I originally posted my impressions in the Deathmatch thread, but seeing the many threads popping up regarding this new system I figured I would re-post it as review.
Well I finally got around to ripping most of my music collection in FLAC, and had been reading up on players and decided to give each a whirl.
Anyhow the Sonos has not arrived yet, buy I did receive the Duet and the Cisco System.
The Duet did not want to communicate with the control without running the squeeze control/server software and applying a few tweaks. Overall I could see how inexperienced users without network skills could easily hit a road block with this thing. After completing the setup on my home server I streamed some older rips in .WAV to test if it would lose signal or run across buffer underrun. Surprisingly the signal held solid which I wasn't expecting considering the distance and that the Duet and router are on different floors in open face cabinets.
The control has a visually appealing screen for the size, but the text is small, and can be hard to read for older folks. The remote feels really good in your hand and I like that you don't need two hands. However I find it a pain to use the scroll for entering letters, and I wish it had directional clicks (L,R,U,D) which would work better for the branch menu layout. I also had to reboot it 4-5 times in a matter of a few hours of playback to get it to recognize the network again, un-freeze it, or get it to access my shares. Overall I think it's lacking a bit, and would like to see a remote that resembled a full size Zune, with a nice big screen and control which has directional click as well as scroll.
On to the Cisco/Linksys, which is annoying in it's self to see "Linksys by Cisco" on everything. Personally I think most of the junk Linksys stuff will just diminish the goodwill Cisco has developed. So I fired up the remote, easily navigated to network settings, which you can either achieve by using the scroll wheel or by touching left or right on the screen to shuffle through the icons. When it came to entering my password the touch pad immediately showed its weakness, even though the individual letters are good sized (maybe 2.5x times the iTouch keyboard letters), it still registered wrong presses or didn't register them at all. I would press a letter and it would highlight as pressed, however it would not register on the entry line. Second it was slow, if you pressed letters beyond a slow-moderate rate it would miss letters. Anyhow I got my pass entered and it logged on quick, I then proceeded to change a few general settings and exited. I proceeded to navigate to libraries, and presto my media servers showed up along with computers that had active shares, and I thought hey this is nice. Well I tried to browse my folders and I got a "System Busy" error. I proceed to try other computers, and the other Server and nothing, all errors.
After giving up on accessing my shares I plugged in the Director unit as well as the extender and quickly found that the remote would not find either of them. So I used the front panel buttons on the Director to set up my network on that unit, and soon found the interface to be quite lousy using the buttons. When you press one of the buttons, four graphics pop up, one in each corner next to the buttons to show there corresponding action. Anyhow I found it to poor that they chose aesthetics over function, instead of having a dedicated select and back button, along with an up down left right control. When you press any button, to get the OSD action boxes to pop up so you can tell what your doing, it will perform the unknown action corresponding to that key. Next I found the lower left button OSD box blocks part of the password entry box and therefore you couldn't see the letters, which starts as A and requires the use of the top buttons to adjust to a different letter/number. So without being able to see what you had adjusted the letter to, it was completely worthless. I quickly got fed-up and had to walk away.
Which leads to today, so I hopped online this morning and read the manual online which is very scattered and un-detailed. According to the manual the use of the packaged software is not required to setup the system, but is required to activate online services like Rhapsody. Well since my previous attempts at manual setup failed, I fired up the software, which took forever to load on a new laptop, and was actually surprised by the nice interface. Once it finally finished installing a screen pops up that shows you network and all the attached devices. For some reason it took close to 15 minutes for it find and identify all the stuff on mine. Anyhow the setup of audio system components is pretty straight forward, you click the "Add New Device" button and it prompts you for what type, and the third option being "Home Audio Device". It proceeds to bring up a new window which has large icons of the different components. From there I just clicked the Director icon and it proceeded with simple written instructions and flash graphics to install the unit. The steps were plug-it-in, connect it to your network via CAT cable, enter your password, it then proceeds to configure the device for you, when its done it asks you to disconnect the CAT cable so it can test whether it has successfully installed and can connect to your wireless network, if successful your done. Now you can choose to add another device or you can quit, I chose to add the remote which requires you connect it via USB to the computer for it to auto configure, and then proceeded to install the Extender. Overall the software is very easy to use, though it takes a few minutes for setup and test of each device, and definitely will be easier for the standard user than Squeeze.
Now that I was done I played around with the "Cisco Media Server" which is the name for the PC control interface. It has a very pleasing GUI, it shows your different music sources as icons across the bottom, with your players along the left, with the rest for file trees and and searching. You can easily link the players with 2 mouse clicks and it then proceeds to synch them and start streaming, which took roughly 30 seconds. Overall it looks nice and Rhapsody searches from the laptop were pretty fast, displaying cover art when available. But the niceties stop there, even though my shares showed up under sources it would still not successfully access any of them, after 40mins of screwing with it I once again got fed up and decided to write a review about this hardware's failures. Due to oversimplification of the GUI, I have been unable to find a method to truly diagnose the problem or be able point the software to specific paths, nor can I enter access keys for pass protected content. After running the remote setup twice now, both times with it confirming proper installation and showing up on the network, it still fails to find either the director or the extender, along with System Busy errors any time I try to access my music. Needless to say I am highly disgusted with this sytem.
