Squeezing a little more from a Logitech Touch

BrumjamBrumjam
edited February 2012 in Digital
As I touched  B-) upon in another thread I have recently acquired a Logitech Squeezebox Touch.  Curiosity got the better of me and I want to see how it stacks up against my Sonos and Mac into the Weiss.

It's just come back from being pimped by Fidelity Audio who have installed their level 1 upgrade which includes a new clock and a handful of Oscon capacitors.  The stock SMPS has been replaced with a linear supply from Mark Grant.  I know there is much debate on other forums about whether a linear supply makes any difference to the Touch - time will tell over the next few weeks.

In addition to these hardware changes I've also installed a set of software changes from a long running thread on the slim devices forum.  From what I can gather this is primarily aimed at killing non-essential processes which 'might' impact on sound quality.

The Touch is connected to my network via ethernet and I'm using my MBP as the Squeezebox server.

It's too early to comment on the sound quality after the hardware changes but here are my initial impressions pre the hardware mods:

 - In standard form it is a very high quality digital transport.  I had trouble distinguishing between it and my MBP (running Audivarna+).  
 - Last week it was available on Amazon for £135 which makes it an absolute steal.
 - Judged purely on sound quality (pre hardware mods remember) it's clearly better than my Sonos ZP80.  The Sonos is not even close.
 - The user interface is just about acceptable, but not up to the standards of the Sonos software.
 - Wireless stability during streaming is not a patch on the Sonos.
 - Overall the Touch software and the way it interacts with the Squeezebox server (the software running on my Mac) is not as stable as the Sonos system.  It frequently hangs, the server stops and I find myself reaching for the power cable to restore order by rebooting it.

I'm sure given time I will understand and overcome the software 'features'.  So long as it can at least keep pace with my Mac in the sound quality stakes I'll be happy.  Using the Mac I find myself forever trying different software, tweaking settings and generally spending more time with software than the music.  With the Touch, I think that I now have it fully pimped  B-) on the software and hardware front.  All that's left to do now is load up a Natalie Merchant album, charge my glass with vintage port, sit back and see how it sounds.


Comments

  • AlanAlan
    Such a great idea this. As is Apple.... as ever, real world living-with-it experience is different from the ideal, it seems!

    Keep us posted James, if it outclasses (or at least equals) a MAC (once you figure out how to reliably run it) then I might be very interested.
  • BrumjamBrumjam
    For the last couple of days I hadn't been able to work out why I could hear a metallic ringing sound on high frequencies through the Touch on both digital outputs.  The same files sounded fine through firewire.  After a few hours fretting that the hardware mods were to blame, I finally realised that the DAC202 clock source was set to 'Internal', which is fine for firewire, but not for the other inputs.  It has to be aligned to the relevant digital input, so now that I have the input set to RCA and the clock source set to RCA all is well  :)  The pesky Weiss is too damn clever sometimes.
  • BrumjamBrumjam
    Tonight I've setup Squeezebox server on my Netgear ReadyNAS Duo.  It's currently in the process of scanning my music library.

    The internet radio works fine.  I've yet to figure out how to run Spotify and Napster without my Macbook being swtiched on - looks like it should be possible to stream from the NAS server.  Must be a setting somewhere that I've missed.

    For me the acid test will be how responsive the Touch is when browsing music on my NAS.  If it's quick then I may just have a replacement for my Mac as a music server.

    One of the staff radio picks 'TSF' Jazz Paris' is currently streaming - never mind the music, I want to meet the rather attractive sounding Parisienne host 
    :x
  • BrumjamBrumjam
    It took two hours for the Touch to scan my music library.   Although not as quick as the Sonos in terms of navigating my music files, the Touch is quick enough for my needs.  Therefore the Touch will be my primary source from this point forward.  A good result given what it cost (even with upgrades).
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