist
Genre
Year
New Music
Music Folder

Playlists can be created, saved and modified from the SB Controller or SqueezeCenter.

Mike

You can sort your music by:

Album
Artist
Genre
Year
New Music
Music Folder




I like SB transporter. Will the software ever allow you to rank the song in an album?

WMP11 has this star/ranking thing which I found to be very convenient.

Thanks.

Be careful using the abrevation SB. SB could mean Squeese Box or Sound Bridge.

The Roku Soundbrige is a reverse engineering job on the Squeezebox 1. We're on our 3rd gen hardware.

You can sort your music by:

Album
Artist
Genre
Year
New Music
Music Folder

Playlists can be created, saved and modified from the SB Controller or SqueezeCenter.

Mike

Hold it there, on what basis do you say that ... :eek:
If it was so much reversed engineer, how come the approach on how the functionality is implemented is completely opposite (this especially if it's against v1 of Squeeze Box) ?
Contrary to Slim V1, all the intelligence is done by the device, not the server ...
Inquiring minds would like to know :D (or at least, I would like to know ...)
Patrick S.

Contrary to Slim V1, all the intelligence is done by the device, not the server ...

Thats not true either. If it was there would be no PC software running with a sound bridge. Last time I checked you still need PC side software it just wont talk straight SMB to a NAS like an Xbox which really does all the processing client side...

Sean

Hold it there, on what basis do you say that ... :eek:
If it was so much reversed engineer, how come the approach on how the functionality is implemented is completely opposite (this especially if it's against v1 of Squeeze Box) ?
Contrary to Slim V1, all the intelligence is done by the device, not the server ...
Inquiring minds would like to know :D (or at least, I would like to know ...)
Patrick S.

You're saying the Roku Soundbrige is device driven VS software? I'd take another look. They changed their firmware a bit to work with WM and iTunes, but the software is still doing most of the work.

How do I know it was a reverse engineering job? Because when it first came out it ran on SlimServer and only SlimServer. It still works with SlimServer. Also internally, I am told - I'm not an engineer, it looked a HELLA similar to our boards. i.e. way too close not to be copy.

Mike

Wow, you should do your homework ...
Im not saying its better or worse, but your way misinformed.
The SB does not rely on the server to manage flow, song browsing, decoding (aside from unsupported formats), which is why they work on any UPnP, DAAP (or even Slim) server or set up directly a url on the device to access the music.

Aside from that, when it came out, it supported UPnP, DAAP and Slim. At least, this is what's written on the specs I have of V1 and this is what I had when I got mine way back then.

As for board comparison, devices with such a focused goal can't be that much different. Im sure you take almost any audio media player out there and will find similarities. If it was such reversed engineered, patents would have been broken and lawsuit would have been unleashed, especially in such a market where if someone can take down a competitor, they will ...

Im not taking sides here, I do like both product (but do admit having Roku's units at home cause they just cost less ...) but I really don't like it comes to disinformation.

can the soundbridge access any shared folder available on the LAN? I have a popcorn hour media player and I stored all my FLACs in the media player. I can access the popcornhour's shared folder through windows, can the soundbridge stream directly from the popcorn? I know Squeezebox can't....coz it can only stream from the server apps....

As regards "reverse engineering".

Doubtless the hardware in the SoundBridge and the Squeezebox havesimilarities, but I don't think either reverse engineered the other, and I have a feeling the SoundBridge came first (not sure of the timing compared with the original Slimp3).

Soundbridge has its own software, but can also use SlimServer, the software for the serving the Squeezebox, which may be where the perception of reverse engineering comes from. They are perfectly entitled to do this, as the software is open source.

However, SlimDevices (now part of Logitech) obviously have no interest in supporting rival hardware, and there is no guarantee that the software will work. It may well work, particularly earlier versions, but if there happen to be problems you would not get support from SlimDevices.