tldr:

I bought a Logitech Squeezebox and I love this thing.

Image from Crutchfield

It is a baby. It is so small and cute.

Logitech stopped selling them, discontinued the product line, and finally turned off the servers pretty recently, but all one needs is a computer that runs the server software on their home network, and it works just like it did when it was new. One could say it runs even better today because of third party plugins that add new features.

With a spare Windows laptop, I got it running pretty quick. Like Icarus, however, I flew a little high and installed a bunch of plugins, one of them being AirPlay compatibility of some sort, and this caused it to error out (and stop working) due to a missing .dll file. Plugins are surprisingly hard to uninstall - it never seems like the changes stick after rebooting the Logitech/Lyrion server - so choose wisely.

Otherwise, that’s it. I want to buy like 7 more. It’s tiny, plays music, and seems like the ultimate tinker toy. Squeezeboxes go for as little as $40 (not nearly a must-buy price) on eBay, but I got mine for $20 (absolute steal) off of Facebook Marketplace.

However, the more sensible option for network audio in a house is Sonos. Technically, there’s a UPnP plugin, and I can “sync” the squeezebox to the Sonos, but the timing is off, so it’s not really worth it. Setting a static offset (mine was nearly 2 seconds) wasn’t reliable.

I suppose the thing I like most about the Squeezebox is that the controls are right on the unit, and it promotes a fun little discovery process every time I want to find a new radio channel to use.

Otherwise, it’s slow, the screen is dim (actually, I think they’re all dim), I haven’t figured out Spotify or AirPlay integration, and I don’t believe a “Spotify Connect” solution exists at the moment. Of course, all of these are solvable with a straight week of boredom and too little to do. That’ll come soon enough.

Maybe most important of all? My parents can use it. I had some issues with the server crashing, needing a manual “close and reopen the exe”, but you just need to set it up as a windows service. They enjoy radio from their home countries, in their native languages, with just a push of a button. Dedicated shortcut keys are what make this radio worth anything. All of the internet logic, the laptop, the dim screen, the weird complex scroll wheel fades away when the “1” button immediately brings up my Mom’s favorite station.