Over the last few years I have been searching for a decent way of having my music delivered all around the house without having the hassles of CD players everywhere.
Multi-room amplifiers work well but are ridiculously expensive and can’t be installed when renting, iTunes can send music to multiple airport receivers, but only if you all want to listen to the same thing. The answer seemed to be pointing to, the still reasonably expensive, Squeezebox.
Then, out of the blue a good deal on Catch of the Day left me with a brand new Pinnacle SoundBridge HomeMusic.
After a quick search of the web I discovered this is actually a rebranded Roku M1001 SoundBridge – considering I already run the Roku music server, Firefly, on my Thecus NAS to serve my iTunes collection this couldn’t be better. So I thought….
First problem, conflicting information, was it WPA capable or not ?
After lots of mucking around I managed to get a firmware upgrade onto the machine that gives WPA, unfortunately 802.11b only, but that’s life.
The sound quality is good and the remote is OK, not simple but OK once you learn it. I haven’t tried the ‘partner test’ yet to see, but hopefully it’s learnable…
For remote control album art browsing would be much better. I have found the Firefly music server will provide album art if it has been embedded into the song files, something all versions of ITunes before 7 did. With version 7 they sometimes keep it in a separate directory; the solution, enter Corripio, a tool design to work with iTunes and keep things as they should be. Now I just need a rainy weekend.
After that, the next step is remote control of the SoundBridge from eLife…
Getting closer, to music nirvana!
An update, I have thrown this out and gone with Apple Airports; brilliant and I don’t have to worry about a separate media server!