home entertainment 2007

check, I switched from Windows’
Media Connect 2.0 server program to
Roku’s Firefly open-source server program
(www.rokulabs.com/support_
sb_dwnld_firefly.php). Not having
WMC’s DRM option, Firefly could
see but not play the Jarrett tracks.
However, when I then switched back
to WMC 2.0, I managed to shut out all
of the unprotected music files I’d copied
from my favorite CDs. While I could
see the Jarrett tracks on the Sound-
Bridge’s display, all my ripped files had
disappeared. Nothing I did persuaded
the SoundBridge to recognize the other
music files on my hard drive. I felt
dumb. Then I felt dumber.
After two days of failing to solve the
problem, I e-mailed Dan Sletten,
Roku’s software engineer. He had
experienced the same problem with
WMC 2.0 shutting out unprotected
files after downloading protected
music tracks from MTV’s music store,
www.urge.com. He advised me to
drag all of my digital music files out of
my music library’s folder and onto the
laptop’s desktop, then back into my
music library again. After WMC was
first stopped, then restarted on its
“sharing” page, all of my music reappeared
on the SoundBridge’s display. I
was back in business.
Remote control and Web
control
The SoundBridge M1001 can be controlled
with its remote or through a
Web page on a PC. Either way, while
playing music through the Sound-
Bridge, you can: browse media; add
songs to a current playlist; browse by
artist, composer, or album title; fast
browse; play Internet Radio via Universal
Plug and Play (UPnP), even
when your PC is turned off; change
the display’s text sizes or brightness;
control the SoundBridge with a PDA
or Crestron system; support iTunes
Network Music sharing; and upgrade
the SoundBridge’s firmware via the
Internet. (If the firmware that controls
the SoundBridge is accidentally
corrupted, the player can be run in a
restricted Safe Mode that allows it to
download an intact copy of the
firmware from Roku.) And once a
song has begun to play, the Sound-
Bridge displays a spectrum analyzer.
When I set up the SoundBridge, I
accessed its PC Control and Web Control,
going through Windows XP’s
“My Network Places,” where I found
ROKU SOUNDBRIDGE M1001
the SoundBridge’s icon. Double-clicking
on this icon opens the SoundBridge’s
Web page (http://192.168.0.103/Sound-
Bridge.html), which is hard-coded into
the player’s firmware. This Web Control
function offers more flexibility than does
the handheld remote. For example, Web
Control includes a Stop button; the
remote doesn’t.
Then I took the SoundBridge upstairs
to my listening room and placed it atop
my Krell KRC-28 CD player. With a
1.5m length of Wireworld Starlight Digital
coaxial cable, I connected the Roku’s
S/PDIF output to the coax input of a
Bryston B100-DA integrated amplifier
and DAC. I also used my outboard
Adcom GDA-700 DAC. When I turned
on the SoundBridge, it found my WiFi
ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT
MUSIC SERVER IBM X30 laptop
with 1.2GHz Pentium 3 processor,
788MHz system board, 760MB RAM,
and 80GB hard drive running Windows
XP (v.2002, Service Pack 2).
WiFi network comprises D-Link Airplus
Extreme G DWL-G640 Wireless
108g Notebook PCMCIA adapter
with D-Link DSL-G800 AP Wireless
Range Extender. Music-server music
library: “My Music” subdirectory on
IBM X30 laptop. Music-server software:
Windows Media Connect 2.0,
Firefly, Slim Devices SlimServer.
ANALOG SOURCES Day-Sequerra
Signature 1 Reference, McIntosh MR-
78 FM tuners.
DIGITAL SOURCES Krell KRC-28 CD
player; Sony SCD-C555ES multichannel
SACD/CD player; Slim
Devices Squeezebox network music
player; Bryston B100-DA, Adcom
GDA-700 D/A converters.
PREAMPLIFIERS Bryston B100-DA,
Krell KCT, VTL TL-6.5.
POWER AMPLIFIERS Bryston 4B-
SST & B100-DA, Mark Levinson
No.334, Krell FPB-600c, VTL S-400.
LOUDSPEAKERS Quad ESL-989,
Revel Ultima Salon, Velodyne DD-18;
REL Studio III subwoofers.
CABLES Digital: Wireworld Starlight
coaxial. Interconnect: Red Rose Silver
Ones, Krell CAST, Mark Levinson Silver
single-ended, Bryston balanced.
Speaker: Ultralink Excelsior 6N OFHC,
Coincident Speaker Technology CST 1.
ACCESSORY RadioShack 33-2050
analog sound-pressure-level meter.
—Larry Greenhill
network and connected to it.
I browsed my music library using
the remote’s Home, Right, and Select
buttons. When I found the album I
wanted to hear, I pressed Play or Select.
Hitting Select brought up details about
the track playing: file format, bit rate,
and sampling rate.
Playing DRM-wrapped
music tracks
Over the two months that I used the
SoundBridge M1001, I discovered the
advantages and disadvantages of using
Windows Media Connect 2.0. The benefits
included the SoundBridge’s ability
to play DRM-wrapped files and, when I
selected an entire album, to automatically
play all of the album’s songs in the
proper order. This greatly eased listening
to all four movements of a performance
of Beethoven’s Symphony 9,
which I’d downloaded from iTunes.
The disadvantages of using the Sound-
Bridge were actually attributable to the
instability of the WMC software on my
PC. First, when I used my laptop to work
on photographs with Adobe Photoshop
or Photo Mechanic, these programs
hogged so much memory that the
SoundBridge had to interrupt a song to
rebuffer after playing only a few minutes.
Second, I had to turn off Windows XP’s
firewall before WMC 2.0 would connect
to the SoundBridge, even though I’d listed
the WMC server as an exception.
Third, I had to exit all other music
servers, including SlimServer, Napster,
Rhapsody, and Firefly, before using the
SoundBridge. Fourth, I discovered that I
couldn’t go online while the Sound-
Bridge was running, or it would stop
playing. Fifth, every so often my WiFi
network dropped its connection to my
laptop, which also stopped the music. I
began to understand why JA had been so
positive about using a music player with
a proprietary wireless distribution system,
such as the Sonos ZP80.
Playing music
To compare the SoundBridge’s analog
and digital outputs, I connected them to
the digital and analog inputs of my Bryston
B100-DA preamplifier. This allowed
me to switch almost instantaneously
between the digital stream and the output
of the SoundBridge’s internal DAC. It
me took no time at all to determine that
my downloaded WMA lossless digital
music files sounded better using the
SoundBridge’s digital output mode.
There was a decided drop in level when I
www.Stereophile.com, May 2007 73