Looking for tabletop MP3 player
June 3rd, 2009
We’re looking for an MP3 player for our kitchen. Ideally, it would be a standalone device that can browse and play music from our server using Wifi. It should have its own speakers and a reasonably small footprint. If it has an FM tuner, that’s a plus too.
I’ve tried searching, and found things such as the Squeezebox. But ones that are decent at this task seem to be in the $200-$300 range. That’s trange, because TV devices that do this are actually cheaper!
I’ve tried Googling, and can’t seem to craft good search terms.
Any ideas?
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Hi John,
If you’ve seen the SqueezeBox, chances are you’ve seen the SoundBridge Radio too, but in case you haven’t, check it out.
http://soundbridge.roku.com/soundbridgeradio/index.php
It sells for $199 and it’s well worth it from what I’m told (I have the non-Radio SoundBridge, which is excellent too). Sound quality is excellent, which is not always the case with other devices (too say the least).
It’ll grok any music format thanks to mt-daapd and radio stations are managed through radioroku.com.
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Dean Reply:
June 4th, 2009 at 7:51 am
I have the radio soundbridge. Sound quality is excellent. It has an FM radio tuner but to be honest I’ve never used it as you can just use internet radio.
You can set playlists exported over mt-daapd to work with the buttons on top of the radio.
You can also control it to varying degrees via telnet, its webpage or via various bits of software (though I’ve not tried any of these)
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You want a SqueezeBox Boom. It’s not cheap, but worth every penny. Sound quality is excellent. Doesn’t have an FM tuner but will play nearly every kind of radio stream just fine.
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Is your “builtin speakers” condition set in stone? If not, you might want to consider a cheap Nokia 770/800/810 tablet. Builtin speaker volume is not great, but you might want to combine it with a decent speaker set…
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You could look at the freecom musicpal.
In the netherlands it’s sold for about 120Euro.
* 802.11b/g Wi-Fi en ethernet poort
* mp3/wma radiostation support
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Thanks everyone for the suggestions. It looks like the Roku Soundbridge Radio is exactly the device I’m after. I appreciate it!
I do have an N810 from work, but I don’t think it would be as convenient in any setup.
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Yeah, I’d go for a cheap N800, the speaker quality at full volume is surprisingly good. The reason I’d go for an N800 is that you can install a UPnP player immediately, and share all your music from a media server, play internet radio, and use the built-in FM radio. The N800 also has two full size SDHC slots, meaning you could affordably put two 16GB cards in it, or less affordably, two 32GB SDHC cards, and play quite a bit of music without a wifi connection.
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I also recommend a Nokia N800. It’s also the only Internet Tablet that supports FM radio.
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I’d agree with the suggestion of an N800 as well. I have one, and it has great sound quality and stereo speakers. With the volume turned to 90% or so, you can hear it from several rooms away.
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The Chumby should fill the niche, and do some other cool things besides. I’d give it extra points for being a very open pice of hardware.
http://www.chumby.com/
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