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

This low-priced audio component compares favorably to the likes of Sonos and Bluesound-at a fraction of the price.

- JONATHAN TAKIFF

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 seems like stuff from the dark ages of shopping at Tower Records and Sam Goody.

Rejoice! 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 3.25x3x1 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. That low-budget exterior allowed a healthier percentage of manufacturing moolah to be spent on the guts inside, where it counts.

Andover's director of engineering and product development, Bob Hazelwood, told me he was inspired by a low-cost NAD receiver from the 1970s "that wasn't much to look at but had great sound." He also took cues from a legendary audio guy he met while working at Cambridge Soundworksco-founder Henry Kloss-who championed the cause of affordable, everyman hi-fi rather than sky-high-priced esoteric stuff.