I set up my new toy last night so thought I'd share some first impressions. I'll start with the niggle first; I'm not entirely in love with the platinum case. The finish (to me) is a bit flat (it looks too much like a plastic box painted flat silver, which is what it is I suppose) and it seems to emphasise the 'radio alarm' look of the housing. I contrast this with my recollection of opening the packaging of my SB1 a year ago and being very impressed by the black textured finish. The black casing also 'disappeared' into the cabinet which houses my AV gear, making the display seem to 'float' in mid-air, where now the SB2 stands out and it looks like someone's put a radio alarm in there. I suspect I may end up swapping the SB1 and SB2 boxes over. Are there any differences internally to prevent me from doing this? I'm sure there would be a market for a slightly more expensive model with a classier housing, but I appreciate that small companies are limited in what their design teams can take on. Maybe an aftermarket opportunity for someone? Anyway, considering the capabilities of the SB2 and the price, I do feel mean being so picky about the case. If I were to buy again though, I'd definitely go for the black.
Set-up was painless and easy. I downloaded and installed the latest nightly, changed my wireless network security from WEP to WPA, plugged in the SB2 and off she went. There was a minor hiccup when the Squeezebox couldn't find the DHCP server, but allocating a manual IP address and entering the addresses for the various network components did the trick. I did regret choosing a longer than minimum shared key as entering it via the numeric pads is a bit of a kerfuffle, but hopefully I'll only do it once. The positives: the display is superb, I'm really impressed. If this was the only improvement over the SB1, I'd consider it worth upgrading. Clear, readable, fast and aesthetically very pleasing. I love it. I really like the little touches, like being able to have a news ticker screen saver when the box is off. I haven't had a serious listening session yet and I chose to plug the SB2 in as a direct replacement for my SB1 (which means I'm using an external DAC so cannot comment on the sound of the Burr-Browns), but there does appear to be a significant improvement in (the already excellent) sound quality over the SB1. It seems cleaner and clearer, with more attack and punch. I'll listen to this a lot over the next few weeks before forming fixed opinions, but I've already got a good feeling about this model. Add in the other improvements (802.11g, WPA, wireless bridge, Squeezenetwork, UI improvements) and this equates to a significantly improved product which could easily have sold at a premium over the SB1. It's nice that the price has been kept the same. In sum, a massive improvement to an already impressive piece of technology. I just wish I'd bought black. Maybe the platinum will grow on me ... -- Fifer _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
