simonclayt:
Mine arrived Friday - didn't get to look at it until Saturday.
Bearing in mind I already have a robust homenetwork network running Squeezeserver plus two Squeezeboxes (SB3 and Duet/Receiver) I had the Touch out of box and running within 10 minutes. I plumbed it into the network via 200 Devolo Homeplug and it rapidly both found and ethernet connected to home server, library and Squeezebox.com. I doubt if wi fi would a have posed any problem for connnectivity.
Does it work? Album art display is good, touch screen browsing and commands are quicker and more responsive than with Duet controller or iPhone with iPeng app - but I'd expect that since Touch is hard wired. Screen flicks etc all good as expected. Using Touch display as digital photo frame is nice bonus. Build quality and design superb, display screen could be bigger and have OLED, but then it would cost more...and besides it is more than good enough.
I have not yet had chance to run SB Touch as a standalone unit with external HDD/SD for source, but would expect this to be slower in operation than if using network and homeserver with an ndexed filesystem.
Sound quality? I have not had chance to mess around with DACmagic vs SB Touch internal DAC for direct comparison, but can say sound is instantly better than the on board DAC chip in the SB reciever/Duet combo, which is in turn inferior to the SB3 Classic on board DAC.
First listening impressions are of instant 'hi fi' quality (think upper mid range CD player) with FLACs and 24bit files I have notably Keith Jarrett's "Koln Concert" 24 bit recording which sounded just lovely. My constant companion, Tom Petty's "Crawling Back To You" from 'Wildflowers' sounded as good as I can remember hearing on anything. I intend to hook up CA DACmagic this week and do some more listening, but wonder at this point if it will offer any real improvement over internal Wolfson 24bit chip, which is pretty much state of the art in DAC terms.
First impressions is that Logictech have done a really good job with the Squeezebox Touch. For £250 it does an awful lot for your money if you are considering the computer audio route. The ability to control unit with multiple interfaces (direct Touch on the unit, ir remote, Duet Controller and iPeng) is impressive and it all appears well-engineered and integrated into Squeezebox family.
With the 30 days return offer on product, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain. I have long since got over thrill of being able to quickly access 2500 LPs, but still really appreciate benefits. If you havn't yet taken this step the Squeezebox Touch is an excellent, straightforward and highly cost-effective starting point.
Recommended.
Thanks simonlayt for your initial write up. Like you say there's nothing to lose with the 30 day trial period. I'm very interested to see what WHF think, reviewed in their next magazine. I've bought all my hi-fi gear against their recommendations and have never been dissapointed. Better start ripping my cd's to my external hard disk then
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