The Grace Solo internet radio does a great job connecting the world of internet radio to my home stereo.
The Solo is good looking and connects simply out of the box. Plug in the power, connect the standard rca cable to your stereo, turn it on, choose your home network and within 5 minutes you are listening to Pandora or one of the 17,000 radio stations. While Grace has many models of standalone table top radios, I like the Solo because it connects directly to my home stereo (or even powered speakers). The solo even has a headset jack.
When you first take the Solo out of the box, you see the Solo internet radio tuner, a power cable, manual, remote and rca cable to connect to your stereo. It uses WiFi to access the internet. Make sure you have Wi-Fi in your home, and that it is strong in the area you put the solo. The Solo does have a built in Wi-Fi signal meter to see how strong your Wi-Fi is. So if you put it on the bottom shelf of your stereo system and notice a weak signal you may want to put it on a middle or top shelf. The Solo works with any 802.11b,g or n router and has a built in 802.11g receiver.
After you connect to your wireless network (you will need your wireless WEP or WPA password to do this) and set the time zone on the clock, the Solo remembers everything (including station presets) when you unplug it. That is nice because no one wants to type their wireless password in more than once.
Once you are set up you can start searching for stations by genre or location or type the call sign of the station directly into the radio. You can do this via the remote control or directly on the unit itself. I like Pandora. In order to listen to Pandora you have to register your radio at Grace's web site [...] . After you create a Grace account you enter in your Pandora user name and password on the Grace site and the radio is linked to your Pandora stations. Within a minute your Pandora stations are on the Grace radio in the `personal radio' folder. Pretty cool. You can create stations on the Grace Solo, although I prefer to do that on the Pandora web site. Grace plays SIRIUS and Live365 as well but I do not have SIRIUS or Live365 VIP accounts so I can't comment on that.
I really love the Grace unit. I get all my local radio stations #my FM reception is bad at my house but my favorite FM stations - most do these days - broadcast over the internet .. so I get those, Pandora, NPR and I even started listening to the BBC 4 which is kind of cool#.
Obviously I give this a 5 star. The only negative I would say is that on a few random stations they do not show the song metadata (they all show the station metadata). I'm not sure if that is because the station is not sending it or what. You get the station and song metadata for Pandora which is the most important for me. Oh - you can even thumbs up or down Pandora songs .. very of cool. Grace Digital GDI-IRA500 Wireless Internet Radio Adapter Featuring Pandora, NPR and SIRIUS
I have an older stereo receiver driving a whole house built-in speaker system across multiple rooms. I needed an inexpensive way to connect my stereo receiver system to internet radio stations and other digital audio sources.
The Grace Solo exceeded my expectations; it is a very affordable internet radio solution (as little as $99 from Sears). It provides internet streaming function including Pandora that is only now becoming available on high-end AV receivers costing $1,000 or more (eg Onkyo NR807). It is also much less expensive than a $350 Sonos ZP90 for the same function.
I bought it for its Pandora support, and for its free Iphone / IPad remote control application. (Solo's free Iphone/IPad control app trumps the Myine internet radio alternative)
Things I really like:
* The accompanying product manual is very helpful (also downloadable at the Grace Digital website)
* Once the Solo device was set up and registered, It was easy to connect to Pandora and navigate to my previously defined Pandora channels
* The free IPad / Iphone control app immediately found and connected to the Solo on my wireless network from anywhere in the house
* Super cool, the Grace remote control app on IPad / Iphone can display the album art of the music currently playing on Pandora, changing with each tune
* I can most easily customize Solo content: add podcasts, search for & add internet radio stations, and other media streams at the grace-reciva website from any computer
* Podcast support works - eg, I set up a connection to "This American Life" podcast over the internet
* The Solo is software-updateable over the internet and can display wifi signal strength for problem determination.
* Solo navigation is straight-forward, similar to the hierarchical navigation approach of an IPod
* Although Grace Digital tech support doesn't appear to answer their phone, they were pretty responsive by email with about a 2 hour turnaround time on a Tuesday.
* Setting presets on the device is easy - just hold down a preset button while the source is playing - just like a car radio preset button
* The Solo supports connectivity to a UPnP media server
Things that are somewhat annoying:
* Grace support website forums appear little used and lack very much helpful content
* Setup can be a little glitchy - I had to power cycle several times for initial connection and also to obtain the registration key (needed for Pandora authentication)
* There doesn't appear to be a way to rename the built-in folders for better navigation clarity: there is "Internet Radio", "Personal Radio" and "My Stuff > My Stations"
* There doesn't appear to be a way to rename an internet radio station - you take what is named at the grace-reciva website
Despite the annoyances, Solo is a great value. I plan to add Sirius internet radio and experiment with Solo's UPnP media server support to connect to my Mac and to a NAS music library.
UPDATE: I was able to easily connect to my iTunes library via a UPnP media server application on a Mac, Playback by Yazsoft ($15). Playback is designed to work with iTunes. The Solo immediately found the Playsoft UPnP application on my wifi network and connected with my iTunes library. The Solo's navigation of the iTunes library is very similar to an iPod. - Pandora - Grace Digital - Sirius - Wifi Radio'
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