Andover Audio Songbird review: This budget-priced music streamer is no featherweight

Don't let its small size and $129 price tag fool you: Andover Audio's Songbird music streamer flies high and sings almost as sweetly as competitors that cost three or four times more. The Songbird also offers near best-in-class ease of use and connectivity. Nurtured by Boston audio community vets, Songbird is targeted primarily to the gazillions of people who bought nice sound rigs in the pre-internet age: Built-tough, classically styled stereo gear still functioning quite well, thank you, though maybe gathering dust because the vinyl, tape, and CD content it was designed for what now seems like dark-ages stuff from the times of Tower Records and Sam Goody. The diminutive Songbird is just the ticket for older audio components that predate digital audio inputs, such as this vintage Sansui receiver. Songbird can get you and that rig humming again, with instant access to hundreds of thousands of fresh, free, streaming radio stations and podcasts, plus tens of millions of on-demand music selections--old and new--that can be summoned in an instant for about the cost of one album a month. Barely larger than a tin of breath mints at 3.25 x 3 x 1 inches (WxDxH) and nesting in a nondescript plastic case, Songbird is intentionally made small and light and supplied with short-run cables so it can easily be stashed behind your receiver.