Squeezebox: The world's best audio streamers, bar none

If you like music and gadgets and haven't heard of Squeezebox music streamers, go and get yourself a brew, because we want to tell you how your life could be better.

Squeezeboxes are the most exciting networked music streamers on the planet, and the guys responsible for designing them get it. They get networking, they get music, they get technology, and they get how to put all three of those together into a product. One of these is the Squeezebox Duet -- a small, immensely capable music streamer with a relentless obsession for doing everything, and doing it well.

And now there's the Squeezebox Boom -- a similar product to the Duet, only with built-in speakers. These are two products that not only hardened music streamer sceptics should be checking out, but Squeezebox's competition, too.

They operate alongside fully open-source PC, Mac and Linux media server software, developed in-house by Slim Devices, and built on MySQL. With the Squeezebox hardware, it brings to the marketplace everything we've ever wanted from many other audio streamers: extensive music format support, customisable software, integration with a huge number of online music services, and simple RSS management for podcast subscription to name just a few features.

Here at Crave, we see some amazing audio products, and plenty more with only half-baked feature sets and hardware. While Squeezebox might wrongly not be on the tip of the average techie's tongue when talking music hardware, our reviews should be a point of reference for any manufacturer producing streaming products, and any music nerd looking to do at home for music what Popcorn Hour does for video.

Check out the Squeezebox Duet and Squeezebox Boom to get a taste for what we're talking about. -Nate Lanxon