Computer Networking Review

• WiFi music system with advanced digital music streaming functionality, pair of stereo speakers, and subwoofer
• Native support for Apple iTunes and Rendezvous, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player 10, and Rhapsody
• Accesses free Internet radio stations via broadband connection, bright 280 x 32 vacuum fluorescent display
• Patented Linear Magnetic Drive stereo speakers and subwoofer with acoustic enclosures and fitted digital amps
• Ultra fast 400 MHz Blackfin DSP, measures eleven x six x 6.5 inches W x H x D, 1 year warranty

Review Like its smaller cousins, the Roku M1000 and M500 network music players, Roku’s SoundBridge Radio is intended liberate your digital music from your computer and let you turn on Internet radio stations and your unprotected digital music files in the room of your choice. But unlike those merchandise, the SoundBridge Radio doesn’t require a hi fi system because the SoundBridge Radio is the hi fi system. And not a bad one at that.

A clean design and some number of easy access ports give the SoundBridge added versatility. .

Most of the radio’s ground breaking Wi Fi features may be accessed via the convenient remote. . Featuring two linear magnetic drive full range speakers and a linear magnetic drive subwoofer each powered by fitted amplifiers the SoundBridge puts most table top radios to shame. If you have many of space to fill with your music, you’ll want to think twice before replacing your stereo system with it. But for a unit this size, the SoundBridge offers excellent sound performance, and its many ground breaking Wi Fi features make it worth the price. As a complete Wi Fi music system that can stream your MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, and AIFF music files in high performance sound, play AM, FM and Internet radio, automatically update the time via atomic transmission, and wake you up to a range of ascending alarm sounds or your beloved Internet station or digital music, the SoundBridge has clear aspirations to be your bedside radio of choice. Without needing any special software for your computer PC or Mac, inside some minutes of breaking this five pound radio out of its packaging you may be browsing through the music you stored in your Apple’s iTunes, Real Networks’ Rhapsody, Windows Media Connect or Windows Media ten music players. All you need is a wireless network with a broadband connection, and your digital music is yours for the asking. However, because Apple doesn’t license its digital rights management code, SoundBridge like most other non Apple network media players can’t play protected songs from the iTunes Music Store. In our test we set up an iMac G5 on our network running Apple’s iTunes. The radio, which is configured with Wi Fi 802.11b but is 802.11g matched, now recognized the network but took some number of tries before it effectively connected. If your network is locked, the SoundBridge will ask for a password. And if you can access more than one wireless network, the SoundBridge will give you the choice of picking which network to connect to. Once online, the radio automatically updated the Roku software and was prepared to do. And for the remainder of our test over some number of days, we never once had another connection problem. Diving straight into our iTunes folders, it didn’t take long for us to recognize the some number of play features that put the SoundBridge head and shoulders above many of its competitors. For starters, unlike other network players we’ve tested, the radio recognized our iTunes playlists, and a neat “song queue” feature let’s easily create our own playlists with the radio’s remote. And as a big brownie point, the SoundBridge not only categorized our songs by genre, title, artist and album as most networks players do, it also queued up each song in the same order as they were first placed their respective albums. Astoundingly, not all Wi Fi players can make that assert.

Large, easy to access buttons as well as a big snooze bar on the top of the radio make the SoundBridge an excellent clock radio choice. . On the Internet radio front, SoundBridge doesn’t come out quite so well. While Roku’s marketing material claims “10,000 stations No strings attached,” that wasn’t exactly our experience. The radio is pre configured with dozens of Internet stations all of which may be accessed without the computer powered on and the radio has 18 pre sets that offer fast access to the station of your choice. But to access the rest of the world’s Internet radio stations, you must go through some number of somewhat tedious steps with Roku’s Web interface to configure them. The strongest criticism of SoundBridge concerns its remote potential and navigation. The features of the SoundBridge are intended to be accessed both through the big, easy to access buttons on the radio itself, and via its basic 5.5 x 2 inch remote. Unfortunately, the remote works for many features, but not for others, and less than intuitive navigation makes things unnecessarily complicated. The most glaring example of this problem is with the SoundBridge’s greatly convenient “source” button located behind the radio’s conveniently big snooze button. You hit the source button till you reach you guessed it! the music supply of your choice. If you want AM radio, you tap the button till “AM Radio” appears on the radio’s display. Pretty simple, and just how it should be. But, if you’re using the remote you have to hit the “home” button, which then leads you to a navigation level that’s reliant upon the level you’re starting at. If you’re listening to AM radio, as an example, and you want Internet Radio, the remote requires that you click some number of times through two extra navigation levels to make the switch. And there are other alike problems with the remote configuration and navigation. Call us spoiled, but this may be a drag. Is it a deal breaker? Not by a long shot. The SoundBridge Radio is the 1st dedicated Wi Fi radio that has the capability to serve your digital music collection, and it does it with a performance and convenience that should most listeners. But at this price, and with thousands of examples of designed remote appliances to draw from, we could liked these issues not to have been issues. Pros: Wirelessly delivers digital music and Internet radio from your PC or Mac Linear magnetic speakers and woofers offer excellent sound performance Alarm clock functions feature big, easy to access buttons and some number of alarm alternatives, as well as Internet radio and digital music wake up Cons: badly integrated remote control and hard navigation Internet radio stations somewhat hard to configure

PlaysForSure compatibility plays downloaded music files from matched music resources, like MSN Music, Musicmatch, MusicNow, Napster, and more matched with MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV and AIFF music files and Internet radio stations not matched with songs downloaded from Apple iTunes Music Store protected AAC files AM/FM tuner SD card slot

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 6:04 am and is filed under Networking. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.