So I had the squeezebox for a few days. While the touch screen and larger display is very cool and a nice step up from the classic squeezebox that I also own, the device does not seem to be quite at the same level in terms of feature robustness as the classic squeezebox. The device feels a bit sluggish in many places. It feels more like a computer rather than a dedicated audio device.
My SB network is fully wired, no wireless, running off of a gigabit HP switch. My SC is running on a ReadyNas with 1G of memory. Here are my thoughts and findings in no particular order. 1) In synchronized mode (Touch plus the Classic), volume adjustment can responds very slowly. This is the case despite the volume setting being non-synchronized between the two devices. When I first tested synchronized mode, one of the room's volume is too loud (SB Classic), so used the volume button on the remote to lower it. For the first 5 seconds or so, the volume adjustment on the Classic responded very very slowly (this never happens in standalone mode). After maybe 10 second, the respond time is normal again. 2) The next song starts to play when the count down timer is at -2 or -1. This happens with both Pandora or my own music library. On the classic this is dead accurate. How did this get past QA? ;) 3) The device responds very slowly in some situations. Switching from Pandora to a song on my SC occasionally is VERY VERY slow. Sometimes it seems to be in the order of 10 seconds or so before the song will actually start to play (not every time..) After I navigate to my song (.flac), and press play, the display switch back to the current song display, still showing the Pandora information (why not clear it since this is confusing), and then silent. After what seems like an eternity, the song will eventually start to play. Similar delay is observed when I press repeat. Sometimes the display will update showing the repeat info only after 4-5 seconds! 4) Again related to switching from Pandora to my music library. When I go to browse music folder, sometimes the device would just fail to connect to my SC and ask me to try again. I never experienced this type of delay and sluggishness when I am using the SB Classic. Not sure if this is due to the use of synchronized mode (the other SB is OFF). 5) I really think there ought to be a 'reboot/restart' option in the menu (or perhaps just a shutdown). Maybe it will clear out some of the sluggishness (like my smartphone). 6) I really like the new screen and be able to see the album art of whatever song Pandora is playing. The touch feature is useful, but I would've preferred a LARGER screen over a smaller one with touch capability. In this day and age with the ipad and what have you, the touch's screen just feels small, especially if you are at any distance from it. The default play info screen also doesn't make good use of the screen real estate. Why are there static title bar at the top/bottom of the screen taking up precious screen space? How about one where the album art enlarges to take up the entire left side, and the rest of the stuff (info, timer, etc) stays on the right? The controls such as stop, next, etc, can pop up on demand when the user touches the device. There's no point for these things to clutter up the screen. 7) In case anyone is curious, the capacitive touch screen is not the same kind as the one used on iphone/ipad. It actually bends slightly when pressed, like my garmin gps. The response is fine, but just isn't as glass like as the ipad/iphone's touch screen. 8) The Touch is more angeled upward compare to the SB Classic. I wish it was the same. I had to put some business cards behind the touch to have the screen be more vertical. This is more of a personal preference I guess, as I have the Touch on top of my speaker, rather than the stand where the TV sits at a lower position. Anyone know what OS the Classic SB uses? I know the Touch uses Linux as I've logged in and replaced the default fonts with Android fonts to support Chinese. The sluggishness feels like a slow computer or inadequate memory, like running Windows on an underpowered PC. Not the kind of response you get from a dedicated audio device. My WDTV Live never responds this slowly. Ok, to be fair, most of the time, the interaction is fine and feels snappy. But for a few operations that does matter a lot, like play music, it can be extremely slow and annoying. (With a crying baby wanting to hear her favorite music, I really don't have the patience to explain to her or my wife why the SB is not playing the music 10 seconds after I pressed play. ;) -- wildgoose ------------------------------------------------------------------------ wildgoose's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=23501 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81089 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
