2006-12-12 Slim Devices is a Silicon Valley startup with hot products for audiophiles.

1. 2006-12-12 Slim Devices is a Silicon Valley startup with hot products for audiophiles. It's also a next-generation open organization where customers imagine and design the products. Is this the company of the future? 2006-09-07 - Audiophiles have been feeling left out when it comes to wireless digital music systems. Many systems transfer music with some fidelity, but few well enough to please connoisseurs delicate ear. Now there is the Transporter from Slim Devices, a high-end digital music player with enough pedigree to walk at Westminster. -- John Biggs 2006-11-17 - The "open-source" nature of the Squeezebox's SlimServer software allows it to stay abreast of new developments, and the Squeezebox itself is an elegant piece of kit. At $299 for the WiFi model and just $249 for the hardwired Ethernet version, what excuse does an audiophile need not to join the 21st century? Digital Trends video: http://www.slimdevices.com/redir.html?http://media.digitaltrends.com/digitaltrends/squeezebox_v3_music_streamer.html Gizmodo videos: http://www.slimdevices.com/redir.html?http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/transporter-video-tour-199926.php

2. Transporter It streams digital music with sound quality that surpasses even the most exotic compact disc players...a "no compromise" attitude to component selection and electronic design. Feel Your Music—The new TransNav™ controller uses dynamic tactile feedback to provide fast access to any song even in the largest music collection. The sleek, backlit, infrared remote and dual fluorescent displays make it easy to use from anywhere in the room. Quality Connectors—Transporter's back panel features a complete set of professional-grade connectors, including both balanced and unbalanced signals for its analog and digital interfaces. Astounding Analog—The AK4396 "Miracle DAC" was chosen for its high dynamic range and low distortion. Its low out-of-band noise allows for the use of low-order output filters with higher cutoffs, resulting in preservation of phase and reduced distortion in the audible band. This extraordinary accuracy at higher frequencies allows Transporter to resolve the exact staging of instruments and the finest details of any recording. In addition, Transporter's digital inputs allow its built-in DAC to be used with other sources. Accurate Digital—Transporter's digital path is not only "bit perfect", but also extremely accurate in timing precision. Clock signals in Transporter are handled not as ones and zeroes, but as precision analog signals. Specialized crystal oscillators, careful clock management, and linear-regulated logic supplies ensure the lowest possible jitter throughout the system. Clean Power—Transporter's DAC and output amplifiers are powered by Super Regulators, based on the legendary design by Walt Jung. These regulators offer lower output impedance, faster response, and better noise rejection than standard three-terminal regulators. The result is an incredibly natural sound, with a pitch-black background and a shocking level of detail.

3. Audio Outputs and Inputs

5. Do you want to listen to digital music without limitations? Enjoy the best audio quality? Access new music services like Pandora.com? You need a Squeezebox network music player. Enjoy superior sound quality—Squeezebox features a high fidelity 24-bit Burr-Brown™ DAC, legendary in the audiophile community for their clean output and ultra-low distortion characteristics. Digital optical, coax, and analog connectors can plug into any home theater, stereo or amplified speakers. Free your music—Only Squeezebox handles all of today's leading and emerging formats without sacrificing audio quality. Support for MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC, WAV, and Ogg Vorbis and upgradable firmware. More music—Only Squeezebox enables you to access a wide range innovative music services like Pandora.com, from anywhere in your home. You don't even need a computer. Locate players far and wide—Only Squeezebox comes with built-in support for true 802.11g, advanced lossless compression technologies and dual internal antennas, you can locate your player up to three times further from your wireless access point. Best Selling Player—Squeezebox outsells Roku and other competitors on Amazon.com and has received numerous awards. Find out why.

6. Item Quantity Price Transporter (Black) Bundle $1999.00 Bonus Squeezebox Included! Transporter (Silver) Bundle $1999.00 Bonus Squeezebox Included! NEW Squeezebox Wireless (All-Black) $299.00 Connects to Ethernet or wireless networks. Squeezebox Wireless (Black/Silver) $299.00 Connects to Ethernet or wireless networks. Squeezebox Wired (Black/Silver) $249.00 Connects to Ethernet networks. Squeezebox Wireless (White) $299.00 Connects to Ethernet or wireless networks. Squeezebox Wired (White) $249.00 Connects to Ethernet networks. Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ / Squeezebox Bundle $1499.00 2 Black Wireless Squeezeboxes and a 1 terabyte ReadyNAS NV+

7. The Slim Devices community is a world-wide group of talented customers and developers, including both volunteers and Slim Devices staff. Whether you're interested in suggesting improvements, contributing bug fixes, new features, or documentation, we invite you to join us!

