Customer Reviews

Grace Digital Wireless Hi-fi Internet Radio Tuner featuring Pandora and NPR (GDI-IRDT200)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It is a very strong performer with lot of features. The team that came up the specs did a wonderful job. Tonnes and tonnes of features. WIFI, Radio, Alarm clock, DLNA music client, Windows network share, headphone output, digital SPDIF and Optical output etc etc. I can't find any thing lacking in terms of connectivity or features. Once I plugged and connected every thing it worked flawless, I didnt hear any noise or jitter. Played well with tough AKG headphones, digital output quality was fantastic. I didnt hear any difference between Audio CD and DLNA streamed media. I use a Bel canto DAC3 as external DAC. Features wise it is top notch. I dont think any one who buys this will miss any thing. It found almost all the radio stations, lot of variety. It has support for high bit rate audio via digital output, in built DAC can only support 16 bit audio.

Now comes the cons. All of them are related to the User Interface, Remotecontrol and LCD screen. The LCD screen is a pre-historic 4 frames/sec refresh screen. If you scroll faster it blinks and is hard to read. The menu system has lot of issues. Every time you hit return it goes back to the start the list. Let's say you have 1000 songs in your folder, you want to play the 500 and 501th song. In IPod you go scroll down choose the 500th song once it is over, you can just go down and choose the 501th song. Here it goes back to 1st, then you have to scroll down again to choose 501th. It get annoying when you want to put more than 10 songs in the queue. You have to scroll down 10 times. The remote control is useless, all the initial configuration like WPA key etc has to be done via the knob. You can't do the initial configuration like setting up WPA via remote control, you have to use the dial and there is no easy way to do DEL or BACKSPACE. Every thing from setting time to WPA key has to be done via the front panel buttons and knobs. There is another annoying bug with media streaming, it skips the first 10 seconds.

There is no pause, next, prev buttons on the front panel. You need to use the remote for that. For scrolling down(which you will do a lot). If not for the user interface annoyance, it will be a 5 start product. Unable to measure jitter as my sound card input didnt work, from what I could hear I sounded flawless. Iam not expecting great things from the inbuilt DAC, it is probably as good as cheap laptop DACs. Use a external DAC or your pre-amp DAC to get the best sound.

I replaced the default wireless duck with a larger 5db antenna, it improved the range a lot. Now I see 5 bars all across on the other side of the house. It is a very strong performer, if you are willing to forgive some of the user interface annoyances.

Wow! What a sweet device this is for the even the not so techo-inclined. Installation was a breeze as there were only 2 cables to hook-up: power, and RCA jacks. I piped it into my receiver and hit the power button and bingo! it found my network over it's installed handy dandy wireless network adapter (G). It prompted me for my password, which I entered (by turning the knob, which was kind of a pain) and it connected no problem. You can also wire your connection through the network cable slot in the back, however, no network cable was included.

After that, I chose internet radio and I had choices galore. The real beauty of this device is how you can personalize it. Got a Pandora account? Pipe it through this baby with ease. How about Live365? You can do that too. Want to search the internet radio via genre? No sweat. Absolutely amazing I tell you.

I created my Grace account, added stations online and podcasts and after unplugging the device and plugging back in (yah, they tell you to do that so it updates the streams), my customization was found on the device and away I went.

Here is the absolute frosting on the cake...I'm now streaming all of my music from my laptop and external hard drive to this device! Sort by genre, album, album artist, create a queue, you name it, this thing can do it. This kills the Windows Media Center that never worked right with my 360.

Who knew you could have so much fun with a radio??

The "Grace Digital Wireless Hi-fi Internet Radio Tuner" is one of the best tuners that I have ever seen. The ease of setup and the multiple choices that you have for your listening pleasure (Internet Radio, Pandora, Live365, and others) was honestly quite astonishing to me. With the WiFi I have in my house, I had 5 bars on everything and the radio comes in crystal clear. And the channels! There were so many of them that I had trouble selecting JUST one. It also has a nice bright display that includes a clock (as well as an Alarm setting) and a headphone jack. As far as setup goes, it was as basic as plugging in power and then piping it into an output device (I used my old stereo since its already hooked into the speakers). It's actually a quite attractive system (I guess I like the blue LED display), it is light (maybe too light when you are pushing the buttons on the front) and the profile is quite low - about as tall as your typical high end blu-ray player.

