The Soundbridge Homemusic from Pinnacle is a low-cost audio streaming device that connects to your wireless network to unleash your digital music library on your hifi.

If the design looks familiar, it’s because US-based Roku has been selling similar devices for over a year now – Pinnacle recently signed an agreement to manufacture models based on the Roku software for the European market.

Its tubular design gives it a distinctive look and it won’t take up too much space in your living room. Round the back you’ll find power, line-out and headphone sockets along with an SD card reader for playing audio direct from a memory card.

There’s no Ethernet port, so this device is only for those who already have a wireless network.
Initial setup was relatively simple, but we had to downgrade our Wifi security to Wep since WPA isn’t supported. A beta firmware release includes WPA support, but that’s not much use to people who, quite rightly, only want to use final release firmware.

Music can be streamed to the Soundbridge via Windows Media Player (you’ll need the Windows Media Connect plug-in installed) and iTunes. If you opt for the latter, you’ll need an open-source application such as Firefly (included on the installation CD) to handle the streaming side of things.

You can’t control music playback from your PC and, since it only has a small two-line display, browsing through large music libraries on the Soundbridge can be very frustrating. And unless viewed at the correct angle it’s very hard to read. Pinnacle includes a concave-shaped hard rubber stand, which allows you to tilt the Soundbridge to the correct angle, but a larger, clearer LCD screen would be far better – even if it meant increasing the overall size of the unit.

There are no buttons on the Soundbridge itself; all control is via the included remote. The remote is reasonably small with well-spaced buttons, but the hieroglyphic-style labelling system takes some getting used to.

Once up and running, the Soundbridge performed extremely well, even at a fair distance from our router. A wealth of internet radio stations are provided alongside your music collection and it also picked up music stored on our UPnP network attached storage (NAS) drive.

Performance with this NAS wasn’t quite so impressive – each time we navigated into the Artist, Album or Genre section it took a good 30 seconds to collate the info from the 1,500 tracks stored on the NAS. Thankfully, this didn’t occur when accessing music stored on a PC.

Since Apple is very picky about releasing its DRM (digital rights management) details, the Soundbridge, like many other media streamers, is of no use when it comes to aac files with Fairplay DRM - i.e. all tracks bought through iTunes. Microsoft Wma files with DRM are fine though. The audio quality you experience ultimately depends on your speakers and the bit-rate of the music you’re playing.

At under £100, Pinnacle’s Soundbridge Homemusic is an attractive option for those who want a cheap way of listening to their digital music library through their hifi. The small two-line display can be frustrating, but by setting up a variety of playlists you can avoid having to trawl through the artist, album and genre lists too often. The lack of WPA support is very disappointing though.

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