During a recent install of vmware’s VM player:

You must read and accept the End User License Agreement to continue.
Press enter to display it.

/usr/share/doc/vmware-player/EULA: No such file or directory

Do you accept? (yes/no)

Yeah, I think I can accept those terms.

I really enjoy my music. Pretty much anything I’m doing, I’m listening to music. Consequently, I have quite a bit of it, and I’ve been trying to move that music to a digital format ’cause it’s just so much more fun than CDs. But it’s really a pain in the ass to manage and play that music, especially in rooms without a computer.

The problem I’ve mainly had is I don’t want to hook my computer up to my stereo. In fact, I don’t really want a computer anywhere except my office. This has lead to some interesting wiring to get sound into my living room, where I spend most of my time listening to music. But I still couldn’t control, browse, or interact with my music collection without a computer.

Enter the Squeezebox. Here’s a shot of it - it’s a longer exposure to try and show the little needle bounce around on the analog display.

What this little wonder does, is connect to your music server (wired or wireless network), and then lets you access all your music. You have to run some server software on your music machine, but it’s free, easy to run, and runs off just about any OS. You interact with this device with a remote, and it has a really nice display to show you what’s going on.

Would you like to browse your music by genre, artist, album, year, or how recently you added the files to your collection? No problem. Want to search for a song? Randomly play music from albums, artists, or your entire collection? All very easy. Maybe your ID3 tags are all screwed up and you want to play based on the filesystem folders? No problem, it does that too.

So, yeah, so far it sounds decent. Easy access and control of your entire music collection with a remote. Then, you can add some fun extras. Being able to search your collection is a nice touch. You can rescan your library anytime, which is handy when you do some re-structuring. But what I’ll frequently do is just put the thing on random, and listen to whatever comes up. When I hit a song I like, I just have to hit a button on the remote, and it’ll add it to a playlist. I can create as many playlists as I want, and it’ll append the song to whatever list I want. So, I can make some neat mixes just kicking back in my living room. It’s especially nice to be able to switch through whatever CDs you have with the touch of a remote.

The thing also understands internet radio, and comes setup with a tonne of different stations already configured. You can, of course, add your own stations. There are lots of plugins like alarm clocks and RSS readers to show neat displays while your music is playing, and you can write your own too. In fact, all the software needed to run this stuff is licensed under the GPL, which makes it nice and easy to extend and play with. A quick google search will show you how many plugins there are out there. Or, you can just take a look at the Slim Devices plugin page - there are quite a few tools there.

If I was so inclined, I could take my Squeezebox with me to work, and connect to the server running off my home computer to access all my music, and it would stream it over the net. The earphone jack built into the back makes that an attractive idea. In fact, it’s taking quite a bit of willpower NOT to do that very thing. Luckily, there’s a java application you can download from the plugin page that emulates a Squeezebox, so I can run that from work and just access the music. Yeah, it’s pretty sweet.

One of the things I didn’t expect was the difference in sound quality with this device. I have a decent Yamaha receiver with some good Paradigm speakers hooked up to my computer. When I’m in my office, I am listening to my music through that setup - but the sound I get off my main stereo through the Squeezebox is much better. I imagine that’s a combination of a better DAC, and a better sound system. But whatever the reason, it’s sweet to listen to.

As a side note, this thing is a bit expensive, being around 300$. If you don’t like that price-tag, you can get a Roku Soundbridge, which will run you under 200$. But, it’s not as full-featured, and can’t use an encrypted network. Also, it’s software isn’t open sourced, but there is a large development community where you can learn about how to log onto the box via telnet and play around.

What this really comes down to is the Squeezebox is a really great addition to your stereo setup, especially if you’ve got a really nice stereo. It’s a great toy. I literaly use it every day, and it’s given me the access to my music I was hoping for - not just for me, but for anyone at my house who might want to listen to anything - I can pass the remote to anyone and they’ll be listening to what they want in no time.