This is my first Internet radio, and I seem to have made a good choice----very nice sound at a reasonable price, and a handsome little unit to boot. I have an iMac G5 and a Linksys WRT54G wifi router and the radio pulls in all the stations both upstairs in my study (where the router sits) and downstairs and around several corners in the master bedroom. This is a compact little unit with a single speaker, and the sound is, to me, impressive. Not base heavy at all, so voices come through cleanly, but music also has a rich, full sound to it. Most impressive for such a small speaker, and the sound through headphones is excellent. This is a reciva-based unit, so you can save any station not already programmed into the radio (damn few, I'd say, since something like 10,000 are already on board when you do your initial turn-on) by using the My Stuff link on the reciva site. Just click "Save this Station" and in a few minutes it's right there on your radio and ready to use. Within 15 minutes after setting it up I was listening to live evening prayers from some huge mosque in Tehran via Radio Iran International, half a dozen stations in Ireland broadcasting Irish/Celtic music, about 95% of which I had never heard before, audiobooks (a reading of a Robert Frost poem), 3 SUPERB classical music stations (you have about 200 to choose from!), the oddball Whole Wheat Radio from somewhere in Alaska, Radio Netherlands, Radio Prague, Beach Radio (Spain), and on and on. The list is virtually endless (nearly 2,000 choices in the UK alone). Even Papua New Guinea and the Maldives are here. There are only 3 preset buttons on the face plate, but using the remote you can add 96 more (99 total), which should do the job.
The manual is NOT very clear about how to do the programming and later recalling of the stations that you program with the remote. Once you get into double digits, you need to hit the Store key, then hold down the "-/--" key for about 3 or 4 seconds until a horizontal line appears at which point you hold down (again for a good 3 or so seconds) the first number, then the second and the station is stored as 10, 11, 78, whatever. When you want to play these stations, same thing, only using the Recall button but still holding for 3 seconds. With single digits, you skip the "-/--" key and just hit Store or Recall and then 4, 6, etc. This took me about half a day to figure out, so you don't have to. This radio is just flat out amazing. 10,000 stations with ZERO static and good to excellent clarity/sound. You can also use a USB stick to listen to your own music, but I've not done this and don't intend to so you're on your own here.
BTW, this radio is EXACTLY the same as the Intempo GX-01 sold in the UK and Europe, so if you want more info (there is next to nothing on the CTA via Google), use GX-01 for your search; a ton of stuff on it, including a good 2 minute demo video (by Shiny Shiny) on YouTube. It does cut out from time to time and has to rebuffer, but I think this inevitable whe you are streaming audio. So what you get here is the cool retro look of a 1950s tabletop radio but with access to the entire planet. It's quite an adventure.
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Product Description:
DESKTOP STYLE INTERNET RADIO
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