WiFi: Weakness and Strength, All Wrapped Into One

By using WiFi, Logitech makes the Squeezebox a non line-of-sight solution, which has some great advantages over infrared. WiFi is also the greatest weakness in this solution though, because WiFi simply isn't as reliable as consumer technologies such as infrared. A perfect example of this occurred when I was testing the system at high volume, then wanted to reduce the volume rapidly - I held down the reduce volume button, and while the remote indicated that the volume was going down, it didn't change the volume on the Squeezebox for at least 20 seconds. That's with the Squeezebox saying it was already connected to the network.

The more frustrating problem is when you've been listening to music for a while, and the remote goes into the deep sleep mode. If you want to change anything about the music playback, you have to pick up the remote and wait as it wakes up and re-connects to WiFi. You can probably imagine this scenario in your own household: you're listening to music, the phone rings (or your spouse walks into the room and wants to talk to you), and you need to pause the music before you pick up the phone...but you have to wait 20 seconds until you can do so. It feels like an eternity. Or, if something happens to your WiFi connection or router (and it will), be prepared to pull the plug on the Squeezebox in order to stop the sound from coming out of your speakers. Sounds really irritating, right? It is. To me, that's a significant problem because WiFi simply isn't as reliable as infrared or a dedicated RF signal.

Sometimes there's serious lag in the connection - several times I've picked up the remote, started a song, then tried to adjust the volume and waited a good ten seconds before the volume changes. Pressing play or pause sometimes takes so long to be executed you'll think it didn't send the command, so you'll press the button again - and 15 seconds later the music will pause. And sometimes the volume indicator will be out of sync with the volume level on the Squeezebox - the volume level will be all the way down, but the speakers are still kicking out sound.

Other weirdness abounds: you'll press play after looking up an album, and there will be 10 to 20 seconds of silence - the track progression is going along on the remote, but no audio is coming from the receiver. Then suddenly the song will be heard through the speakers - and you'll have to use the back arrows to re-start the song to hear it again.

Ultimately one of the problems then is that you have a remote control that's essentially the same as an MP3 player - it has to stay powered up for you to control anything. Unfortunately, it's an MP3 player with fairly poor battery life. I find that I have to place it back onto the charging cradle daily if I've been listening to music, and I've had it happen more than once when I'll be listening to music, I'll grab the remote to pause it, and find the remote is dead. I'll then need to drop it in the cradle, wait for it to boot up, and finally be able to pause my music. Quite the hassle!

My last thought about WiFi is that the Squeezebox doesn't seem to be very compatible with many WiFi routers. I had a fair amount of success using it with my Linksys WRT54G, only getting the occasional disconnect. I had nothing but headaches when trying to connect it to a Linksys WRT310N, a Linksys WRT610N, and a D-Link router I no longer own. I'd get dozens of disconnects, but only with the receiver, not with the remote. Ultimately I grew weary of having to fight with it, so I hard-wired the receiver with Ethernet and everything has been working perfectly since. I moved back to the WRT610N and have had no issues. It seems like the remote has a stronger WiFi connection back to the router than the receiver does.

Slightly Screwy Software

Sometimes the Squeezebox Server software doesn't find new music - I put a new album on my Windows Home Server after downloading it from Amazon.com's MP3 store, and more than 24 hours later, the Squeezebox wasn't showing it to me as a listening option. I had to log into my Windows Home Server and initiate a manual re-scan of all my music (which took 10+ minutes) using the Squeezebox software before I could see the new album on the Squeezebox remote. When I pick up the Squeezebox remote I'm never entirely sure if my newly purchased music is going to show up on it. The lack of confidence in the product is a problem.

The Squeezebox software is also a bit peculiar when it comes to processing metadata - for instance, I browsed via Artist and selected Third Eye Blind, expecting to hear songs only by that artist. I was surprised to hear an A Capella cover of a Third Eye Blind song. Looking at the metadata for that song, the only place it says Third Eye Blind is in the composer field. I wasn't browsing by composer, I was browsing by artist - so why would the Squeezebox software add it to my playlist? Another mystery. There's an issue where it splits up albums - it doesn't seem to read album and artist metadata the way other applications do. I'm a metadata Nazi, having poured over every song (all 13,000+) I own to ensure that the metadata is correct. I never see any of these metadata problems in the Zune software or Windows Media Center, but I routinely mutter the words "Huh?" when browsing music on the Squeezebox remote when I see music being displayed in strange ways.

The software on the remote is also a bit problematic. Sometimes the remote will just reboot - once I picked it up, it said "Please Wait" as if it was waking up from the sleep mode, then I saw the Logitech logo and watched it do a complete reboot. For a while there was a firmware version for the remote that would reboot it every few days and congratulate me on installing the 7.4 firmware. Eventually this was fixed with another firmware update. It wasn't much of a bother to me, but for a less experienced user, it would be disconcerting to say the least.

On the plus side, new features get added to the Squeezebox remote from the firmware updates; the current firmware has a nice large digital clock view that's better than what it had when I first set it up.

Wrapping It Up

As you can tell, I'm a bit conflicted about this product. It's a powerful, versatile network music player. It's capable of some impressive things, yet when it comes right down to it, the things I want the most from the Squeezebox Duet are the same things my old Roku M2000 delivered: fast, easy networked music playback. If a future firmware update can enable that infrared port on the Squeezebox remote to allow instant pause/play to work even when the remote is in the deep sleep mode, it would go a long way toward addressing my chief complaint with this product. And if the client-side software can be improved to accurately and reliably find new music and display the metadata properly, it would address my second main complaint. I'd also like to see the price come down - at over $330, it seems expensive for the hardware you get since there's no local storage. $249 or $199 would be a more natural price point for a product like this.

All the pieces are there for this product, but it needs to mature before I'd recommend it to anyone other than geeks who like to experiment with gadgets. Keep working on it Logitech; you're close...

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, his son Logan, and his sometimes obedient dog. He wishes companies thought more about ease-of-use and less about cool-awesome features.

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