Orb’s Puck Streams Your Music Wirelessly For $70, and It’s an attractive Thing [Orb]

Beaming music to speakers around the house is, in my estimation, some of the great luxuries of the 21st century, but it surely could be a pricey one. Orb’s new puck helps you to play your tunes anywhere, wirelessly, for less than $70.

The basic setup involves three components: the Orb Caster software, the Orb Controller app for iOS (and, soon, Android) and the Orb MP-1 puck. Orb Caster indexes the media to your computer (either your iTunes library or folders that you just specify); the Controller app permits you to pick what songs you must play; and the silver-dollar pancake-sized MP-1 puck receives that media over Wi-Fi (b/g/n) and plays it on whatever set of speakers you have got it plugged into. Moreover your personal music collection, Orb streams Pandora, and, in case you’re a subscriber, Sirius.

Setting up Orb’s puck was simple and went without a hitch. And while it’s just plain silly you could’t control the music you’re playing from your computer itself via the Orb Caster software, the Controller app is sweet looking and functional and, as it’s been element of Orb’s offerings for ages now, has been sanded all the way down to a pleasing polish.

That app, which up until recently was $10, doesn’t look any less glossy than Apple’s own iPod app, and it easily permits you to pick not only what music you need to play but where it’s good to play it-for your iDevice itself, or on any or all the Orbs you might have installed. And since it’s not encumbered by iTunes, you may play different songs on different Orbs, too. All this gets to the important promise of Orb-at $70 a pop it’s cheap enough you could pick up a number of and deck out the whole rooms you spend time in with streaming music, and it’s flexible enough to make it easy to achieve this.

I own and love an Apple Airport Express, and for $30 extra it can provide the advantage of adding printers into the mixture and the greater advantage of extending your wireless network. The Orb does neither, and since it’s not rebroadcasting your network itself, you need to run into some streaming issues in the event you had them installed the outskirts of a larger home. Air Tunes, chained to iTunes, has some frustrating limitations (though it’s definitely poised to expand its functionality as it transforms into Air Play in coming months) and I’ve found that Airport Expresses can get fussy while you’re looking to juggle a couple of of them on an identical network, or after you’re looking to move them from place to put.

But in my experience with Orb, the entirety just worked, that is crucial. It’s easy to peer Orb becoming the Flip of streaming wireless media around the house, something that’s cheap and adequate, besides the fact that it lacks certain frills. Rapidly Orb’s handicapped by several random shortcomings-not having the ability to control music from your computer being the glaringly obvious one-however’s flexible in many ways that Air Tunes seriously is not. And it’s worth noting, too, that the Orb Caster software, which has been the company’s focus for years, handles video content, so I wouldn’t be in the slightest degree surprised to determine an Orb Video puck somewhere at some point for streaming content not to only speakers but screens in addition.

The move into hardware is sort of an unexpected play from Orb, a corporation that has formerly interested by its free streaming software. But the move is certainly a welcome one. That they’ve spent those years working on their software implies that their streaming infrastructure is solid, and I’m pleased to claim that the recent MP-1 puck definitely isn’t a weak link. Whenever you don’t mind the assumption of your smartphone being your sole remote on your music, the cheap, flexible streaming ecosystem Orb’s establishing might be just the ticket for letting your music collection run wild at your residence. [ Orb ]

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This post is tagged: 21st century, apple airport express, estimation, personal music collection, plain silly, silver dollar, streaming music