I bought a Squeezebox Radio from Logitech. It replaces my old bedside short wave radio. I still fondly remember the 70’s, before the airwaves had become so anemic. It was then still possible to receive New York and Boston talk shows in Southern Ontario. I had downloaded the manual even before the box arrived by courier. By the time I set up the Squeezebox, I practically knew the instructions by heart. Even so, it wasn’t quite trivial to lead the Squeezebox through the trickeries of my wireless network. But the perfect reception of Boston, New York, London, Paris, Munich, Canberra and Budapest stations made more than up for the effort.
I did enjoy the Squeezebox that night. Subsequently, I also installed the squeeze server on my desktop. I had fun experimenting, tweaking and optimizing. But gradually, things started to go awry. I started loosing preset stations. Storing ‘Favorites’ functioned inconsistently. The menu seemed to change spontaneously. The audio might come from one station, the display from another. And, finally, the Squeezebox announced: ‘Can’t connect!’ Actually, looking back on it, the Squeezebox had difficulties with its biorythm. Almost all the problems occurred at night time. During the day, the box appeared to be reasonably happy.
The manual was of no help. I tried to find the answers on the support pages – nada! I called the helpline; I might as well have talked to a parakeet. The only advice was to do a factory reset and start everything afresh. I had to understand the system myself.
It became rapidly clear that the problems occurred primarily, when my desktop was switched off. But that was not the complete answer it took quite a bit more experimenting until I finally found the answer. Here it is:
The Squeezebox has three separate initialization sequences. The factory reset is the major one. Everything has to be entered from scratch. The network parameters have to be entered by hand; WPS does not work. The more common initialization occurs, when you connect the power. The box looks for the presence of a squeeze server to store optional data on. If it doesn’t find a server, it uses the default mode and stores optional parameters internally. The least complex initialisation occurs, when you turn the unit on. It just gets the parameters from its designated memory.
What had happened to me was that I had connected the box to the outlet, while the squeeze server was running. Before going to bed, I had turned off the desktop computer running the squeeze server. No wonder, the Squeezebox couldn’t find its parameters. Once I had figured this out, my woes were gone.
It is unfortunate that Logitech brings a device on the market, however ingenious, before sufficient support information has been developed to spare users unneccessary frustration.
I have used my Squeezebox for about six months, 5-10 hours/day. I daily listen to radio stations in New Zealand, France, Mexico and US. Most of the time it works fine, but repeatedly
– stations “die” for hours (because the Logitech server is unreliable?)
– the transmissions break for “software updates”
In addition, although there’s a lot of stations on the lists, the logic of the list arrangement makes it a challenge to find a station – if it’s at all in the list..
Because, a lot of international web radio stations are not accessible via Squeezebox. So, in addition you still need to use your computer.
In summary, it’s a useful tool – most of the time, but not always – and not necessaryly giving you the stations you would like to/need to listen to.