However there is a BIG "but". The User interface system that Grace uses is archaic. It's been awhile, and I'm dating myself here, but I felt like I was programming the clock on my hi-fi that I got in 1980 (that still had an 8-track player in it BTW). All the initial setup uses the Tuner's knob and the frame refresh rate makes the display constantly flash if you scroll faster than say 1 or 2 channels a second. The display only shows a few stations/songs at a time and there is no way to fast forward or go back beyond the simply pushing the forward and back buttons over and over and over again - so you basically have none of the time-saving buttons that we have all come accustomed to in your basic $25 stereo or any car radio built in the last 10 years. And just wait until you want to queue up more than 2 or 3 songs at a time - I think it took me about 2 or 3 minutes to setup music that then only played for maybe 10 min - a huge waste of time - because when you pick a song (or a radio station), the unit goes back to the top of the list for your next selection and NOT to the place where you last selected. So like if I chose a station called "Klassic Kristian" music, scrolling all the way down from "AAA AM" (and going from A to K on the radio takes a LONG TIME), the next time I want to pick a station (mind you w/o turning the tuner off) it is back up at the top at "AAA AM". As you can probably assertain for yourself, I have never gotten out of the "A's" on the internet radio because 1) there are so many stations and 2) it takes so long to scroll down. Which means that I basically use about 10% of it's capability - a huge waste of this unit's vaste potential. After you do the initial setup, there is no interface with the front of the unit - everything is on the remote - so God forbid if you lose that sucker.

So the Pandora and internet radio are really, honestly God sends and this unit plays them with crystal clarity. I really love the look of it and there is a vast potential that I have yet to even tap. However, the interface system is so awful that I rarely bother. I've had it setup in my house for 4 months and I think I've only used it half a dozen times and my kids don't even try - it just takes way too much time. What a crying shame...



(As a caveat, I have read in some of these reviews that you can download an I-Pod app that allows your I-Pod to act as an advanced remote. Although I have not tried it, this would be a huge benefit. However it wouldn't change my rating as 1) not everyone has an I-Pod and 2) you shouldn't have to use a 3rd party device in order to get the darn thing into the 21st century)

Confession- we moved into our house about four years ago and we *still* haven't set up our stereo. Our computers, iPhones, and iPods have sort of made music very portable, so we didn't really feel a huge need for any sort of stereo/radio in our living room.

However, a few months ago I started listening to Pandora radio on my iPhone and got hooked. For those who haven't tried it yet, it's basically a custom internet radio- you type in the name of bands, musicians, genres of music and Pandora creates a personal radio station for you based on your musical interests. They also have several stations programmed that you can choose from if you just want to pick a genre of music and go from there. It's better than satellite because not only is it customized to your tastes, but it's absolutely free (commercials are minimal- just a small spot every ten or fifteen songs.) I tried to figure out a way to get Pandora into the living room, on a *bigger* scale, but came up with nothing.

Then the Grace Digital Tuner came along and it's the *perfect* solution.

Even though we have no official "stereo" equipment, we simply plugged the tuner into out 40" flat screen and instant home stereo! The tuner is very low profile and slid right over our TiVo. It's very attractive and lightweight.

WE LOVE THIS TUNER. We're not big "stereo/entertainment system" people, but this tuner has us a bit giddy. I love how easy it is to use and how easy it was to access *my* Pandora settings (saved on the Pandora website and accessed wirelessly by the tuner) and get my personalized stations playing through the Tuner.

The first thing we did after we unpacked it was plug it in to the wall and the TV (the tuner does come with a remote, a power cord and antenna, but you need to provide your own cords), and turned it on (power switch in back). Immediately it recognized our WiFi and presented us with a list of wireless networks. Entering a password was a little tedious, but once you get it in there, it remembers it.

The tuner got online, updated both the firmware and software automatically. To access Pandora, we went into the "settings" of the Tuner, and the tuner registered itself over the internet, and displayed a code on the LCD display on the front of the unit. We went to the Grace website, set up an account, entered the code, and we were able to access our Pandora settings.

We haven't tried setting up our satellite radio account with it yet, but with Pandora, I'm not sure we will even bother. We were able to access several internet radio stations and FM radio stations as well.

The unit came with a power cord and antenna, but we needed a digital/audio cable or RCA audio cables to hook it up to our TV.

Final word of recommendation:

GET THE IPHONE APP FOR THE TUNER! It is available free from the iPhone app store (doesn't seem to work on the iPad though...). The app basically turns your iPhone into an advanced remote control for the tuner - scans the network for any receivers and recognizes them and lets you control several aspects of the tuner from your phone, including volume, station tuning, etc.. It pulls up information for the music playing, as well. However, you can't turn the unit on from the iPhone- when the tuner isn't on, it's not active on the network. Not sure if this would be the case if the tuner were plugged into our network.

