New Adventures in Wi-Fi Hi-Fi

After several months of subjection to highly-effective co-worker peer pressure, I caved and bought a ROKU SoundBridge. Man - I might need to fold to peer pressure more often. This $200 device is a small wonder. It's a music server that streams music files or Internet radio over your network - wired or using wireless-B - and hooks to a receiver or set of speakers. There are plenty of other devices to hook your iPod to a home receiver, but this approach takes the iPod out of the mix.

Setup was relatively breezy. You enter your wi-fi network's SSID into the SoundBridge, and then, if you're using encryption, the hex or ASCII value of your network's passphrase. The SoundBridge finds your network and updates its OS to the latest version.

Then, if you're using iTunes, you just share your entire library or selected playlists, and the SoundBridge finds it. iTunes has to be running for your library to be visible to SoundBridge. While it's playing, the SoundBridge LED displays song, artist, and year data from the ID3 tags, or data from the stream if you're listening to Internet radio.

The device is much smaller than I had expected, allowing the UI to show two lines of data and an EQ. Navigating the UI can be kind of a pain, but having a remote makes it tolerable, and it also has a Web console for navigation and setting up favorite Internet radio streams. It's great to be able to get to Virgin Radio, and the local NPR affiliate has just added a digital-radio-and-Web-only stream of AAA that I'm looking forward to hearing.

My music files are mostly MP3 and AAC. The SoundBridge plays them fine, but won't play DRM-protected AAC files purchased from iTunes Music Store. I ended up creating a Smart PlayList in iTunes to filter audiobooks and podcasts from my library, since those are no fun to shuffle in between Jellyfish and Kaiser Chiefs.

My complaints are really just quibbles. The SoundBridge is unaware of what's actually playing in iTunes. If it could synchronize with the content playing in iTunes, then I may be able to fill the house with music. I also think that since it's a wireless-B device on my wireless-G network, any other devices connected to my network would only connect at B, but I may be wrong about that. Since our piece o' junk laptop is the only other wireless device in the house, I can live with that. Oh, and maybe the next generation could have a color screen for album art or visualizations.

As far as fidelity - at the end of the day, you're still streaming a 160-bit MP3 file. But at least it's in your living room!