The Logitech Squeezebox Duet is an elegant digital music streaming system that's simple to set up and use.
Few digital music streaming devices have caught on. Sure, such devices let you stream music over a wireless network, but they've either been inexpensive and clunky - with complicated setups to connect to your network and tiny, text-only screens - or they've been more graceful but pricey.
The new Squeezebox Duet, from Logitech division Slim Devices, tries - and mostly succeeds - at splitting the difference between those two extremes. At £199 for a one-room setup and £279 for a two-room system, the Logitech Squeezebox Duet costs about half the price of the Sonos system.
And the Logitech Squeezebox Duet shares some of the features of its more expensive competition, including an elegant remote control with a colour LCD.
Getting up and running with the Logitech Squeezebox Duet is easier than with most other streaming devices we've tried. The Duet detected the networks in our area, and let me choose which one to join.
In our testing so far, the Logitech Squeezebox Duet has seemed pretty reliable. Other streamers we've tested - the cheap ones regularly, but even the Sonos Digital Music System on occasion - lost contact with our wireless network. We didn't have that problem with the Duet.
The receiver portion of the Logitech Squeezebox Duet is a basic black box with just one button in the front (you push it to prompt the box to connect to your wireless network). It has RCA, optical, and digital coax outputs for connecting to a stereo, boom box, or powered speakers.
If you have two Duet receivers (an extra receiver is £99), Slim Devices says you can either play different music in two rooms or synchronise the two receivers and have the same music playing in both rooms. The company supplied only one receiver, so we couldn't test how well that feature works.
Once you have the Logitech Squeezebox Duet configured to work with your network, you have lots of musical playback choices. The Duet handles most audio formats that you can think of, including standard fare such as MP3, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis; lossless formats such as FLAC and Apple Lossless; and uncompressed formats such as .wav and AIFF.
The Logitech Squeezebox Duet's one gaping hole: it won't play files with any sort of digital rights management protection. In addition to streaming music from your PC, the Duet will also connect with numerous online music sources, including paid services such as Rhapsody, Pandora, and Slacker, plus free internet radio stations. If you don't already have accounts, you can sign up for premium services through squeezenetwork.com, a site associated with your Duet.
The web service still has some kinks to work out. The squeezenetwork.com site had some bugs when we used it, for example. We attempted to sign up for Pandora, filling out all the required boxes, and when we clicked submit we received an error message that said, literally, "BLAH BLAH".
Not exceptionally helpful. We successfully signed up for Last.fm, but once we did so, we couldn't find any way to play the service through the Logitech Squeezebox Duet.
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Comments
Az said: Brilliant product Given the lack of knowledge by consumers of all things wireless this product is years ahead of its time Expecting trouble i found myself connected to both internet radio ichose New York and selected live jazz from 10 offered stations in 20 seconds also the device found my pc music and separate laptop immediately Unbelievable Secure wireless was no problem The music quality is excellent So listen to saycosta rica radio by genre USAby State - flexibility is incredible or swop to your pc for your own music files The guide is crap most of us want the reassurance of text and maybe a diagram showing interconnections however the controllerguides you thro the sequenceProbably aimed at makingit a consumer device with no expertise needed I am told there is a lot of help on Logitec forums for 100s of possibilities of laptops pcs files and wifi routers which is where the issues seemto lieMost people resolve their issuesI seem to have a standard arrangement and the Duet design is flawless It is great to finally to be able to connect the receiverto the expensive hi fi to play music from a range of sources at great clarity I plan to buy another receiver for the bedroom Just a few years ago multi room was a lot of wires i nstallationand 10000