The HOF Weblog

Santa was good to me this year and got me some cool musical things to better enjoy the house with. I’ve been toying with streaming media for a while now with my X-BOX 360, which means I can download TV shows off the Internet to my computer and play them on the TV (in another room) via my X-BOX 360. I've written a "How-to" on that, which can be found here.

For music and multi-room audio, I’ve discovered the Squeezebox to possibly be the coolest thing since the iPod. You see, I lost my iPod. It was a beautiful, metallic-red, 4GB Nano. It was slick, and I had fun with it for a few months. However, I soon discovered in my old age that walking around with headphones in my ears was not necessarily conducive to conversation; plus I was talking much louder than I should have been and wasn’t hearing anyone. This is what my mother now does after she’s done her rounds about the lake with her Shuffle still going. She’s still a teenager at 74.

Yes, I’d say that the iPod is good for walks and possibly plane-trips, but—again I must be getting old—I no longer take pleasure in sequestering myself away from the world by shoving things in my ears or cranking up the stereo to 11.

So, I was searching for a way to de-tether myself from my iPod and prevent myself from becoming an iTunes zombie. They have all kinds of docking solutions now, and I was waiting until I had a little money so that I could buy something that I could plug my iPod into and listen through some speakers. I had a car device that played the iPod through an FM channel, but it was staticky and the radio often changed channels when making turns, which resulted in blaring Thai radio that scared me half to death some of the time. Also, trying to drive while navigating the iPod menu system is not the safest thing to do especially in Chiangmai, where everyone is out to kill you. Then, I got a car stereo that played MP3 and WMA files, which made the iPod take a back seat permanently.

While waiting for that moment when the bank account didn’t look so tenuous, my iPod vanished. This opened up several new possibilities, though I still needed a stereo before I found the perfect auxiliary device to play my MP3 music collection.

Now, I don’t like loud music anymore either; and I usually hate music with words. Both are conversation ruiners. Therefore, in my search, I was looking for a small unit with rich sound as opposed to loud. The HOF living space has great music-hall acoustics with a cement floor and walls. Sound travels well in there. With this in mind, I was about to settle on the Bose Wave Music System, which I’d demo’d in a local audiophile store. Nice, rich sound somehow—amazingly—emitted from this ridiculously small unit. The problem was price. So, I shopped some more and found the Boston Acoustics Microsystem CD. This little marvel had excellent sound (right up there with the Bose unit) and was hundreds of dollars less. I was sold!

What does this have to do with a Squeezebox? Well, the Microsystem was only the vehicle, and the Aux unit was still needed. The Microsystem would let me plug an iPod into the front, but—sadly—I’d lost it. Therefore, I went in search and found the Squeezebox by Slim Devices.



The Squeezebox can access your entire music library (several different types including MP3, WMA, etc.) stored on your home PC. You can search for artists or songs with the remote and/or setup playlists. Or you can shuffle everything and play it all randomly, adding the songs you like to a Favorites collection, which is then playable with the press of a button.

HOF is wired—at least the main rooms are—and I’ve got a wireless access point in the living area. The Squeezebox can be connected either wired or wireless to your network and with a few quick setup steps it’s ready to play. You do need to download and install the Slim Server software in order have the Squeezebox access your music library.

Using playlists created in Winamp, I’m now able to listen to customized collections from my entire music collection and more (it also streams Internet Radio) as I cook in the kitchen, sip in the living room, or eat at the dinner-table. JR digs it too!

And if that isn’t a cool way to enjoy music in the house, I don’t know what is except for the Squeezebox Duet that I just found will be coming soon or the Transporter for audiophiles who want the best of the best.