What is a Squeezebox?

There are now two parts to the Squeezebox family. The first is the new 'Boom', which is an all in one music player thet can be put in any room. The second is a piece of audiophile grade hardware that you plug into your hifi and will sound as good if not better than a high end CD player.

Both systems will run standalone, but if you want listen to your own musisc collection, you need to follow these three steps:

1. 'Rip' all of your music CDs to a digital format using for example, DBPoweramp. The best format is FLAC, which is lossless. An MP3 file is smaller than FLAC as some of the music is thrown away, that is, it is a lossy format. On a decent system you can hear this difference so you should always try to rip to a lossless format. Once the CD is in FLAC format you can convert to any other format i.e. MP3, but you can't go back to a lossless format from an MP3. These music files are stored on the hard disk of your PC.

2. Download the latest verson of SqueezeCenter, which is the software that is used with the Squeezebox, from the Slimdevices website and install it on your PC. This software will scan your music library and stream (send) the music to either a Squeezebox Classic or a Duet Receiver or Boom.

3. The final step is to setup the hardware (Squeezebox Classic or a Duet Receiver or Boom). This connects to your PC over your existing wireless network or via an ethernet network cable and your router.

Once this has all been done, you can sit back and enjoy the music.