Roku Soundbridge M1000 Audio Bridge

Reviews: Multimedia

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Richard Poelling
Brian
Roku Labs
Mar. 16, 2006

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Installation

Installation of the device is simple. Getting it to play your music will solely depend on what you want to use. To begin, you have to plug your M1000 into a power source and connect it to speakers using either the supplied cable or one of your choosing. For testing purposes I am plugging into either my stereo receiver or a set of standard powered speakers. You now have the choice of using either the built-in wireless or the wired Ethernet port. If you have an open AP (Access Point), the device will automatically connect to it. Of course you don't have an open access point because that would just invite disaster and everyone sets up their wireless with the highest security possible, right? (Hint: you should be using WPA or WPA2). Of course if you have your AP properly secured, you might as well go find an Ethernet cable since this device does not support the WPA protocol. This is by far my biggest complaint with media based devices, either video or audio. Everything from network video players to MP3 players seem to think it is alright to "just get by". I would expect that for the price you are paying they could incorporate the latest security algorithm. This may seem harsh, but WEP has many known vulnerabilities, although some security is better than none. Still it peeves me, but back to the matter at hand.

Once everything is physically connected and you have a net connection, by means of either the wireless or the wired, you will need to select a music source. The M1000 uses UPnP for control and music streaming. This allows the M1000 to have many choices when it comes to a music source. Some players are better than others, but most of them are free, so you can decide for yourself. Roku lists several of the most popular ones such as Windows Media Connect, iTunes, Rhapsody, and Musicmatch. For this review I looked at Windows Media Connect, iTunes, and Musicmatch jukebox.

Most of the configuration of the M1000 is accomplished from within the menu system using the remote. Upon first turning the device on, you will set up the language, followed by the time zone and then wireless zone. If the device detects that no Ethernet cable is plugged in, then it will begin searching for a wireless AP. Barring an open access point, the M1000 will ask to set up a WEP encrypted AP. The menu system was easy to navigate with the included remote.

Testing

To test the Roku M1000, I set up WEP security using a 5-digit ASCII key. For all testing, the latest version of the software was used which at the time of writing is version 2.4.4.

Windows Media Connect (ver. 2) ( link )

For a quick and easy setup, you can download Windows Media Connect. The software is very basic; you have a choice of what devices you want to authorize to play your music and what music to share. A big plus is that the software will autorun at startup and minimize itself as a system tray icon. Installing WMC will have the following impact on your computer:

Wmccfg.exe	2-4 MB RAM
Wmccds.exe	10-15MB RAM

The program will begin sharing at startup, so user intervention is kept to a minimum. I was able to do searching by way of the M1000 interface through WMC. The big drawback to WMC is that it will only play music located on the local machine. Mapping network drives does not work so don't bother trying. If all your music is local, then this program may be for you. You will also have problems playing AAC files from WMC.

Musicmatch Jukebox (ver. 10.00.4033) ( link )

Musicmatch jukebox can also be used with the M1000. Setting up the software is simple, to enable playback through the M1000 you need to enable the music server functionality through the options menu. Selecting the "Enable Music Server" checkbox will allow you to choose your streaming method which for the M1000 is the UPnP method. Once activated, you will have access to your music immediately on the M1000. I was able to import a mapped network drive to the music library. Unlike WMC, Musicmatch had no problems with this functionality. It did attempt, by way of a prompt, to copy the files locally to ensure reliability of access to the music. Like WMC, you do not have to launch the Musicmatch software to begin sharing. The music server is run as a separate background process which shows up in the system tray.

The system impact of Musicmatch will be the following:

mm_server	90-100 MB RAM
MMTray	1-4 MB

When Musicmatch is running, the system impact is:

mmjb.exe	10-15 MB
mm_server.exe	4-6 MB
mm_director	2-4 MB
MMDiag.exe	100-400K
mm_tray.exe	100-400K
mim.exe	6-8 MB
Musicmatchcomponentmanager	100-400K
Trackdownloadmanager	100-400K

Interesting to note is that with a large database of songs, Musicmatch took up large amounts of RAM at startup >90 MB. By starting up the Jukebox, the RAM usage dropped to about 5 MB. Closing the Jukebox did not result in an immediate increase in RAM usage. Initiating a browse request from the M1000 did cause a spike in RAM usage, although to only about 40 MB which is where it stayed. Although this isn't an issue with the M1000, it is of consequence if you want to use this software to serve out music to it or have limited RAM resources.

On the downside, Musicmatch Jukebox does not support the search functionality of the M1000, although browsing was possible. I did have some problems with browsing through multiple folder depths when only browsing by artist. Browsing by artist/album did seem to work on the same music set although you can only play the single album.

iTunes (ver. 6.0.2.23) ( link )

Another choice in music sharing is iTunes from Apple. Many people who use iTunes for their iPods and such already have this software installed so this may be the deciding factor anyway. A simple matter of a checkbox is all that stands between you and your music. iTunes had no problem importing multiple tracks from alternate locations on the network unlike WMC. iTunes needs to be started before sharing can commence, although I am sure you could just put the shortcut into the startup menu anyway.

As for its impact on your system, it will have a greater one than WMC. Installing iTunes will also install Quicktime which brings up the overall footprint of the install. Installing iTunes will impact your system in the following ways:

iTunesHelper	1-2 MB
Qtask	500K
iPodService	1-2 MB

And when running iTunes:

iTunes.exe

60-70 MB RAM

Minimizing iTunes will drop its usage to about 10 MB which is probably how most people would run it anyway.

One important fact to mention, especially if you are already an iTunes user and have downloaded music from the iTune Store is that the M1000 does not support the DRM protection that Apple uses (i.e. protected AAC) files. Files imported into iTunes which are unprotected will play fine, and protected AAC files will show up, but will be tagged with a padlock and be unplayable.

Internet Radio

The M1000 also includes the ability to play internet radio. Although this feature isn't one I usually look too closely at, I was very happy to see that you can easily configure your favorite radio stations by way of the web interface. This makes the unit far more useful since there are so many good internet radio stations that change on an almost daily schedule. Simply connecting to the M1000 by way of a web browser will give you its web interface. Besides configuring the internet radio stations, you can also change the format of the date and time display as well as a few other settings.

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Page 1: Introduction / First Looks
Page 2: Installation / Testing
Page 3: Quality Check / Conclusion

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