Pinnacle Soundbridge HomeMusic

I recently bought one of these from Ebay marketplace seller "Transaction One" and it was delivered very promptly.

It was very easy to set up and get working. I have it connected to a stereo in my lounge, which is directly under the bedroom where the wireless router is situated, and it works fine there. I have not tried it further form the router so can't comment on the wireless range.

After connecting it up and switching it on, it immediately found my wireless network and asked me to key in the password. There is a bit of fiddling around with the remote to change from upper to lowercase and vice versa when entering the password and this is not covered in the quickstart guide, but it's not really a problem. After I had entered the password, it asked me if I would like to download the latest software, which I did. This took a couple of minutes.

I did this before I set mp PC up to share audio files, so the Soundbridge then displayed a message saying "no libraries found" and then displayed another message which suggested that it could not find any libraries due to there being a connection problem to the network, probably due to the password being entered incorrectly. I knew this was not the case as it had successfully connected to the internet through the router when it downloaded the latest software. I mention this in case the error message confuses anyone.

I then sorted the PC out. I discovered that the simplest way to enable it to stream music files to the Soundbridge was to upgrade to Windows Media Player 11, as this has the necessary sharing software (or whatever the technical term is!) built in. The other option is to install Microsoft Connect, but on visiting the Microsoft website I found this software is no longer available, as this function is built into WMP 11. (The quickstart guide talks about Windows Connect, but be aware you just need WMP 11 and nothing else.)

So I upgraded to WMP 11, and then set it to search for any devices to share files to. It could not find any. So I then selected "share to any device that requests files" (WMP warns not to do this) and it immediately found the Soundbridge. I then ticked the box to share to that device, and changed the settings back so as not to "share to any device that requests". (I mention this purely in case anyone else has trouble setting up their PC to share media files. It sounds a pain, but it actually only took me about 2 minutes to get set up.)

Since then, I have been listening to the audio fles stored on my PC through the Soundbridge, and I am very impressed.

Being able to listen to internet radio stations even when the PC is switched off is an added bonus, although there only seem to be a few stations stored in the memory. I have not investigated this, and it may be easy to add more stations for all I know.

One thing I will say is that the display on the Homemusic version of the Soundbridge isn't all that big, and consequently you usually can't see the whole filename of a track without waiting for it to scroll across from the right. This slows your browsing for files down somewhat, as you can't continue to scroll down a list of files until you have waited for each one to scroll accross the screen so you can read it! I am using mine to play through playslists stored in WNP on the PC, so it is not really a problem for me. But it might be an issue for anyone who wants to search for particular files on their PC. So that said, I can see the appeal of the more expensive Soundbridge models with the larger displays.

Overall, the Soundbridge Homemusic is easy to set up, works well and is good value for money. Also, it's a small discrete unit and should not look out of place in most living rooms.

Having searched for a wireless MP3 player that would simply access files on my samba share, to no avail. I lowered my targets and accepted the concept of streaming software on my PC.

Fortunately Roku sponsor the FireFly media server project (previously known as mt-daapd). There's a ubuntu 7.04 package for this, so installation was trivial. Simply configure the server with the directory containing your music, firefly then indexes and shares it with mdns-sd (bonjour). Take care pick a server name compatible with DNS, e.g. no spaces.

Pinnacle have made some good decisions by adapting the more expensive soundbridge M1001. Both wired ethernet (with wlan bridging) and digital audio out aren't really necessary. However local storage of music via SD/MMC slot was an important feature that helped me choose this product.

I therefore have three music options:
Only local SD/MMC files: I don't need anything else turned on.
Local files + Internet radio: I only need turn on my wireless access point/broadband router.
Local files + Internet radio + PC music collection: Turn on router and PC.

The open source firefly media server also works with NAS drives, which is another way to avoid leaving the computer on permanently.

Features that I would like to have seen are:
A few buttons on the device. I don't always want to use a remote control, however I expect the full user interface would be difficult to use with a limit number of controls. I have the sound bridge in my kitchen, so I'm on my feet already. Using the remote is a hindrance, perhaps volume up/down, fwd/back and pause would be sufficient.

Fast Forward/Rewind.
There is skip to next/previous track. However there is no ff/rwd within a track. I expect this could be addressed via a software upgrade. Hopefully Roku will add this feature.

Overall, the product met my expectations and I'm recommending it to my friends.

As a Mac user I was interested to see how this product performed as most of the other reviews on the site were for PC or Linux.

After powering up the unit and inputting my WEP pass keys the soundbridge connected to my wifi network no problem. It then went about downloading the latest set of software updates, this took about 5 minutes. After this the unit rebooted and was ready for business.

I then needed to install the firefly server on both users on my Mac. I could then connect to both users music libraries and play my music and podcasts no problems. I really think this is an excellent device, especially considering the low price. However be warned it wont play any music downloaded from the iTunes store due to DRM issues. I will now be back to buying my music on CD as I think this is a bit of a con.

I hadnt considered the Internet radio side of this device until I plugged it in. But this is an excellent service opening up thousands of radio stations playing all kinds of music and other programmes, a superb bonus.

I am now considering buying another for the living room (thats if the wife will let me!).