Rating: 
Summary: Best combination of features and price
Review: After a month of using the SBWM, I'm mostly satisfied with it. It's missing a few features that would make it outstanding but overall for (...) (...) this was a good way to free the music sitting on my PC's hard drive.
Setup on my secure wireless network was easy. The radio frequency remote with the LCD display is what sets this unit apart from competitors like Squeezebox. The remote makes it easy to select songs and control playback w/o having to sit in front of the unit [or set up a playlist beforehand].
Unfortunately, a key feature that would've given made life easier is missing: the ability to queue up songs [or create a dynamic playlist] from the remote control. Unless you create a playlist on your PC, you have to select songs one by one, after each song has played. Even worse, there's a noticeable gap in between songs selected from the remote. The ability to queue or add to a playlist would have been a killer feature and hopefully Creative will provide this it via a software upgrade.
The Media Sniffer feature, which detects new songs added to a directory, doesn't work consistently. Sometimes the SBWM unit loses the connection to the PC with the music.
Problems are few. If you're into setting up playlists, then you'll really like this unit. If you like to select tracks dynamically, you'll be a bit disappointed. But overall, SBWM does a good job.
Rating: 
Summary: If you're like me, you want it to work, but ...
Review: After reading the other reviews, I felt obligated to add my two cents since I experienced problems that others have not reported.I plugged the receiver into my wife's ten year old Sony stereo, and the soundblaster worked fine -- but with bad sound quality. The quality was fine when I plugged it into my powered computer speakers, but I needed it for a backyard system so I bought a new shelf stereo to hook it up to. Unfortunately, it would not work with the RCA connection for the Panasonic SC PM19S. I took that stereo back and bought a Phillips MC500, but the soundblaster did not work with that one either. After taking that one back, I bought a third "boombox" type stereo, but the aux/rca connection did not work with that stereo either. I asked customer service how I could know which stereo it would work with because I was tired of returning stereo systems. They simply replied: "The unit should work fine with most stereos." Right, except the three new ones I bought, and the old Sony. I strongly advise that anyone considering buying one of these hold off until they are more widely marketed and other products have been designed to be compatible. My next move is to buy an expensive receiver unit (I'm fairly certain this will work). I would not have purchased this product had I known it had these compatibility problems. The soundblaster otherwise worked just the way I hoped. If you plan to use a high end stereo receiver, or powered speakers, this is a great product. Otherwise, hold off, let the price come down, and purchase the next generation when the compatability problems are smoothed out.
Rating: 
Summary: Very slow; dangerous software!
Review: As with other reviewers, I found the receiver to be unbearably slow to load large playlists, and the remote control was extremely sluggish. (One reason for loading a large playlist is when you want to, say, shuffle play all your music in a specific genre.) I didn't get a chance to try the newest firmware before I returned it, so I don't know whether all these issues were improved. However, I also encountered a much worse problem: Creative's mp3 organizer application *corrupts* ID3 tags created by certain other applications (notably iTunes for Windows). When I imported my library into the Creative app, it actually deleted some of the ID3 tags on a large number of my files, forcing me to go through and retag the artist, album and genre info for about forty of my CDs. (I imported the files with the option to leave existing tags alone, but apparently it rewrites them anyway.) I didn't want to risk having new mp3s I rip get corrupted in the same fashion, so I returned the SBWM. And I'll never let any software from Creative touch my mp3s again!
Rating:
Summary: You might be unlucky..........
Review: Box certainly looks good, handheld is a nice interface (similar menus to that on ipod), PC software comprehensive also, and it all installed easily (it has to be said it did mangle all the ID3 tags that iTunes created, but it was fine with tags created by other rippers like MusicMatch so that might be iTune's problem, not Creative's). The receiver happily connected to my wireless network and both receiver and PC reported that they were mutually connected. But according to the remote I had 0 mp3 files available, so I couldn't play music. Upgraded to latest software, and it did list the mp3s on my PC on the remote, so I was able to play music, and like others say here, the sound is great quality, the hardware is obviously good. That lasted 2 days, and then I powercycled my PC and now remote just tells me that I have 0 mp3s available, so I can't play any music. The software is obviously not good! So if you do get it working, don't switch anything off! :( Its useless to me. (By the way, Creative support did try and help, but only with generic "how to config WEP" stuff which has made no difference. If somewhere at Creative knows more than general FAQ stuff they can get back to me on enquiry KMM2966288I24521L0KM). I hope you are more lucky than me. I will stick to using my iPod with iTrip broadcasting FM to my stereo, which to be honest, works just aswell.
Rating:
Summary: Stay away until a newer model comes out
Review: For me, this device is absolute garbage. I was enthralled with the idea of playing music over my wireless connection, but the Sound Blaster Wireless Music is not the solution I thought it would be. Previous reviewers are correct when they state that the remote is extremely unresponsive right out of the box without the firmware update. The update does speed things up a little, but it didn't matter for me because the whole thing just stopped working. But the remote browsing was a lot faster, I'll give it that.
I am also perplexed at the fact that sometimes the receiver connects to my network and sometimes it doesn't. And the remote very frequently freezes for absolutely no reason.
It's a neat idea, but for whatever reason, it doesn't work very well for me. I wish I had just avoided it altogether.
Rating:
Summary: Generally OK, but has quirks
Review: Generally, the unit works as advertised IF you have a traditional network setup. My network involves a wireless 802.11g router plus a HomePlug bridge to get from the Wireless box to the XP box running the server software. Even playing 128kbps MP3 files skip one second for every 3-4 seconds of play. When I moved the XP server box in a test and hooked it directly to the router, the Creative box played fine. Unfortunately, I can't keep that server box there. However, my TiVo successfully plays 320kbps files over the full network with the bridge quite well and never skips. Clearly Creative needs further work on either their server or on the network communication they're using to serve music data to the Wireless box.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Sound
Review: GET THE UPDATES BEFORE TRYING TO INSTALL
Thats the key to this product. Update the firmware and remote control.. And you have one GREAT sounding Network MP3 Server.
No TV needed all is on the Remote. The sound is truly VERY VERY good if not CD quailty. Got mine up and runng in less then an hour.
Buy it you will love it.
Rating:
Summary: only for geeks
Review: i am an early adopter.
But this unit has taught me new levels of pain.
It works, but sometimes it doesn't. So in the middle Others have said, but here's the downside:
a) The remote control is buggy as hell; crashes regularly.
b) The unit has to be rebooted regularly also.
c) List display is slow and with a large collection I actually print out my list.
d) the software for the pc is just plain poor. It was probably bad and ugly in 1984, and it hasn't gotten better. I have wasted many many hours trying to get MP3's retagged (it blows them away), lists created. And it's so slow. All in all, it's a first generation product. It's amazing when it works; and the concept is a winner.
So if you are a geek like me, then you can get value out of this. If you are not; wait for version 3. This is version 1.
Rating:
Summary: Warning!!!
Review: I bought this thing about two weeks ago and still can't get it to work. Creative's customoer service line is not a toll free number. I waited 15 minutes before someone can talk to me. Remember they have no Toll Free number. You must pay for the long distance phone call.
When I finally spoke with their customer service, they told me that someone whould have to call me back while they researched for an answer. that was 4 days ago. They never called me back.
Final advice if you do not know much about network stuff, don't buy this product!
Rating:
Summary: Slow performance
Review: I credit Creative Labs with an innovative product. I like the display on the remote control. However, it was too slow to navigate through the songs when searching for a song to play.
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