Hard to say. The real test in my mind is when mysqueezebox.com shuts down. For me personally, this is mostly important for access to SiriusXM (my wife really likes the various Public Radio stations there). With Squeezeboxes and LMS, even without mysb.com, I can play my own music, listen to most, if not all, the internet radio streams I want, and I can try out new things or listen to one-off things via Spotify via Triode's plugin. But I know others that use their squeezeboxes with only mysqueezebox.com and no local server. Furthermore, they are using mostly Pandora. So the loss of mysb.com would be a double whammy, as I know of no other way to access Pandora without the mysb.com 'handshake', even when using one's own server.
I'm very hopeful with the ickstream development as a replacement for mysb.com. With that and LMS one can mostly continue on with the squeezeboxes and LMS. It would be very nice if they could get access to providing SiriusXM connection and Pandora connection (even if paid pandora account). Currently, as a backup for SirusXM for my wife (and just to experiment with myself), I have a single SONOS connect that I've played with and have connected to my preamp. It's perfectly OK and easy to use, but after years of Squeezebox and LMS use it is painful to use SONOS. It can't handle my large music collection, has no ability for plugins and customization, can't deal with lots of tag issues (multiple artist and genre tags, for example), chokes on large art, etc. If I had started with SONOS I'd think it was wonderful. But if I'd been commuting with a horse & buggy, I'd love driving a 1972 Ford Pinto. But the Sonos is like moving to the Ford Pinto after having driven a BMW for years. Of course the Sonos fans will note that SONOS survived and prospered while Squeezeboxes 'failed' and are no longer produced. They are correct of course, but one only need remember that the best quality doesn't always survive (cf., Betamax vs VHS, blu-ray vs DVD-HD). In my opinion Squeezeboxes suffered from many, many bad home network setups (that were only "exposed" when one tried to use SB players). Not fair that SB's were blamed, but it is what it is. Here's to a healthy and prosperous 2015 and a future life for all things squeezebox and LMS. *Home:* VortexBox 4TB (2.3) > LMS 7.8 > Transporter, Touch, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet except Radio) *Cottage:* VBA 3TB (2.3) > LMS 7.8 > Touch > Benchmark DAC I, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet except Radio) *Office:* Win7(64) > LMS 7.8 > Squeezelite *Spares:* Touch(3), Radio(3), Boom, SB3, CONTROLLER *Controllers:* iPhone4S & iPadAir2 (iPeng8 & Squeezepad), CONTROLLER, or SqueezePlay 7.8 on Win7(64) laptop *Files:* ripping: dbpoweramp > FLAC; post-rip: mp3tag, PerfectTunes; Streaming: Spotify ------------------------------------------------------------------------ garym's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17325 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=102809 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
