I just wanted to take a second to tell you about my new clock radio! I’ve been waking up to this thing for the past two mornings and I’m here to tell you — it’s fantastic! I’m in love with the slick look, not to mention the incredible sound that comes out of this beast!
This is the new Logitech Squeezebox Boom. It’s an Internet radio that works through your home WiFi hotspot or a wired Ethernet connection to your LAN. It packs 30 watts of stereo power for deep bass and lots of dynamic range. It has a nice size digital clock with auto-dimming. I had been using the C Crane Internet radio before, but it’s no match for this!
The price is a bit high, averaging around $275 or so, but I think it’s well worth every penny. The setup Wizard is easy to use. I had it working in about five minutes, which immediately gave me access to thousands of stations, Pandora, Rhapsody, Sirius, Last.fm, Slacker, MP3Tunes, RadioTime, RadioIO, and even a super connection to all the stuff in my iTunes library, including my playlists. It plays a whole bunch of file formats, like MP3, M4A, M4P, WMA, FLAC, AAC, AIFF, and others.
I set up an account on the SqueezeNetwork website, downloaded the SqueezeCenter software for the Mac (it also works with Windows), then added MusicMaster Oldies as a custom station. It claimed to be pre-configured for all the Live365 stations, but I haven’t found them yet. If they’re not there, I’m certainly going to send them a suggestion to add them to the default setup. No matter. It was easy enough to add MusicMaster Oldies.
The alarm clock was easy to set up and it works perfectly. There’s even a snooze bar on top that doubles as a Sleep button at night. It has a battery backup, and even changes automatically to a beeper if the Internet station you set is not available. There’s a remote control, too, but I’ve always thought those were a little strange for a bedside radio. Still, I know at least one person who puts their clock radio on a dresser across the room, so I guess some people use the remote.
I’ll be adding all my favorite terrestrial radio stations so I can keep tabs on all my friends in the business. It looks like I can add as many as I want, but I know I’m going to fill up all the pushbuttons by the end of the day! MusicMaster Oldies is on button number one. I’ll let you know who ends up winning a spot on all the other buttons!
That's awesome! I never wanted to get an internet radio because I figured I could just get my stations on the computer. But I never thought about the possibility of waking up to them. The only problem is, I might end up laying in bed all morning waiting to hear if the next song is going to be as good as the last!
Wow, good guess. That's exactly what I do most mornings!
By the way, I finally found the setup screen where you enter all your login and password combinations. This lets me access all the Live365 stations through the directory. I'm still a bit confused by the way the "networks" are arranged. I've begun using the Squeezebox network and now I'm getting everything I want. Maybe I'll eventually figure out why the radio needs to be organized the way it is.