Regarding network strength, I had high hopes for the Cisco stuff since that's their primary business, and was excited they went with Draft N dual band since I recently updated my network bits. However the limited settings give you no options or information regarding the quality of you connection like the Squeeze does, nor can you manually choose or see which band it's using. The remote shows 2 of 3 bars signal when 2 ft from the WAP and sometime drops to 1 bar when only 20-25ft away in the family room. Again just more disappointment. Since it fails to access my media I have been unable to comparison test against the Duet by streaming the same file to the same location.
I did plug some spare speakers into the Director and streamed some Rhapsody, it sounded as good as one could expect from a cheap amp and bookshelf's. While playing from Rhapsody I tried using the volume wheel (does not move) that's located around the power button on the face, and it was again unimpressive and required a deliberate press and leave of your finger for a second to register that your touching it before you can start scrolling, otherwise it would do nothing. It's also too small and easy to accidentally turn off the unit since it does not require a press and hold. While on the topic of power, there is no power button on the remote, which leaves you sleep and hibernate both of which are adjustable in settings. Both the director and extender also come with a seperate IR remote. The one pictured below is for the extender (the director remote is the same besides a blue home button), with many of the buttons being useless since it has no display to see what your controlling.
Overall I had high hopes for the Cisco system, I liked the idea of having a nice color screen on the extender and also a large touchscreen remote. However navigating the OSD with buttons is a pain, and the remote is both inaccurate and unresponsive at times. I wish they would make extenders with a small touch screen and make it available on non-amplified units. I also liked the idea of USB drive support and analog inputs, but really have no patience at this point to test them. Hopefully I'll have a better experience with the Sonos. After reading all the CES coverage, what looks promising is some type of mixed system utilizing $350 touchscreen netbooks and MCE's. Too bad the iTouch XL ended up being vaporware, at least for now. If they made it, it could serve many control purposes and enhance a lot of these sytems.
For those interested I did check the internals on the extender, it uses: -Samsung ARM designed core processor.
-DAC is a TI PCM1782 24bit 192khz
-ADC is a TI PCM1807
Some comparo pics
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Well I finally got around to ripping most of my music collection in FLAC, and had been reading up on players and decided to give each a whirl.
Anyhow the Sonos has not arrived yet, buy I did receive the Duet and the Cisco System.
The Duet did not want to communicate with the control without running the squeeze control/server software and applying a few tweaks. Overall I could see how inexperienced users without network skills could easily hit a road block with this thing. After completing the setup on my home server I streamed some older rips in .WAV to test if it would lose signal or run across buffer underrun. Surprisingly the signal held solid which I wasn't expecting considering the distance and that the Duet and router are on different floors in open face cabinets.
The control has a visually appealing screen for the size, but the text is small, and can be hard to read for older folks. The remote feels really good in your hand and I like that you don't need two hands. However I find it a pain to use the scroll for entering letters, and I wish it had directional clicks (L,R,U,D) which would work better for the branch menu layout. I also had to reboot it 4-5 times in a matter of a few hours of playback to get it to recognize the network again, un-freeze it, or get it to access my shares. Overall I think it's lacking a bit, and would like to see a remote that resembled a full size Zune, with a nice big screen and control which has directional click as well as scroll.
On to the Cisco/Linksys, which is annoying in it's self to see "Linksys by Cisco" on everything. Personally I think most of the junk Linksys stuff will just diminish the goodwill Cisco has developed. So I fired up the remote, easily navigated to network settings, which you can either achieve by using the scroll wheel or by touching left or right on the screen to shuffle through the icons. When it came to entering my password the touch pad immediately showed its weakness, even though the individual letters are good sized (maybe 2.5x times the iTouch keyboard letters), it still registered wrong presses or didn't register them at all. I would press a letter and it would highlight as pressed, however it would not register on the entry line. Second it was slow, if you pressed letters beyond a slow-moderate rate it would miss letters. Anyhow I got my pass entered and it logged on quick, I then proceeded to change a few general settings and exited. I proceeded to navigate to libraries, and presto my media servers showed up along with computers that had active shares, and I thought hey this is nice. Well I tried to browse my folders and I got a "System Busy" error. I proceed to try other computers, and the other Server and nothing, all errors.
