The original Squeezebox was made by Slim Devices until the company was acquired by Logitech last year. It was a handy solution for streaming audio from your computer to your home stereo system. With the Squeezebox Duet, Logitech's first update to the original, the company takes the device to new heights with a slicker design and added capabilities. The box itself is much more compact and loses its screen, making the remote, with its bright and colorful 2.4-inch LCD, the star of the show. iTunes users as well as Rhapsody and Pandora fiends—and even fans of Slacker Internet radio—can stream from their online accounts to their home stereo systems sans computer. Audio playback quality is strong, with very few defects resulting from streaming, but the device is not without issues. The worst is an incredibly big lag time between pressing some remote-control buttons (Volume, for example) and their respective responses. Still, the cool outweighs the bad here. Especially for those lacking the budget for a pricey Sonos system, the Squeezebox is a more affordable alternative.

As with the Sonos ZonePlayer 80 and other wireless music transmitters, like Creative Technology's Xdock and X-Fi receivers, you're going to need your own speakers, and ideally, you can route the output of the Squeezebox into a stereo receiver. The box itself measures 0.9 by 6.2 by 4.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 8.8 ounces. It uses 802.11g Wi-Fi and comes with a power adapter. Since it's so small, it's easy to hide behind just about any component or television once it's set up. The flashy part of the system is the remote control, with its big, bright screen for displaying album art. The 6.5-by-2-by-0.7-inch, rectangular baton-style controller comes with its own charger and is equipped with minimal buttons, a scroll wheel, and a user interface that's far easier to navigate than many you'll find on average portable media players. (Hmm? Why doesn't Logitech make one of those?)

Once you've installed the new Squeezebox software, SqueezeCenter version 7 (an upgrade from SlimServer, the original Slim Device–designed software,), the setup process is simple and straightforward. Obviously, you'll need a wireless network; I had no issues finding my Wi-Fi network, entering the password, and getting connected with the remote.

After setup is complete, you can access the music library of any computer connected to the wireless network. The SqueezeCenter software also can access music in iTunes, but only non-DRM files (your own unprotected files or iTunes Plus songs, not the standard AAC files you buy at the iTunes store). That said, file support is a strong point and includes MP3, unprotected AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP2, MusePack, WMA, Apple Lossless, FLAC, WMA Lossless, AIFF, WAV, and PCM. The system can also access the online music services via the SqueezeNetwork, without communicating with a computer—so your PC doesn't need to be powered on to peruse your Rhapsody accounts, and fans of Pandora and Slacker Internet radio can check out their stations via the remote as well. It just takes a quick initial registration of your account on the PC-based SqueezeCenter software. SqueezeNetwork also offers a variety of Internet radio content, ranging from basic channels to Live365, Sirius Internet radio, and RadioTime, to name a few.

Another cool feature: The open-platform, open-source, standards-based system allows users to design custom "plug-ins" such as artist bios and album reviews and share them.

Plug-ins are available at wiki.slimdevices.com and offer the ability to truly customize your system. The possibility of a plug-in damaging your player is almost nil, since the open-source system requires that users meet a set of rigid standards in order to create plug-ins. It should be noted, however, that many of the current plug-ins were designed for the old version of the Squeezebox, when the display was a simple screen on the box and not the remote, so it may take a while for the user base to adapt to the new system.

The audio outputs on the box are stereo RCA, and two digital outs—one optical and one coaxial. There's also an Ethernet connection for wired (and speedier) network access, but the whole point of this system is its wireless capabilities, so this is not necessarily useful unless you're downloading, say, a large software update.

Sound quality is going to be determined by the quality of the files you're playing. Lossless files from your library are going to sound a lot better than Slacker's online content. The streaming process, however, does not produce nearly as many sound defects as one might expect. I experienced neither the stutter nor the poor audio quality often associated with some wireless streaming. Audio quality here is comparable to streaming music on the Apple TV.

The system is expandable: Controllers and receivers are also sold separately. You can add a receiver for $150 (the controller on its own is $300), and the receivers can work independent of each other but access the same library, meaning you can play two different songs in different rooms from the same iTunes account.

As I mentioned earlier, the remote has some issues. The slow response time is bearable when dealing with activities such as selecting a song on Rhapsody: You'll need to wait a few seconds, but there aren't any dire consequences. The volume control lag is a different story. If you raise the volume significantly and hear no immediate results in, say, 4 seconds, you're likely to try raising it again. The lag is so long, however—about 6 seconds—that when I tried it, both increases registered, but very slowly. Because of this, raising the volume twice in a couple of seconds can result in extremely loud sound levels (or extremely low if you're lowering it), so finding the right listening volume can be a bit of a struggle. Updating the remote's software didn't fix the problem. This is a shame, because otherwise the remote is top-notch, with well-designed graphics, ergonomic controls, and thoughtful extra features. (When sitting idle, for instance, the screen displays a clock).

It's clear that Sonos is concerned about the Squeezebox Duet. The company sent a document to members of the press comparing the two systems and highlighting the plusses of its ZonePlayer. Sonos makes some valid points. For one, a multiroom Squeezebox Duet setup consumes a lot of Internet bandwidth. Every time you add a box, you slow down the Internet connection, because each box downloads its own stream. Sonos uses far less bandwidth in a multiroom scenario. The other differences are more nitpicky, but the bottom line is that Sonos is a more elegant and refined multiroom wireless audio setup. It will also run you $1,000 for a starter set—a price high enough to scare away a large number of potential consumers. (Granted, for this price, you'd get a two room setup.) That's what makes the Squeezebox Duet, despite its limitations, such an attractive option. For about $400, you still get much of the same basic functionality. Let's hope that Logitech finds a way to fix the slow remote. Apart from that, the high rating reflects the fact that the Squeezebox Duet is affordable and that its pros greatly outweigh its worst flaw.