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T
he Squeezebox Boom is another solid
entry in a long line of great audio stream-
ers. Logitech has mastered the art of
building inexpensive, good-quality powered
speakers, and the ones integrated into the
Boom are no exception.
The Squeezebox Boom’s closest competi-
tion is Roku’s SoundBridge Radio, but it’s not
much of a contest. Both devices can function
as an alarm clock, waking you with music
streamed from your PC or Internet radio sta-
tions (and both have an all-important snooze
bar), but the Boom sounds better, supports more
audio formats, and consumes much less room
on your nightstand.
The speakers utilize a two-way design
consisting of a pair of three-quarter-inch soft -
dome tweeters and two three-inch long-throw
woofers. Listening to the opening of “Fortune
Teller,” from the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss
collaboration Raising Sand (which we’d ripped
from CD and encoded to WMA Lossless), we
were pleasantly surprised by the small woofers’
ability to reproduce the boom of the traditional
bass drum (which sounds distinctly diff erent
from a drummer’s kick drum).
If you want even more low end and have
a powered subwoofer lying around, the head-
phone jack in the back of the device can be
reconfi gured as a subwoofer output. The tweet-
ers, meanwhile, deliver pleasingly crisp highs.
Logitech doesn’t disclose the amplifi er’s output,
but it delivers enough power to fi ll a moderate-size bedroom with sound. Push the amp too
hard, however, and it will shred your eardrums
with unpleasantly grating highs. There’s also
a line-in jack in the back, which is handy for
plugging in an MP3 player.
Given the proliferation of 802.11n Draft 2.0
routers, we’re disappointed that this Squee-
zebox remains limited to 802.11g. It’s not that
music requires the extra throughput, it’s just
that having a Squeezebox on your network
prevents you from running the network in
802.11n-only mode.
The Squeezebox Boom echoes the design
of the Squeezebox 3, but with a smaller display,
a collection of buttons, a large knob on its face,
and, of course, those built-in speakers. Most of
the buttons perform typical playback functions
(play, pause, skip forward/back, and volume
control), while the knob and a few buttons are
used to navigate the onscreen menus (the knob
can also be used to adjust the volume). You can
store favorite tracks, radio stations, or albums in
six preset buttons beneath the display, so they
can be recalled with a single button press.
One thing that’s sorely missing from the
front panel (it’s on the infrared remote) is a
Home button that takes you to the device’s
root menu. The only way to get there using thefront-panel buttons is to repeatedly mash the
Back button. You can also control the Boom
using the remote that comes with the Squeeze-
box Duet, which is outfi tted with a color LCD.
If you’re looking for a general-purpose
audio-streaming box, as opposed to an alarm
clock, you’ll be better served by the Squee-
zebox Duet or the Squeezebox 3 paired with
high-quality self-powered speakers (Axiom
Audio’s Audiobyte and Audioengine’s A2
or A5 are good choices). One reason is that
the Boom lacks a digital output, so you can’t
use an outboard DAC or integrate the Boom
into your hi-fi system. And if it’s a multiroom
system you’re after, no one does it better
than Sonos. -M I C H A E L B R O W NLogitech Squeezebox Boom
Here’s an alarm clock you won’t mind waking up to
One of the Squeezebox Boom’s
few shortcomings is that you
can’t detach the speakers from
the cabinet.+ -
VERDICT$300, http://www.logitech.com8
Great alarm clock,
great user interface,
comprehensive audio-
format support.No digital outputs
and limited to
802.11g networks.MAIN SQUEEZELOGITECH SQUEEZEBOX BOOMSHAMELESS TEASEIN THE LAB^
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