I have 3 Jogglers and 1 Squeezebox radio running in my system, and I previously owned a SB3 so feel I can cpomment on this.
The Joggler has a 3.5mm output. The audio chip on-board has several options including digital and line out however only the headphones output is used and connected to the the jack on the back. This means the output is not up to the standards of a real squeezebox (if you have a touch I believe they have headphone jacks, imagine using them instead of the RCA outs) So out of the box its not really suitable as a high quality audio device. The output can be tweaked by the way so the low volume issue can be sorted but its still not the best. I do use the standard output with the Joggler in my bedroom connected to a cheap 2.1 speaker set I got included with a Dell PC a while ago, its perfectly acceptable for that purpose, once the gain has been adjusted to combat the low audio levels mentioned above One of my other Jogglers has been modified by myself to have an optical port, this was actually quite an easy mod to do, its 3 wires soldered to points on the motherboard and this feeds the on-board DAC in my Arcam AVR amplifier. I have tried this Joggler feeding the DAC in a mates entirely Linn based system (I don't recall the model numbers of his kit, I was too distracted by the pile of expensive Linn kit, including a rather lovely TT he owns) TBH the Joggler feeding FLAC (ripped from CD so 16/44.4) was indistinguishable from CDs played through the same DAC. I'm not pretending we did a proper ABX blind test but to both of our ears we were perfectly happy with the digital output from my Joggler. My mate has since bought one which I've modded with the optical output for him and he's a happy bunny My third Joggler uses a Behringer USB soundcard (UAC something or other from memory, possible 302?) feeding a modest stereo setup (Cambridge Audio A5 Amp, Mordaunt Short MS906 speakers) I have directly compared the Joggler with Behringer to my Cambridge CD player, I couldn't compare the SB3 directly as I sold it a while ago but this is the system I used to have the SB3 connected to. I have to be honest I don't think I could tell them apart. The sound quality is certainly good enough for my ears and modest setup. The Joggler in some ways is what the Touch should have been. A lovely 7" screen. Its powerful enough to run a full LMS, either using network shares or a USB device for your tunes. My Joggler with the SP-DIF mod runs the latest LMS, including a fair few plugins, including PLAYWMA and PLAYREAL with Mplayer to transcode these screens. Even Triodes spotify plug in works, but not the official one. Regarding the USB port on the side, personally I found this location to be a pain, however if you're not using the WiFi then you can actually remove the internal wifi card which frees up another USB port, I drilled a hole on the back case and stuck a small usb evtension cable in it so I have a captive lead on the back. you can then use a Hub to connect multiple devices to the USB. So for me (I'm from Yorkshire so a bit tight) I have 3 zones and a perfectly capable LMS machine for less money (including the previously mentioned Behringer soundcard) for less money than I spent on the SBR. I love my Jogglers but they do require a little more effort than just plugging in a genuine squeezebox to shine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jimbobvfr400's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=56857 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96844 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
