Large collections of digital music are becoming increasingly common and media streaming devices tending to be jacks-of-all trades, masters of none. They focus has been on the sexy business of streaming video.  Asa result, these systems tend not to do other media - audio in particular - full justice. But some products have bucked the trend, choosing to stream audio and audio alone, and the one of the most successful in the past couple of years have been Slim Devices Squeezebox 3.   Logitech's Squeezebox Duet is an easy-to-use network music streamer that supports a wide range of music file formats and has a great online service.  The only things that might stop it from being perfect is the lack of digital rights management (DRM) compatibility. The Duet name refers to the two key components of the system. The iPod-esque remote control is the brains of the operation, with a brilliant, glossy colour screen and a circular control wheel.  The receiver is designed to hide away in an A/V rack or behind some powered speakers, with its features accessed through the remote.

The Squeezebox Duet is an altogether different beast to the original Squeezebox, which was a product more in the mould of traditional hi-fi component, albeit it a fairly forward-looking one. The main unit, incorporating a gorgeously clear and luminous vacuum fluorescent display, for our tests was hooked up directly to the hi-fi controlled via the infrared remote.

The Duet, however, sees the Squeezebox split into two parts. The Receiver deals with the business of streaming audio - over 802.11bg Wi-Fi or Ethernet - receiving data and converting it into a signal your hi-fi or powered speakers can understand. On its rear are stereo phono outputs for this very purpose, and also both types of digital output - optical and coaxial - so you can bypass the Receiver's DAC electronics and use a stand alone DAC or your home theatre amp's decoder circuitry. Either way, it gives you huge flexibility.

The receiver has the necessary outputs on its rear: two analogue RCA audio connectors along with optical and coaxial digital outputs. An Ethernet port is also included for a wired connection to your  network, if necessary.  Of course it has the inbuilt wireless network capabilities making it suitable for use in a wide range of situations.  As a bonus, the Receiver module, as with the earlier Squeezebox, can act as a wireless bridge, allowing other non-wireless devices with Ethernet ports to access your wireless network. This could save you a bundle on buying the wireless adapter for your Xbox 360 or PS3, for instance, if your AV setup is nowhere near your router and broadband connection.

The really clever stuff, however, now resides in the remote control which has gone from AA battery-powered infrared unit to something altogether more exotic. The most obvious difference is that it has a 2.4in TFT screen of its own for browsing your music library and selecting tracks from the palm of your hand. Though the original Squeezebox's display was good, this is better, and the new scroll ring control makes traversing long lists of albums and tracks simple. If we had one complaint about the Squeezebox Duet, it would be that sometimes the click wheel on the remote is too sensitive. It's not a touch-style remote like an iPod, but uses a spinning wheel and it's occasionally possible to spin it too fast to accurately scroll through lists. However, using it for a little while overcomes this initial problem and it becomes second nature.

The build quality is exemplary too: the remote has a heft that makes it feel expensive and a gloss finish that won't look out of place in even the trendiest of Grand Designs-style living rooms. There's more luxury in the form of a motion sensor, which automatically switches the screen on when you pick it up. The battery is rechargeable too - you simply drop it into the equally stylish cradle to recharge it when not in use. Perhaps the only disappointment is that the old number pad mobile phone-style text search isn't possible any more, what with no numeric keypad, but then you can't have everything.

The good news is that the new Controller and Receiver are backwards compatible with previous models, such as the Squeezebox 3 and Transporter and can be synchronised with other players too, so all devices play the same tune at once. Not only that, but the Controller can also be used to control those older devices - all you do is simply switch between them on the handset's menu. It can do this because the Controller doesn't talk directly to the Receiver, but via Wi-Fi to the server software - SqueezeCentre 7 - on your source device, which then passes instructions to the selected player.

And the features that made the previous models so usable are also still present. Unlike so many video streaming boxes, tracks can be browsed, queued and playlists created as others are playing. Tags are recognised, as is album art, and you can also browse by folder, or search by keyword if that doesn't work.

Integration with Rhapsody, and a number of other music services, such as MP3tunes Music Locker, is beautifully carried off. These services enable you, for a subscription, to search for and play back tracks from a huge vault of music direct from the remote without having to have your SqueezeCenter server turned on at all. There's also an enormous list of Internet radio stations, plus by adding the AlienBBC plugin you'll be able to access all the BBC radio stations and the corporation's 'listen again' service too.

Audio format support is superlative - another advantage over do-it-all video streaming boxes. Not only are the usual suspects played natively - WMA, MP3 and AAC - but also Musepack, MP2 and the open source Ogg Vorbis. There's wide support for lossless formats too, for the audiophile crew. Flac, Apple Lossless and WMA lossless can all be played, as well as the uncompressed formats - AIFF, WAV and PCM.

Setting it up

The receiver and remote are incredibly easy to set up; we were able to access a wireless network within seconds of configuring everything, and then we were prompted to connect to the Squeezebox itself. All in all, the setup process (including all necessary plugging in) took under 2 minutes and was not difficult.

We were then able to connect to our music storage system as well as the online SqueezeNetwork to access Internet radio. The SlimServer software that controls music files is equally easy to set up. After a quick installation, the software prompted for the location of a music database. It uses ID3 tags to distinguish between songs, artists and albums — as long as you have your music well organised, it is a breeze. We were soon able to access every single music file in the library using the controller.

Whole House Music

A huge feature of the Squeezebox Duet is its ability to be connected in multiple rooms. If you purchase additional receivers, you can control music in up to three rooms with a single remote. You can choose whether to have each room playing different music, or the same songs simultaneously. This system is intuitive and hard to fault. With no real training, we were able to get it up and running in only a few minutes, and access a vast range of music both on  and off-line.  The range of Network Attached Storage devices from both Synology and QNAP make the running of such a system a snap.

It's not a groundbreaking product: like the Sonos Digital Music System (that has been around for several years now) and the comparisons between the two are obvious.  Reading what users of both systems have said it would appear that there is a consensus that the Duet wins in relation to sound quality and price.  What the Logitech Squeezebox Duet does, it does fantastically. It's a simple and intuitive system, whether you're accessing your own music library or using online content. Apart from the lack of DRM compatibility and the slightly finicky click wheel on the remote, it does a great job.

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