After giving up on accessing my shares I plugged in the Director unit as well as the extender and quickly found that the remote would not find either of them. So I used the front panel buttons on the Director to set up my network on that unit, and soon found the interface to be quite lousy using the buttons. When you press one of the buttons, four graphics pop up, one in each corner next to the buttons to show there corresponding action. Anyhow I found it to poor that they chose aesthetics over function, instead of having a dedicated select and back button, along with an up down left right control. When you press any button, to get the OSD action boxes to pop up so you can tell what your doing, it will perform the unknown action corresponding to that key. Next I found the lower left button OSD box blocks part of the password entry box and therefore you couldn't see the letters, which starts as A and requires the use of the top buttons to adjust to a different letter/number. So without being able to see what you had adjusted the letter to, it was completely worthless. I quickly got fed-up and had to walk away.
Which leads to today, so I hopped online this morning and read the manual online which is very scattered and un-detailed. According to the manual the use of the packaged software is not required to setup the system, but is required to activate online services like Rhapsody. Well since my previous attempts at manual setup failed, I fired up the software, which took forever to load on a new laptop, and was actually surprised by the nice interface. Once it finally finished installing a screen pops up that shows you network and all the attached devices. For some reason it took close to 15 minutes for it find and identify all the stuff on mine. Anyhow the setup of audio system components is pretty straight forward, you click the "Add New Device" button and it prompts you for what type, and the third option being "Home Audio Device". It proceeds to bring up a new window which has large icons of the different components. From there I just clicked the Director icon and it proceeded with simple written instructions and flash graphics to install the unit. The steps were plug-it-in, connect it to your network via CAT cable, enter your password, it then proceeds to configure the device for you, when its done it asks you to disconnect the CAT cable so it can test whether it has successfully installed and can connect to your wireless network, if successful your done. Now you can choose to add another device or you can quit, I chose to add the remote which requires you connect it via USB to the computer for it to auto configure, and then proceeded to install the Extender. Overall the software is very easy to use, though it takes a few minutes for setup and test of each device, and definitely will be easier for the standard user than Squeeze.
Now that I was done I played around with the "Cisco Media Server" which is the name for the PC control interface. It has a very pleasing GUI, it shows your different music sources as icons across the bottom, with your players along the left, with the rest for file trees and and searching. You can easily link the players with 2 mouse clicks and it then proceeds to synch them and start streaming, which took roughly 30 seconds. Overall it looks nice and Rhapsody searches from the laptop were pretty fast, displaying cover art when available. But the niceties stop there, even though my shares showed up under sources it would still not successfully access any of them, after 40mins of screwing with it I once again got fed up and decided to write a review about this hardware's failures. Due to oversimplification of the GUI, I have been unable to find a method to truly diagnose the problem or be able point the software to specific paths, nor can I enter access keys for pass protected content. After running the remote setup twice now, both times with it confirming proper installation and showing up on the network, it still fails to find either the director or the extender, along with System Busy errors any time I try to access my music. Needless to say I am highly disgusted with this sytem.
Regarding network strength, I had high hopes for the Cisco stuff since that's their primary business, and was excited they went with Draft N dual band since I recently updated my network bits. However the limited settings give you no options or information regarding the quality of you connection like the Squeeze does, nor can you manually choose or see which band it's using. The remote shows 2 of 3 bars signal when 2 ft from the WAP and sometime drops to 1 bar when only 20-25ft away in the family room. Again just more disappointment. Since it fails to access my media I have been unable to comparison test against the Duet by streaming the same file to the same location.
I did plug some spare speakers into the Director and streamed some Rhapsody, it sounded as good as one could expect from a cheap amp and bookshelf's. While playing from Rhapsody I tried using the volume wheel (does not move) that's located around the power button on the face, and it was again unimpressive and required a deliberate press and leave of your finger for a second to register that your touching it before you can start scrolling, otherwise it would do nothing. It's also too small and easy to accidentally turn off the unit since it does not require a press and hold. While on the topic of power, there is no power button on the remote, which leaves you sleep and hibernate both of which are adjustable in settings. Both the director and extender also come with a seperate IR remote. The one pictured below is for the extender (the director remote is the same besides a blue home button), with many of the buttons being useless since it has no display to see what your controlling.
Overall I had high hopes for the Cisco system, I liked the idea of having a nice color screen on the extender and also a large touchscreen remote. However navigating the OSD with buttons is a pain, and the remote is both inaccurate and unresponsive at times. I wish they would make extenders with a small touch screen and make it available on non-amplified units. I also liked the idea of USB drive support and analog inputs, but really have no patience at this point to test them. Hopefully I'll have a better experience with the Sonos. After reading all the CES coverage, what looks promising is some type of mixed system utilizing $350 touchscreen netbooks and MCE's. Too bad the iTouch XL ended up being vaporware, at least for now. If they made it, it could serve many control purposes and enhance a lot of these sytems.
For those interested I did check the internals on the extender, it uses: -Samsung ARM designed core processor.
-DAC is a TI PCM1782 24bit 192khz
-ADC is a TI PCM1807
Some comparo pics
