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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Cisco-Linksys Wireless-B Music System WMLS11B | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted Cisco-Linksys Wireless-B Music System WMLS11B Reviews (cont...)Date: 2007-08-30 Frustrating, even for a techie Ok... I am not one to give up on a piece of tech, but this device from Linksys got the best of me. I purchased it against my better judgement because I REALLY DESIRED a way to play my music files in my bedroom without the constant din of a PC and the bulk of a monitor and cabinet disrupting the room. When the box arrived, I eagerly tore it open and surveyed the contents. I was very pleased with the overall construction and the size of the buttons on the remote, even though the layout of said buttons was not very intuitive. When I plugged it in and set the basic configuration, everything worked as the minimalist manual indicated. I own another Linksys product, so I was familiar with what Linksys thinks passes for a user manual. The network configuration is straightforward but the bundled music server software is hideous! I opted to D/L the Yahoo Music software, (They bought Music Match - Thank God in heaven!) although it still pretty much sucks. I had not (until today) learned that there are alternative music servers. Oh well. Read some of the other reviews for info on alternatives. Down to business. Yes, the first few hours of Internet Radio were bliss, until I tried to change to a different station. That's when the veneer began to peel up. Like another reviewer, I too was only able to listen to 2 out of 15 Internet Radio stations. Surprisingly, alot of the foreign language stations worked fine. I switched to playing my music library and ran into the "will only play one song" annoyance. I discovered that after selecting a playlist, beginning to play the first song, then pressing the repeat button twice convinces the WMLS11B to "repeat all" of my playlist songs. Ok, a work around exists. Then it happened, one of the speakers quit working, for no apparent reason. I troubleshot and sure enough, it was dead. Bummer. I checked with the seller and found out I had gone over the warranty period. Major bummer. So, I dragged the old stereo back out and plugged the audio from the WMLS11B into an aux input. Another work around. This continued for another few weeks while I tried to keep my main PC from going into sleep mode thereby stopping the flow of music and I continued to fiddle with the internet radio hopping to figure out how to make more of them work most of the time. I finally sat back and considered the muddle that I was in and decided it was too much. I would rather put up with a PC and monitor in the bedroom that works all of the time rather than continue to fuss with the cantankerous, annoyingly good looking but ultimately frustrating piece of equipment that is the Linksys WMLS11B. You might get lucky and snare a good one, you might get lucky and have a PC music server that doesn't sleep, you might get lucky and discover that all of your Internet Radio stations work or you might not be so lucky and instead join the ranks of the former owners of a Linksys WMLS11B. I sold mine CHEAP in our yard sale to some other poor sap who thought he would have a go at it. Date: 2007-07-23 Great product! Easy to use! I originally bought the Logitech Wireless Music System for PC to stream the music from my computer to elsewhere in my house, but it didn't allow me to browse my music, so I bought the WMLS11B because it does allow browsing. It took me around an hour to research and get this thing fully set up, so be ready to take some time to get this thing running. First off, DO NOT use the software that comes with this unit. You can find all the information you need about how to set up the unit, where to get the latest firmware, what music server software to use instead of the generic Linksys junk, etc. at the Yahoo group called WMLS11B ( http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wmls11b/ ). You'll have to join the group before you can browse it. First off, go to the "Files" section of the group and use the "Getting Started-New Installation Win XP.pdf" file to start the process. It should give you the information you need to set this up. Do the firmware upgrade first, then load some music server software. I personally used the Twonky Music Server (the file is "TwonkyMusicserverSetup2.9.1.exe"). It's easy to install and decently easy to use. It has lots of options and tweaks, so depending on how much time you want to spend on it, you can do lots of cool stuff. On the Twonky configuration screen, set the "contentdir" setting to the main directory where your mp3's are stored. I personally had no problems at all setting this up with the existing wireless network in our house. It's not a protected connection because we don't live near anyone, so the encryption wasn't a problem. But I took this thing in the other room, and it worked great the first time! The internet radio stations are awesome to have! There are so many of them, and they are very diverse. And the unit easily found the music from my computer and played it very well (there may have been a couple slight disruptions, nothing horrible...95% of the songs played flawlessly). As previously mentioned by another reviewer, the sound from the speakers is actually really nice. Great bass and sound, for the size of the speakers. But when I hooked it up to our full-sized amp/sound board/speakers, it didn't sound very good. It may have been the quality of the mp3 file, but all of my mp3's should be 128 kbps. But through the unit's speakers, it actually sounded great. I also noticed that the unit finds songs from my computer alphabetically rather than by Track number. I'm not sure if I can change this or not, but I'd like to listen to an album in the correct order. This is probably something within the music server, but I'm just not sure yet. Overall, the WMLS11B is awesome! It's fun to be able to stream my music anywhere in the house or even outside and also to be able to play internet radio stations from all over the world! Highly recommended, especially for the price! Date: 2007-04-26 4 out 5 stars I read a lot of reviews before purchasing this product. The one thing that kept popping up was the loudness/pour speakers issue. So when I bought it, I assumed I was buying a device with sound quality equal to an alarm clock speaker. When I received the linksys and tried it out, the speakers seemed very loud and good bass given the size. I started playing different mp3's and found the loudness issue to be directly related to the quality of the mp3. I had one mp3, which was poor quality and quiet on my pc, and guess what, it was poor quality and quiet on the linksys. This was not an issue with the music I ripped from windows media player. Also, had problems playing WMA lostless files. I'm not too crazy about musicmatch software, with comes on a cd, and needs to be installed to share your music ( there is other software that will work ). It's constant nagware to purchase the software or upgrade. But on the flip side, It works seemlessly, using libraries and playlist. The internet radio is cool, most of the pre-load channels do not work ( I tried about 15 and only 2 worked )I would have given this 5 out of 5 stars if I could program my own stations... The linksys device has a website you can access and make changes. Its a little bugy, had to reload the page after making changes or navigating and the favorites page never retained any entries. Even after upgrading the firmware to 1.09 it still had problems. Overall, I am very please with the product, but I wouldn't pay anything more than 50-60 bucks for it. I am so pleased, I bought another one. Date: 2007-04-03 Nice idea; flawed execution What a great concept! I can take this very portable device anywhere within reach of my wireless router and have streaming music from my digital library or Internet radio stations. Here's the reality (as I have experienced it): even after upgrading to the latest firmware, my WMLS11B will not stay connected to my wireless network. I have to re-enable the SSID every time I turn the device on to get an initial connection. From then on, streaming music stops and starts as though the connection were spotty, even though my laptop (also on the wireless and sitting next to the device) is streaming beautifully. In addition, the WMLS11B will only receive Internet radio stations that broadcast as strict mp3's. Which means no .pls, no .asx, etc. Unfortunately, this is what most streaming formats are in. Luckily, the speakers are powered and are connected to the wireless device by standard RCA jacks. I use this product now primarily as a way to play songs from my iPod nano. Date: 2006-06-22 Not Perfect, but works well (on linux to boot) I bought this not having super high expectations after reading all the comments. That said, I think it was a good purchase. I run it on my linux system (Linspire 5.0 using MP3beamer software) to listen to my mp3 collection and playlists. It set up easily (I'm techie enough) with MAC address filtering and 128 WEP encryption. The interface (screen) is not much different from the SMC wireless media adapter I have, but the remote is much better and the buttons on the unit are handy. The speakers are only good enough for a small room (I use mine in the bedroom) I don't use internet radio really, so no comment on that feature. - Cheers
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