2. Features

The SoundBridge is one of a new class of small, fanless devices designed to connect to your local network and stream music from an external source to either your stereo or to powered speakers. Support is provided for quite a number of external music sources including iTunes, the daap protocol, the UPnP protocol, the SlimServer music server, many Internet radio stations, Microsoft Media Player, and Microsoft Media Connect.

The device can decode mp3, wav, wma, aiff, and non-protected aac files. Note that If you've purchased music from the iTunes music store, you'll need to convert to a supported format such as mp3 before the SoundBridge can play it. On the other hand, music purchased through a service using Microsoft's Media DRM 10 (now indicated via the "plays for sure" logo) will play directly.

Update 11/27/2004 For hooking the SoundBridge up to the network, support is provided for 10 Mbps Ethernet or, with the higher end models, an included 802.11b wireless card. Note that although 11b's slower data rate is fine for music streaming, a wireless SoundBridge's connection to an 802.11g-based wireless LANs will cause all other clients associated with the same access point to slow to accomodate it. On the music output side, connections are provided for analog stereo, optical digital or coax digital. All these connection options are shown in Figure 1 (courtesy of Roku).

In order to decode all of the various formats that it supports, the SoundBridge needs a bit of processing power and memory. Internally the device uses a Analog Devices 400Mhz Blackfin DSP processor and 16 megaBytes of RAM along with a 24-bit digital analog converter.

Figure 1: Ends of SoundBridge with caps removed

The general design of the unit is a bit different than the other types of home-network appliances you'll find in your local store. Instead of a basic book or pizza-box shape, the SoundBridge is a silver and black cylinder with a small stand to rest on.

The M1000 unit I used for this review was the smaller of the two available sizes, measuring in at 10 inches wide by 2.5 inches high and deep. With its tube shape, it's just a bit smaller than a tennis-ball can. Both ends of the unit have removable caps covering the ports where all cables are plugged in. A cut-out on the back of the each end cap is provided for feeding cables behind the unit.

Figure 2: SoundBridge M2000

The most striking feature of the box is its large, bright, vacuum-fluorescent display. The high-end M2000 model (Figure 2) comes with a 12 inch display, while the lower-end M1000 models sport a 7 inch display. The larger display allows up to four lines of text, the smaller display supports two.

A configuration menu allows selection of two different font sizes for display. I found that the small font was really unusable from more than a few feet away, so I switched to the larger of the two fonts for reading across the room. However, with the large font, the display was limited to displaying a single line of text at a time. The displays on both models allow bit-mapped graphics. This means that in addition to text, arbitrary graphics such as an equalizer can be displayed.

As far as price, however, these units aren't cheap. The high-end model, the M2000, retails for $499. The wireless M1000 that I had for review sells for $249 and the M1000 model without wireless goes for $199.