Performance

The OpenSqueeze is fairly interesting once you set it up, which can be somewhat troublesome. The OpenSqueeze as a device provides you with very basic outputs, such as headphone-out and line-out. The device is, like its Logitech relatives, controlled through the web interface which is then mimicked by the SqueezeBox apps available for both Android and iOS. We encountered some problems with our first router, a Cisco WRT-160N; however, switching to our old and trusty WRT-54G with DD-WRT got rid of the small stuttering issues we experienced.

The sound quality of the OpenSqueeze is definitely comparable to that of the original. As a source, it is detailed and linear and sounds very clean. Perhaps not the best pairing for something that aims to reproduce high quality audio, although it works just fine for the OpenSqueeze, the power is supplied by a small USB adapter. We hooked it up to a qualitatively better power supply and did not notice any differences in sound quality, which is great because it shows that the device is not overly sensitive to power conditioning.

The OpenSqueeze is close to the ODAC, the cheapest well-sounding DAC out there, but you might find the sound quality a little lacking if you plan on using the OpenSqueeze in combination with a high-end headphone setup, as while the old SqueezeBox from Logitech had S/PDIF, which allowed you to upgrade the DAC in the signal chain, doing so here is not an option. You may be limited to what is on-board, but the OpenSqueeze is still a very nice-sounding device.

The OpenSqueeze is more than good enough not to bottleneck my current living-room setup consisting of an upgraded Marantz 1090 amplifier and modified B&O bookshelf speakers. It is extremely easy to use the OpenSqueeze, and it brings internet radio to my ancient amplifier, which my portable speaker and phone configuration lacks.

The OpenSqueeze is much like its Logitech relatives: a device of convenience and a successful one at that.

One of the OpenSqueeze's major nuisances is that it does not feature wireless connectivity per default. You have to add a LAN to WLAN device, which can be troublesome.