MySqueezebox.com & Squeezebox Server

[Tobius]

Here is an update on the incident ticket that I submitted to Logitech on 04/06/12:

Me (04/06/12): I have Squeezebox V3 (circa 2006) when it was still under the SlimDevices brand. As several other users have noted in this forum thread (http://forums.logitech.com/t5/MySqueezebox-com-Squeezebox/Pandora-freezes-on-Squeezebox-Touch/td-p/8...), mysqueezebox.com freezes about 2-3 times per hour when listening to Pandora and can do one of a few things:

(1) complete reset in the middle of a song where it has to obtain all of the wireless server information (which takes ~30 seconds),

(2) Stop in the middle of the song and I have to press play to continue

(3) Stop in the middle of a song and go to the next song (probably a Pandora issue).

This never happens when I listen to the Squeezebox from music streamed directly from my PC - there are no interruptions there. This is very frustrating especially considering that I am paying for the Pandora service. Is there any hope of getting this fixed? Thank you.

Logitech (04/07/12): We were having issues with Pandora. Understandably, we had a lot of calls and emails about this specific issue since the service is so widely used. The problem caused issue (2) in your email. This issue (which was on Pandora's end) was reportedly resolved two to three weeks ago, and the calls and emails stopped. I think your issue is a bit bigger than the problem that we were having with the global service. I, personally, did not hear one case of the wireless completely dropping. Let's diagnose that first. I don't know if you have gone through the standard network troubleshooting steps, but I will list them here and you can go through them:

1. Factory reset the Squeezebox. This is done by unplugging the device, pressing the plus (+) button on the remote, then plugging back in with the button held down. Go through the setup again, and you should be back to normal.

2. Power cycle your router. This step is essential, but not a lot of people give it credit. It fixes a lot of issues!

3. Is your Squeezebox using wireless? If so, try using an Ethernet connection and testing again.

Let me know how these steps go!

Me (04/13/12): Thanks for your quick response and suggestions. Of the 3 troubleshooting tips you provided below I did a factory reset of my Squeezebox (tip #1) and power cycled my router (tip #2). I was not able to connect my Squeezebox to my router via an Ethernet cable (tip #3) because I do not have one that is long enough. But it may be a possibility in the future if tip #s 1 & 2 aren’t effective. I am continuing to monitor the effectiveness of the first 2 tips to see if that improves the stability of the connection between mysqueezebox.com and Pandora. It may take several hours of listening during different days and different times of the day to know if the problem has been fixed or not.

So far that's it. I've listened to about 8-10 hours of Pandora on my SB in the last week in four 2-3 hour sessions. During each one, SB had a single reset where it froze and had to retrieve all the wireless info again (issue #1 in my ticket). This seemed to occur about 5 songs into the play cycle or after about 20 minutes had gone by. I didn't have any other trouble after that. In my opinion, the issue is still not fixed because this never happened at all when I listened to Pandora through mysqueezbox.com anytime last year.

I will continue to follow-up and report what happens with Logitech's response.

[vhiner]

Thanks for sharing, Tobius.

[smithc]

Thanks, squeezet, for the Last.fm info.  I guess I won't be hurrying to check them out...

[cncb]

Given their incredible failure to fix this problem in a timely manner, the multitude of "unconfirmed" bugs in their bug database, and the lack of responses on this forum and the slimdevices forum I'm starting to think that only a couple of people are on the Squeezebox development "team" and they really don't care about these products very much...

[vhiner]

Pandora is freezing again. No ETA on a solution, but they do blame Pandora. 20 pages on this forum about a months-long unresolved problem. You do the math. Freezebox...brought to you by Illogitech.

[vhiner]

Just got off the phone with Illogitech. They've been forbidden to post on this forum. They are telling everyone to call the corporate number listed on their website. If you are considering one of their products, I'd advise against it. The company continues to advertise that their product plays Pandora, but refuses to respond to inquiries about why it won't reliably work. No one answers their corporate number and they don't return messages.

[murso]

bump for no information from logitech.  this was one of my favorite products for a long time.  they've ruined it with the lack of response on this issue

[Taylarie]

This is a User to User Forum. Logitech employees do respond sometimes, but you may get better results trying to call or email them.

[smithc]

I was musing the other day that maybe Pandora has paid off Logitech to prevent Slacker from working!  (Pandora works smoothly 99% of the time for me, but I don't like it as well.  Slacker still locks up after about 3-4 songs.)

I'm thinking it's about time for all of us affected by this to write some letters. When I used to work in HP customer support (back in the '80s) we always heard about it when somebody wrote a "John Young letter" (the CEO at the time).  Here's a bit of research about Logitech's head:

Chairman & acting CEO Guerrino De Luca
Resides in San Francisco per Wikipedia

Logitech Americas Headquarters
7600 Gateway Blvd.
Newark, CA 94560

Actually a Swiss Public Company:

Swiss Head Office
Moulin du Choc D
Romanel-Sur-Morges, CA 1122
Switzerland

Maybe if we write Mr. De Luca about our displeasure, and mention adding or editing some unfavorable Amazon, etc., reviews about Logitech's customer support (or lack thereof), we might see some action.

[ianto39]

Fingers crossed, but I seem to have Slacker working again. Somehow, my SB Radio & SB Touch were "connected to" mysqueezebox.com and not to my local SB server (which is on a Synology NAS). I set both devices to be "connected to" the local SB server (using the Logitech Media Server interface on the NAS ) and am now streaming Slacker without the hanging. I was going to try setting one of the gadgets back to being "connected to" mysqueezebox.com to see if the hanging came back, but for the life of me can't see how to do it, boy do these Logitech kiddies need to go on some UI training courses.