Highly recommended for anyone looking for a simple way to bring radio (internet, satellite, or otherwise) into their homes.

Perhaps I just have bad luck, but I'm astonished to see the number of very positive reviews for this product. Based on my experience, it's simply not ready for consumer use. The Grace product has troubles holding a network connection. After hours of fiddling with it, back to Amazon it went for a replacement. The second Grace has been plagued with problems. It turns on by itself (in the middle of the night, of course). It often loses its network connection, and has great trouble reconnecting. It routinely displays error messages. Some stations play for a few seconds and then stop, then repeat the process over and over again as though the radio hasn't buffered them enough. I've been to the Grace support site (not much of a support site, mostly a chain of posts from frustrated users who don't seem to receive answers) and my problems are hardly unique. Between the two Grace units I've owned, I've probably spent >10 hours troubleshooting. All for a simple Wi-Fi radio! They also advertise that you can listen to Sirius radio on it, but don't tell you that you must pay extra to be able to listen on this device. Even with a Sirius subscription. I would only recommend this product to someone I really don't like.

Most other reviewer ratings are pretty accurate as far as usability and value. The Grace GDI-IRDT200 is a unique, rare find - a true internet radio tuner made to compliment an existing audio system. Audiophiles will like its clean rack format and analog, optical and digital outputs. It has a pretty decent analog FM tuner - it picked up most local FM stations with its little 3 foot supplied antenna, where as my vintage higher end NAD and Marantz gear insist on a large attic FM antenna.

So take my 3 stars and the following with a grain of salt since this is a high value unit at $150 (a Grace refurbished unit from Amazon, which looked like brand new) - it's not reasonable for me to be too picky at this price level.

Interface: As others have noted, the interface is dated and you will be pressing a LOT of buttons. Button-city is is OK for one time setup duties, but not for daily operation since at some point you want to relax and easily change music and not be a button minion. It has the same poor ergonomics as many badly designed after market car stereo head units, so if you are OK with those, you are OK here. Sadly, basic functions like simple front panel/remote control one-push presets buttons to switch between my favorite stations and my local DLNA/UPnP media server, are missing from the Grace - and in all fairness, from almost all other modern audio gear (when did endless, serial menus, needed to accomplish basic functions, became desirable to consumers, other than for cost savings?). A web browser interface, like used for home networking gear, would go a long way.

Operation: The unit was decent to setup and wifi configuration was no more complicated than a basic router or firewall network appliance, WAP, dedicated IP and all. It quickly found my 3COM wifi access point and never had a single wifi issue during a few days of 24 hour use. The unit is good looking, well made, it does not run hot - an issue for other appliances like fanless DVRs, some of which will overheat themselves to death. In contrast to earlier Amazon reviews, this particular unit uses a very tiny switching power supply-wall wart, which even after a couple of days, was barely warm to the touch. Also very nice - even after removing AC power for an hour, settings were not lost - a notable plus.

Local Streaming: It detected and worked well with my Synology Diskstation DLNA/UPnP server, only getting lost once and requiring a reboot (rear panel full on/off switch) in order to find the Synology server music playlist again.

My Issue: The real reason why I rate this 3 stars and not 4 or 5, and sadly must return it; the GDI-IRDT200 only supports specific premium internet stations listed on the Grace website. The premium stations Grace does support are really great, but I also use others like sky.fm premium which it cannot support (i.e. there is no way on the GDI-IRDT200 to enter the user ID and Password for other premium providers). I wish Grace would have made it clear that other premium stations are 'not' supported, since I have spent years streaming using a ubiquitous spare laptop connected to my audio system, with no limitations what so ever. I understand Grace can only negotiate and support so many premium stations, and suspect this is common to other internet radio appliances. To most of you, this will likely be an irrelevant, tiny nit, if at all.

Support: My use of Grace support was great - I emailed support at 7pm asking about premium support and got a decent response a couple hours later, on a Friday night no less.

Summary: If it was not for this one premium station support limitation issue, I'd give this 4 or 5 stars and have it still. If all the nits and complaints were rectified, this thing would cost $400 and we'd probably be complaining about the price. Overall, its a good deal for a unique item which only costs $150-200. e.

Update - since I returned this, I could not leave a seller Feedback, which would have been 100% positive. So please note, Grace is a real pleasure to do business with. No questions asked, and quickly refunded - the hard part of being a good seller. e.

