Does The Squeezebox Touch Have a Worthy Successor?

I really don't think that you'll find anything close for the $300 price tag.

I have both the Sonos and the Squeezebox. I started with the Sonos and loved it, but then I got it into my head that I wanted to get into hi res. The Sonos tops out at 16/48. The Squeezebox will do 24/96 out of the box and will do 24/192 with the addition of a 3rd party app.

To be honest, I really don't know that pursuing the ability to play hi res files was worth it for me. I download most of my stuff from HDTracks and I've gotta tell ya, the quality of the hi res files is hit and miss. With some, the improvement over 16/44 CD rips is unmistakable; with most, I'm really hard pressed to be able to tell the difference.

It really sucks because the hi res stuff isn't cheap, usually running about $18 for an album of 24/96 and $25 for an album of 24/192.

I know that the Squeezebox has gotten a lot of good press and deservedly so; but I've really enjoyed my Sonos as well. The Sonos is just plain bullet proof. I've never had a single problem with it. It is very well supported by the manufacturer and the free controller app is very refined and easy to use. It is much more intuitive and bug free than anything that you can get for the Squeezebox.

I also know that the Sonos has taken some criticism here due to it suffering from a lot of jitter; but, on the other hand, I've spent many countless hours enjoying the music coming from the Sonos unit being fed by CD rips from my NAS.

The way I see it is that the Sonos is weaker than the Squeezebox in three areas.

First, with the Sonos, you have to stream content from a computer or NAS. There is no option for using a USB drive or SD card. Second, there's the jitter issue. Third, the Sonos doesn't have an IR port, so all control has to be through an iPad, iPod, or some other sort of smart device. The third thing is what gets me, because I like to build a play list and then just control everything with my Harmony 900 remote, which I can do with the Squeezebox.

The Sonos goes for $350. I say, give it a try. I think it's the closest you're going to get to a Squeezebox Touch. If you don't like it, return it.

Sonos is my recommendation, and reclock it. I use one myself. I also have SB3

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Logitech got out of the business because it just wasn't a great business for them. They likely needed considerably more volume to justify keeping it around.

Logitech is a mass market consumer company, and everything is seen through this lens. They probably saw an opportunity to do something with Squeezebox when they made the acquisition, but it didn't work out.

It was a great product.

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What about the guys that created SlimDevices? Since Logitech is no longer interested, it seems like a logical re-entry point for the SlimDevices guys to buy it back and get back into the game.

I had never even heard of the Squeeezbox until I read it here on the 'Gon in a thread. I've never seen one in a store, I've never seen it advertised, and no one that I've ever met has ever heard of a Squeezebox. Logitech never spent any money to really advertise or market the device.
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Logitech is a mass market consumer company, and everything is seen through this lens. They probably saw an opportunity to do something with Squeezebox when they made the acquisition, but it didn't work out.

Just imagine there's demand to attract $$ and best and brighest. Probably have a Netflicks and OnDemand for audio. If there's enough bandwidth for HD Video, audio should be trivial. No more disc, transports ...

I've own all the SBs and currently using a Touch for internet radio only and a Boom. Excellent products and engineering staff. All just plug and play with no problems.

Currently using a PS Audio PWD MKII/w bridge. Sometimes the bridge would get stuck and I have reinitialize by recycling power ... bad programming. Paul McGowen should hire some of the SB engineering staff.