Logitech Squeezebox Boom review

Logitech Squeezebox Boom Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Reviewed on: 17 September 2008

You can add the RSS feeds of your favourite podcasts to the SqueezeCenter by pasting their URLs into the appropriate box. All of your shows and their episodes are instantly browsable through the Boom. It's really that simple. Within minutes we had our own Crave Podcast streaming in MP3, and Leo Laporte's TWiT in AAC.

Like the Squeezebox Duet before it, the Boom supports the most comprehensive list of audio formats we've ever seen in a networked streamer. MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, WMA (unprotected only) and OGG are supported natively by the hardware, and AAC, Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless, APE, MPC and WavPack are automatically transcoded on-the-fly by SqueezeCenter when accessed. Protected iTunes Store downloads will not play, and neither will WMA files from Napster -- check out the updated Sonos system if this is a critical requirement. But DRM-free downloads from iTunes Plus play fine. Common playlist files, such as M3U, are also supported via SqueezeCenter.

Performance
Logitech could easily have made such a comprehensive and customisable ecosystem of hardware and software extremely confusing. But it hasn't. Both the Boom's interface and the SqueezeCenter software are cleanly presented and simple to operate. As far as networked streaming systems go, they don't come any more accessible than this.

And it sounds great, too. We were surprised how capable the 30W Boom was as a standalone music system. Its speakers produce a loud, powerful sound, with decent character and detail. There's no doubt that audiophiles with a decent hi-fi in their living room would be far better buying the speaker-less Squeezebox Duet, but for kitchens, bedrooms and smaller living rooms of non-audiophiles, it's well-suited.

A fairly slim form factor makes the Boom suitable to many rooms around the house

Floor-shaking bass from something this size is never going to happen, but a hit of 50 Cent and Pendulum proved there's enough 'boom' to satisfy most bedrooms. Ingrid Michaelson's beautiful, passionate voice flowed nicely from the Boom's four speaker drivers. It's not the warmest sound in speaker history, or a sound with the most extended treble, but for such a capable and affordable system, we're nothing but pleased with its audio performance.

Podcasts, too, were simple to access once added into SqueezeCenter. And there was only a slight delay when trying to play files the Boom had to have converted on our PC before being played, such as Apple Lossless. It encodes progressively, so your songs start playing within a couple of seconds, even though the rest of the song is still being transcoded.

A small remote offers up all the functions available on the Boom itself

We had the Boom working over Wi-Fi, and hidden, encrypted and unencrypted networks are supported. Bear in mind that if your network requires Web-based authentication (this is common within offices), you'll need the Boom's MAC address adding to your network's safe list in order for it to access Wi-Fi. You can always use Ethernet though, as mentioned earlier, and both 10Mbps and 100Mbps lines are compatible. IP addresses and network configurations are automatically handled for you.