The Grace Digital internet stream tuner is a great product, which I thoroughly recommend. Some highlights:

1-Feels solid. Like a quality home audio component, in a metal case. Other stream tuners are made of cheap plastic or have odd shapes more appropriate for a bedside table than a stereo cabinet.

2-Good firmware. Tunes and buffers quickly, and doesn't crash if a stream is corrupt or absent. Convenience features include searching and history.

3-Linked with the Reciva website. You can make all adjustments to your "My Stations" list via a web browser, instead of the small buttons on the remote control. Also updates its address listings from Reciva, so the unit does not go out of date.

4-Has both wired and wireless ethernet. May not be important for all, but was a must-have for me.

5-Has both digital and analog outputs. Allows easy connection to home theater preamps and a/v processors.

6-Convenient onboard headphone output (with volume control). You can listen to the Grace with headphones, without needing to power up the rest of your stereo equipment.

7-Large LCD clock display when unit is in standby. Big and clear, easily visible from across a room. A bonus, but may be too bright if you are thinking of bedroom use.

This unit costs more than other products that can tune the same web streams. Even an old laptop can be pressed into service as a stream tuner. But you get what you pay for in this case - a solid and supported box that is right at home in your listening room.

I had never heard of Grace Digital Audio before I purchased this tuner. There are not a lot of options if you are looking for a traditional component size internet digital tuner. I was a little apprehensive but was swayed by the reviews here. While the build quality is not up to the major manufacturers like Yamaha or Denon neither is the price. I was looking for an internet radio tuner that fit into my home theater rack. (I have shipped the tuner to Middle Atlantic for measurement and they now have it in their rack shelf database.) This unit does everything I was looking for and much more. The iPhone/iPod app is very well thought out and adds incredible value to owning this tuner. So far the performance is phenomenal and I am listening to music and talk radio from all around the world. Also having access to my digital library, Pandora and Live365 makes this my go to choice for our whole house audio system. I can't praise the functionality of the GDI-IRDT200 highly enough.

I have been listening to local AM and FM stations for years but had enough of the inane chatter of DJs and poor quality sound resulting from weak signals. I am not an audiophile but the quality of the sound from the Grace Internet tuner sounds very good to me. No static, just clear audio. My wife who speaks Russian is able to enjoy stations that originate in Moscow. I hooked up to Pandora w/o a problem and it is free. Rhapsody is available by paid subscription. There is plenty to listen to and enjoy. I don't think I will be playing CDs very often anymore.

UPDATE 1
I am sorry to report that after one month of use the radio is malfunctioning in ways similar to those reported in the review by Network10. Specifically, it turns on by itself, usually in the middle of the night. Second, it stops playing for about a minute or two and the screen on the radio says "buffering". I would like to attribute the latter problem to my wireless network but I have high speed internet and a premium router so this is unlikely. Also, I have no problem streaming Netflix to my Vizio tv. In my opinion the radio is at fault. For the time that it worked properly, I really enjoyed this device. I am downgrading my rating from 5 stars to 2 as a result of the problems that developed.

UPDATE 2
I returned my Grace Internet Wireless HI-fi Radio Tuner and ordered another several weeks later hoping for better results. The new one did turn on by itself but Grace customer service suggested shutting off wireless standby (Settings>Network Config>Wireless Standyby>No) and that solved the problem. The other issue of loss of signal (buffering) has not occurred with my second tuner. So, I have upgraded my rating back to 5 stars as this tuner preforms faultlessly.

I got this for Christmas to replace an old DirecTV reciever that was connected to our Nuvo whole home audio system to supply commercial free music. My only regret is not getting it sooner. I thought I would have to spend a lot of time searching for stations, but it connects to a factory database that has thousands of stations of every type of music imaginable from all over the world including news, talk, podcasts and more local AM and FM stations then you could ever actually pick up on a 'over the air' tuner. I like a wide variety of music, a lot of it not mainstream, so this is great as you can find anything you might be into that would never be on an FM station. The real iceing on the cake is the ipod/iphone/ipad app that lets you control it from anywhere in your house over wi-fi. I subscribed to Pandora one to get commercial free music but even the stations with commercials keep them to a minimum. Pandora shows a very high resolution picture of the album cover and song title on my Ipod for the song currenly playing which is nice. The one downside to Pandora One is it will time out after 5 hours with no input, then the only way I have found to reset the Pandora timer is to turn the tuner off and back on. Since we have this tuner connected to a whole home audio system that is out of sight, we leave the tuner on all the time so any zone controller can be turned on for music, so we can't just leave the tuner on Pandora as it will probably have timed out then you must go find the ipod to reset it.