8. SlimServerPlugins SlimServer is customisable through add-on components called plugins. SlimServer comes with a number of plugins already installed (see the "server settings->plugins" page of the SlimServer web interface to see them), and you can also install your own. Many people have written their own plugins and made them available to the SlimServer community to make use of, and this part of the wiki serves as a 'directory' where they are all listed. PluginsAudio: Extras for finding, playing, or managing music. PluginGames: Games and screen savers. PluginGraphicsAndFonts: Customize the look of your Squeezebox. PluginRemoteControls: Control your Squeezebox from a variety of devices or use your Squeezebox to control other devices. PluginSkins: Change the look of your SlimServer web interface. PluginMods: Custom hardware and software installations. PluginPlayers: Programs that emulate either a SLIMP3 or a Squeezebox. PluginServerUtilities: Utilities to make SlimServer look or behave differently. PluginInfoDisplay: Plugins to show weather, news, tv listings, game scores, etc. from various sources. PluginCommunication: Caller ID, forums, blogs, phone books, e-mail. PluginDiagnostics: Plugins to show information related to your network. PluginDevTools: Tools to make SlimServer development easier.

9. Resources Here are some of the resources our community relies on to enrich the SlimServer software and help each other out: Nightly Releases - The very latest pre-release SlimServer software is built every night and is available for download. These releases are unofficial and may contain new bugs but also contain the latest features and bug fixes. Wiki - We've just launched the Slim Devices Wiki. Feel free to jump in and add what you know to our community clearinghouse. Downloads - All of our previous releases, as well as some of the software contributed by our community are available in the Downloads directory of our website. Bugs & Feature Requests - A Bugzilla-based bug reporting and feature request database is running on bugs.slimdevices.com. Feel free to browse through the existing entries to see if your problem or request is already reported, and if not, add it so that we can address it as soon as possible. Localization - It's very easy to translate SlimServer's user interface to other languages. Please take a look at the file "strings.txt", to see if your language has been done yet. Also, Michael Herger has created a great online tool to aid translating. Please email us if you want to help us with our translations! Documentation - The developer documentation is included with the SlimServer software under Technical Information. There you'll find information on writing plugins, skins, APIs and specifications for Slim Devices' UDP communication protocol. Subversion Archive - The SlimServer source code is available from our public Subversion tree or pre-packaged on our downloads page. You can browse our Subversion repository with your web browser. To use your local Subversion client to check out the latest version, the following command line can be used: svn co http://svn.slimdevices.com/repos/slim/trunk ...Patches and suggestions should be posted to the Developers mailing list, noted above.

10. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. —Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813

11. The sweet machine in question is a $300 device that lets audiophiles take digital music from their computer hard drives or from Internet-radio streams, and play it with impressive clarity on highend speakers in their living rooms. "Its creators have sweated so many details, you want to hand them a towel." Ah, but who actually did that sweating? Not just the handful of engineers on the payroll at Slim Devices, the startup that makes the Squeezebox. The player, which has sold an impressive 50,000 units, is largely the brainchild of its customers around the world, who have done much of the vital engineering and design work--for free. They've been motivated by their passions--for great audio, for cool products, for the art of engineering--and also by the satisfaction of being admired and relied on by a global community of their peers. True, it's a conclusion he came to by accident. Adams had a more conventional company in mind when he was making the rounds for venture capital. He just happened to be looking for funding during the Valley's particularly inauspicious time of late 2001. "Sean wanted Slim Devices to be open source because he didn't have the money to build a company in the usual way," says Patrick Cosson, Slim's vice president of sales and marketing. "It wasn't a political position. It was out of necessity." Fast Company, December 2006, By: Alan Deutschman http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/111/ears-wide-open_Printer_Friendly.html

12. People around the world have been contributing to Slim Devices free of charge for all sorts of reasons. Some do it to showcase their skills in the hope of attracting a job offer. Some do it for the challenge. But much of it comes down to this: We want things our way. "Initially, I really got involved because the product didn't do quite what I wanted," says Adrian Smith, who's employed as a network architect for a large telco in Britain. "Instead of just complaining, [Slim] allowed me to roll up my sleeves and try to improve it." Why Do People Do It? http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/111/ears-wide-open_Printer_Friendly.html

13. Andrew L. Weekes, the engineer who masterminded Slim Devices' approach to minimizing power, isn't an employee: He works for a company that supplies the British military with target drones, unmanned aircraft that they can use for practice. Still, he's one of a handful of the community's members who have full access to the product's inner sanctum "firmware," the detailed hardware specs and software that determine how it works. "Vendors told us, 'You guys are insane,'" Adams recalls. "They said, 'What are you doing? You need to protect intellectual property. You need patents.'" Instead, Slim's executives decided to put their trust in the contributors who have proven their talent and commitment to the endeavor for several years. It's a risk, to be sure. But cultivating customer-creators of all stripes gives Slim access to talent that it otherwise wouldn't have. "There are a lot of bored telecom engineers who would move to California if they didn't have families or passport problems," says Cosson. "Half our contributors are abroad--in Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Germany--and this is their way of connecting to Silicon Valley." Why Does Slim Do It?