Tonight I retired my faithful SoundBridge 1001 which gave me a lot of pleasure for 2 years. Alas, the electrical noise introduced in the sound (digital from A to Z!!! what the heck is that all about???) had gotten unbearable, even after the "power regulator" had improved the situation to the point of being nearly unnoticeable for a few months.

So I am a bit sad, but I now have a SqueezeBox Duet. OK so far. Sound is MUCH better (in the sense that it now sound like a CD without all that weird noise!) and it is nice to have artwork and text on the remote for my 40-year old, diabetes dammaged eyes. By I have to admit browsing is much slower (2-8 times slower depending on caching) than with the soundbridge. Still worth it, though. Just an adjustment period, I guess.

Now for the funny story (there had to be one!).
After I set everything up (with the controller in its charging craddle), I was a bit annoyed that the slightest movement made the controller reboot. In any case, I re-packed everything for the recycling bing. I was about to bring the packing down into the container downstairs, but decided to be lazy. An hour earlier, I had been a bit puzzled that the first intructions on the installation manual was about battery replacement. Usually that is put in a "troubleshooting" section. Then I got re-intrigued by the constrant "rebooting" of the controller. I picked it back up (after one hour charging) and the thing went dead on me. Hm... I opened it... No battery!!!! I scrambled towards the garbage and... found the battery! It had looked like a sticker so I had not paid attention to it! I very nearly threw away the battery!

So now it doesn't reboot all the time! It's a pretty cool streamer. A bit expensive, but well built. The controller itself has a 1/8" jack that gives an alright line out for a headphone amp (I tried it). That might avoid me to buy a second receiver station for my bedroom.

Anyway, this was just to share my sadness for the dismissal my beloved SoundBride and to welcome its more-than-adequate replacement!

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