Am thinking of getting wifi music for my hoose, I've seen a wee £100 device that plays music and radio through wifi and links into your hifi (can't remember the brand but it's based in Livingston), however the display looks really small and my concern is that it would be a PITA to use, navigating through albums etc.

Apparently Squeezeboxes are rated? Anything else to recommend?

Am not sure whether to go losseless and hook it up to my better system or keep that system separate?

I've got a soundbridge, was only £50, brilliant thing. It's only got a two line display but it's fine to use – good remote, you can skip through stuff by letter (jump from A to B to C with a single button press, rather than scrolling through all the As).

I stream stuff from my NAS, which runs a mediaserver – so I don't even need a PC on.

Internet radio is brill too.

squeezeboxes are really excellent and work very well. i don't know if there's anything better available these days, but in terms of ease of use and sound quality a squeezebox is a good choice.

Squeezeboxes are certainly good – a friend has it and it works very well though the display is a little small if you're in a big room. Sonos is the more expensive but much flasher version – LCD 'remote' tablet sort of control which is lovely to use.

Squeezebox is ace, my parents have one linked up to my music server and my brother has one linked up to a qnap server running full lossless through some high end seperates, sounds amazing. The screen is perfectly visible from the other end of a medium-sized livingroom and navigation is dead easy. You can change the screen format to have large fonts if you need to instead of the 2 lines of the standard form.

If you want to know what the interface is like first you can set up the server software (squeezecentre) on your PC and find a copy of the free softsqueeze software, it's a direct replica of the actual item so menus etc work the same way.

Cheers all. Sounds like a Squeezebox for the main system and maybe a soundbridge in the Kitchen.

WTF is a NAS and mediaserver? Can I just use an old pc?

Another vote for the squeezebox here; I've had mine just over a year and it's been fantastic – the displays on the newer ones are much better than the older ones – I've a feeling the one clubber has seen is probably an older model with a smaller display – if I'm wrong then he's got a different idea of what constitues a big room to me 🙂

A NAS is basically just a mini-pc (usually running linux) that doesnt need a screen or keyboard etc, with the media serving software on it. Same with a mediaserver – its just a PC with the right server software on it. You can roll your own NAS from PC parts or just use a PC, its just that a proper NAS/server will be a low-power item that sits there working silently makign no noise all day long, instead of having to be powered on each time for you to have music.

Squeezebox user and fan here too. I run it wired in the kitchen. Works a treat. Easy to use. Playlists are good for parties, meals etc.

I run Cat5 from the SB to the router, then more Cat5 from the router to the PC upstairs where all the songs are on an external 300mb Seagate harddrive.

I've also tested it back-to-back with my (decent) standalone CD player and the sound quality is pretty good too, so could easily live in a half-decent hifi setup.

MP3 will always sound slightly worse than the CD original, go FLAC. Of course if you go FLAC you can't have a soundbridge for the kitchen as it can't cope with lossless according to its specs

Buffalo TB NAS steaming movies, music, photos etc to a PS3 in the lounge
works well for me

Tom with a squeezebox yesterday:

NAS = Network Attached Storage. Functionally, a hard drive that attaches to your network, rather than your PC.

As coffeeking says, they're like a mini PC internally running linux. Some have a mediaserver pre-installed. Mine (LaCie network space) scans the hard drive for media files automatically, and the mediaserver runs by default. So all I had to do was transfer all my music onto it, and the soundbridge sees it on the network and gives me the option to use the NAS as the source of the music.

If you have a ipod touch/iphone check out iPeng, its a superb squeezebox wifi app (only about £5), I use it with a squeezebox boom and its superb. I dont use the supplied remote any more, and it makes browsing a large music library (22,000 tracks) much easier.

Thanks again chaps. A couple more Q's:

1. Are there battery powered devices I could in theory use in the garden (probs 6m away from router)?
2. £40 Philips number on amazon is bound to be crap?
3. Ipeng will allow me to control all of Itunes (even though not all of it is on my touch) and so would only work on pc not NAS?
4. How much for a NAS?
5. Is there a radio app for my touch?
6. It's the "revo mondo" I was originally on about (£100 odd, as is soundbridge) any views?

4. How much for a NAS?

£60ish for a 500Gb one

Ipeng will allow me to control all of Itunes

The Apple Remote app does this and is free.

So the NAS has built in wifi and once set up (through transferring tracks from your pc) is all you need (along with router and playing device)?

Oh and if a lodger has itunes/MP3's can these be accessed by a squeezebox?

And could I just run a power amp from the squeezebox?

Ipeng controls Squeezecentre (the squeezebox streaming software) only. Squeezeboxes DONT use itunes (thankfully)!

Beware of cheap NAS boxes as they cant run the streaming software very well, they dont have enough memory.

Does this achieve the same as running iTunes on my PC (with my iRemote app on my phone) and using an AirPort Express unit to send the music to my stereo? I like the idea of the squeezebox but want to use the playlist functions and stuff that ive set up on my iTunes.

I didn't spot a wireless NAS when I was looking a couple of months ago – mine plugs into my router via ethernet cable.

IIRC the NAS equipment needs to be powerful enough to run the music server software (SqueezeCentre), so as stated the cheaper NAS units may not work.

Question is, which NAS units are powerful enough? The squeezebox website states it supports Netgear ReadyNAS, but they are very pricey!

Hence why I just use an old PC with its keyboard and monitor removed. Decent NASs are pricey. You can pick up an old pentium II or II machine for pretty much zero cash and install linux on it etc. Bit power hungry but cheaper and more flexible than a NAS.

Been looking a bit more at this. Looked at sonos (nice but pricey) and thinking of a blik in the kitchen and an airport express for the living room (perhaps with my "proper" system – whch is reasonable, Crimson monoblocks etc)

This means I can use my ipod as a remote and just run itunes.

Qs:
1. I take it I can't run internet radio through the aiport express?
2. Is the airport express up to a decent system (running lossless files)

I use a Squeezebox at home, one feature you *may* find useful is that it can be used as a wireless bridge so I have mine connected to my XBox with a network cable and my XBox is online too.

You can use the Squeezebox to access internet radio (host PC or NAS doesn't have to be on for this to work).

You could get an additional Squeezebox Boom for the kitchen?

If you're after top sound quality, the Squeezebox uses Burr-Brown D2A converters (apparently that's a good thing) and it'll plug straight into a power amp yeah..

The SqueezeCenter software will send all of your iTunes playlists to the device but afaik it only supports one music source, so your lodger's music won't be available..

Hope this helps