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Media centre PC‘s and standalone PC‘s to serve music are all well and good. Unfortunately, their use generally depends on a bit of technical know-how and a fair bit of fiddling with extra kit. It’s just never a seamless experience. With a wireless network already blanketing 90% of the house, I decided to try out a gadget that I’ve been eyeing for some time: a Squeezebox. Now owned by Logitech and probably one of the few worthy Sonos competitors, I favour the Squeezebox primarily for its Logitech branding and a more reasonable price point.

Availability of the Squeezebox products is somewhat limited – with little to choose from, I selected the Squeezebox Boom.

In simple terms, the Boom is an attractive, black box featuring speakers on either end and a control panel midsection. In contrast to the Squeezebox Radio, there is no colour screen – no album art can be displayed. Whilst that initially may seem like a disadvantage, the Boom‘s green, text-only display is very functional. There’s no need to view album art the size of a matchbox from 10m away – it’s the sound that matters.

The box contains the Squeezebox Boom, a remote control with a battery included, power adapter and 3.5mm connector cable. If you have any thoughts of taking the Boom with you, a handy protective pouch is provided, though the unit is on the heavy side and you’ll need to remember the power adapter. Without a network and Internet connection, the Squeezebox is of little use. In this mode, it functions as an amplifier for a music source connected by the 3.5mm cable. When connected to a wired or wireless network, however, the functionality of this music device comes to the fore.

It starts with the setup, which is seamless and absolutely first-rate. Prior to starting up the device, I downloaded and installed the SqueezeCenter software on the iMac. This service collates music from iTunes and interacts with Logitech‘s SqueezeNetwork. Signing up is free – I entered my user name and password into the SqueezeCenter, then allowed the service to run through my 300GB iTunes music library. SqueezeCenter also runs on Linux and Windows and is able to serve music files from a variety of sources.

The Boom will live in the kitchen. There’s no wired network connection there, so I decided to try out the wireless connection. After plugging the unit into the power adapter, I watched the Squeezebox Boom go through its setup routine. It’s all automated and the process of entering values using only the dial or remote control unit a no-brainer. By way of DHCP, the unit obtains an IP address. The only other requirement is to enter the IP address of the iMac serving the music and running the SqueezeCenter. A reboot after updating its firmware meant the Boom was ready for service in an area with a wireless signal strength of less than 30%.

First off, I selected an MP3 from the iTunes library. Good sound quality and immediate response. The same when selecting a playlist. The Boom provides a number of onboard features, the creation of ad-hoc playlists being one. Searching for artists and titles is intuitive and easy: scroll through possible entries and enter text one letter at a time by turning the dial or the buttons on the remote. One feature I miss is the ability to play Audible books. That playlist doesn’t show up on the player. I guess issues with the DRM preclude this, but it would be a great addition to the Squeezebox. What amazed me most was the instant access and clear reproduction of Internet radio stations. A host of presets featuring radio stations across the world is provided, selectable from the menu. In all cases, I experienced no lag and no buffering – all radio stations played clearly and without a hitch.

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SpeckyBoy has a collection of music album covers recreated using Lego. A sample of two of my favourites:

recreating this one by Oasis:

And Moby‘s Play

from the original cover art

See more of them here.

It’s taken them quite some time, but Nokia has finally launched a localized version of its online music store. That’s stolen the march on Apple, whose iTunes Store is still not available in our territory and it requires a bit of deft manipulation and a white lie or two to access their US-based online store.

To get cracking with the Nokia online store, the Nokia Music application has to be downloaded and installed. Running a Mac or Linux? Then you’re out of luck. Even Windows users will require at least XP with SP2 to be able to run Nokia Music. In keeping with the style of the Nokia desktop software, the application looks good and is easy to use and operate. It requests to associate music files and offers to import your existing media for easy transfer to your device.

It’s very much iTunes-like. I redeemed my ZAR 200 voucher graciously donated by Nokia and had a look around…

Of course, a good question to ask is what devices you can use to play back your music purchases. Since this is the Nokia Music store, you should expect nothing less than support for Nokia mobile phones. Even so, the list of compatible devices is rather limited – my E90 is not shown as being supported, for example. A list of compatible devices can be found here. That’s where compatibility ends – the application warns that no other devices enjoy support, so don’t buy credits if you own an iPod or any other MP3 player.

Sadly, tracks are not free of DRM. At a time when MP3 files sans DRM can be purchased through Amazon and when even Apple has capitulated and is offering audio files without protection technology, Nokia is lagging behind. Even worse, it’s Microsoft DRM technology which one should be wary of in any case: their Play-for-Sure technology limited users to a tiny subset of supported devices and even then didn’t play for sure. DRM makes it difficult to transfer tracks to another device, required registration and is a bit of a headache. Of course, the tried and tested method of burning tracks to a CD and then importing them again can always be used and this should be considered a part of your backup strategy if you intend investing money in purchasing music tracks from the Nokia Music Store.

The price of music tracks is not exactly something to write home about: ZAR 10 per track or ZAR 100 for an entire album. Though the price for an entire album is probably cheaper than a physical CD, you’ll be missing out on a physical piece of media that you can rip and play on any device as well as having a backup of the music you purchased. ZAR 100 for a downloaded album is just too expensive, in my opinion. Make a track cost ZAR 5 or less and you have a deal – that should bring the album cost down to ZAR 50 and is far more reasonable. The music giants still seem intent on making more cash than they deserve…customers will vote with their money (or their torrent downloads).

The Nokia music store launched earlier today and you can download the desktop application from here.

Die Blou Hond in Linden is a great venue that offers local music and a dinner at a reasonable price. Last night, we finally got to see Arno Carstens live. Live as in 1m away from our table, and what a performance it was.

Arno had help from Albert Frost, himself a very accomplished guitarist and together they played a number of Springbok Nude Girls and Carstens‘ solo songs. I have never seen two guys play their guitars as furiously as these two, and with so much enthusiasm.

Do yourself a favour and check out the upcoming shows at Die Blou Hond. It’s a unique experience.

Tonight, Goldfish plays at The Venue in Melrose Arch. Tickets cost ZAR 150 and should be available at the door, though I suggest you phone to verify that.

Great musicians who provide some excellent entertainment and make world-class music! See you there!

Having spent the last few days in Cape Town, we’ve been exposed to some great South African music talent. First up, the fantastic duo under the name of Goldfish. Both their current and older album are really enjoyable. This falls under the label Electronica, so you’ll know whether or not to give it a listen based on that categorization.

The warm-up act at the Goldfish concert on Friday night at Spier was a small outfit with the name jacSharp.

This is Pop, but similarly listenable.

Support South African music: there is some great music out there you may not yet have heard!