Squeezebox

[Norm]

I've been hearing gradually more and more about high-quality digital servers over the past 18 months, and even more in recent weeks. I've seen that there is some past discussion here and there of the Squeezebox on the forum, but I'm wondering if any owners of this device could comment a bit more on their use of it.

Has it along with DAC completely replaced your stand alone high-end CD player or do you use it in a different room / office , as a complementary unit rather than the main source for your music listening? And in a related vein, aside from the obvious convenience factor, do you find the the sound quality to genuinely rival the CDP / Turntable you were using before (or still continue to use in a different audio rig)?

Finally, do you still purchase CDs or have you switched primarily to downloading?

[Rupertdacat]

I have three squeezeboxes in my home. One in the office and one in each of two bedrooms. The squeezebox is a wonderful device that allows for playing of music stored on one's hard-drive, and for playing music streams from on-line radio stations and music services. The squeezebox is about convenience. It can't hold a candle to the modified Esoteric DV50S multi-purpose digital player in my main music system. Likewise, downloaded compressed audio files are no substitute for well mastered CDs of well recorded music. There is increasing availability of high resolution audio files for downloading and these can be the source of very high quality audio playback, but, IMO, not through a squeezebox or squeezebox/DAC combination.