The Velvet

My New Toy

Like many Velveteers, I suspect, I almost never listen to commercial radio. So when I’m spending time in the kitchen—which is a LOT of time because I love to cook—I usually accompany my activity with music from either of two sources: (a) my iPod or (b) Internet radio, both by way of a small stereo that I lug in and plop down on the kitchen table. Then I either connect my iPod to it with a Y cord OR connect my stereo to my computer, which is in the next room, via a wireless USB connector. This is a clunkier system than most people could tolerate, but I am a clunky person and willing to deal with the additional task, when listening to Internet radio, of being forced to run repeatedly into the other room to look at my computer screen to find out what song is playing.

But then my wireless USB connector, which cost $90, died after providing service for less than a year. I thus began investigating replacements—and came to the realization that stand-alone wi-fi Internet-radio units have been getting high marks from techies and might be my best alternative. So I started studying affordable available products and decided to spring for a $140 Logitech Squeezebox. It came to my door two days ago, I got it up and running immediately, and at least so far I’m loving it.

It’s exactly the same as connecting a wireless printer: You just make sure your router is on and connected and then follow the on-screen procedure (which requires that you enter your router password). When you’ve done that, you’re ready to play any of the kazillions of Internet radio stations that are available on Squeezebox.

But there’s more.

If you go to the company website and download something called “Squeezebox Server,” you then have a device that allows you to play all the music files you have on your computer, which is pretty cool. It took less than 10 minutes for the Server to scan my comp and relay (so to speak) every song and every one of the hundreds of playlists that I have in my iTunes library to my kitchen-table unit. PLUS: there’s an app function that you can use to activate apps that you can designate to appear on the Squeezebox start menu. The one app that was of primary interest to me is Rhapsody, which I pay $10 a month for and which I adore, because now I can sit at my kitchen table and select whichever of Rhapsody’s own vast list of genres and micro genres that I want to listen to, and the song info and color artwork appears on the player screen—so I don’t have to constantly run into the other room.

One of the down sides, I guess, is that it’s a small (8x6x3) one-speaker mono radio. But the upside is that, given that limitation, the sound quality is really good, even at high volume. However, today when I was listening to songs on my hard drive via Squeezebox, I realized that the quality wasn’t quite as good as when I play those same songs on my little stereo using my iPod. So I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll be somewhat clunky, music-wise, in the kitchen when I feel like listening to my iPod. But when I want to explore and listen to the wealth of music on Internet radio stations, as well as on Rhapsody (and last.fm, which also has an app), I'll be using Squeezebox. It's a terrific little tool if you don’t want to spend a lot of money.

(Moby Tenenbaum spins 7-9 Fridays at The Velvet.)