Customer Reviews

Roku SoundBridge R1000 Radio Network Music System

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

Update: After two years, my SoundBridge radio began to die with a constant crackling of static, regardless of volume setting. Apparently, I am not the only customer to experience this problem, but the warranty coverage is one year, regardless. That is a disappointment, because this product is not cheap. I know that things break, but when a problem is common, it is a design flaw and I hope for manufacturers to take better care of their customers. So, I am not changing my rating - it was a great product while it lasted - but two years of life from a $300 product is not good enough for me to buy another, even at the low, low RMA price of $200.

Original review:

I have wished for a radio that could play Internet radio stations ever since stations began to stream on-line. Sure, I can use my computer, but I hate to leave the noisy, power-sucking thing on 24 hours a day. Over the last couple years, a few devices have popped up that could play Internet radio, but that lacked the ability to tune in regular AM and FM radio. At long last, the SoundBridge Radio has arrived with the ability to play both Internet and regular radio.

The SoundBridge is great. It is the best thing of any kind that I have purchased in several years. That said, it is not perfect.

Internet Radio

The SoundBridge delivers Internet radio every bit as well as a computer. Once you have your favorite stations programmed in, it is easy to switch between them - just press the preset button and you're streaming.

The downside is that it is a bit laborious to enter those stations. To add new stations to the presets, you need to log in to the web interface of the radio, using your web browser. No big deal if you are computer savvy, but it would be nice if there were a way to program the presets from the radio itself.

AM/FM Radio

The SoundBridge closed the deal with me just by offering regular AM and FM radio in addition to Internet radio. This was a feature I required and SoundBridge Radio delivers.

However, that is as much praise as I will give it for the standard radio features. There are several annoyances. You cannot scan stations manually. To select a station, you must select it from a list. A tuning dial would be much, much more useful. The reception is poor. This is probably due to the internal AC power supply. Don't expect to pick up weak, remote stations with the SoundBridge.

The radio does provide AM and FM antenna ports, so you can improve on the poor reception by adding a quality antenna.

Radio Controls

There are four ways to control the radio - the physical controls, the remote control, the web interface, and the command line interface. This provides a great degree of flexibility if you are willing to learn them all. It could also be confusing.

The biggest problem with the SoundBridge Radio is that each of these four control sets works differently and does not allow you to control the full set of features. If I had designed the SoundBridge Radio, I would have made sure you could manipulate every feature from every interface. Sadly, this is not the case.

The physical radio controls allow you to do almost everything you will need to do once the wireless network is set up and your presets are programmed. However, you need to use the remote control for setup.

The web interface allows only very basic control of the radio, but is necessary for manipulating presets. You can program the presets for Internet radio stations simply by pasting in the URL.

The command line interface can be accessed by Telnet. I have only done basic tinkering, but it appears you can control most of the radio functions from the command line. You can also do interesting things, such as rewriting the radio display.

Sound

The sound is fine. You're listening to the radio - how good do you expect it to be? Voices are clear and well balanced. Music sounds fine, though a bit heavy on the bass for my tastes. If you crank the volume while playing music, you will overload the speakers - they aren't very big. This is a table-top radio. You probably won't be blowing the windows out with your clock radio and you won't be with the SoundBridge either. I have no complaints. If you want better sound, there is a port for headphones.

Security?

The SoundBridge Radio is a computer, running Linux - it just looks like a Radio. It checks in regularly with Roku for software updates, but you should think of this little box as a computer before you plug it in to your network. I haven't tried to hack it, but just about any computer can be hacked if you try hard enough. You wouldn't connect your PC to the Internet without some kind of firewall and I wouldn't recommend that you connect the SoundBridge Radio to the Internet without some protection of its own.

Overall

I have been using the SoundBridge Radio for a week. I love it. Sure, there are a number of annoyances in the design, but they are far outweighed by the positives.

Most of the irritations come during setup. Once you have the radio set up, you just punch your presets and listen to the radio.

Expect to be amazed. I'm now a born again radio listener with Internet radio. No commercials, it's free, and a ton of choices - what else do you want?

I bought this (from Fry's $249) after I read a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/business/09pogue.html). Arrived in 2 days. Opened the box. Popped the batteries into the remote. Plugged the radio to the AC outlet.The display in the front panel asked a few questions so that the radio can get connected to your wifi network. Fairly easy even if you are using WEP security and you know how to hook up a wireless device. But if you are using WPA security, you may have to start up with WEP, upgrade the firmware, then move to WPA. The unit I got had version 2.5 and the current version is 3.0. WPA is supported starting from version 2.7.

Once you have the radio hooked up to wifi, there's really nothing else much to do but start selecting your stations. I suggest that you go directly to Radioroku.com. This site helps you find internet radio stations and listen to them on your PC or on your Soundbridge with a click of a button. Believe me radioroku will make things a lot easier for you.

If you want to control and monitor the radio remotely from your PC, you can also download Roku Radio Snooper (http://www.rokulabs.com/support_sb_dwnld_radiosnoop.php). You can easily command the radio to play audio files on your PC or store URLs of radio stations using the snooper.

The real value from this (and any) Internet Radio is the amount of content you can get for FREE and at your own leisure without annoying commercials. Remember this radio does NOT need a PC (or MAC) to download music or to run. All it needs is a wireless broadband internet connection.

Finally, the sound coming out of this small radio is truly phenomenal (within reasonable expectations). I'm buying another one soon.

After a great deal of research I settled on the Roku Soundbridge. I bought it and loved it until a week later, on moving it to a different room and plugging it in, it failed to work.

Research on the forums for this product on the Roku website reveals that this product has a common defect--a power supply that usually fails within the warrenty period.

I returned it to Amazon, but I have not got a replacement, as the Roku is the only one with an Atomic clock based alarm, a concept I like very much.

I am waiting for the new model whenever that comes, hopefully with a better powersupply in it this time.

A great idea/concept, but badly flawed by the low quality power supply.

This is a great appliance, easy to install, and does everything they say it does. BUT...there are no outputs so it can not be connected to external speakers or to a music system. If it had just two RCA jacks, it would be a fiver for sure. There are less expensive devices on the market that will do the same thing however, the R1000 acoustics is excellent.

I like having music in the bedroom. In the past, I've had a receiver and separate (small) speakers. I'd listen to the radio or hook up my ipod.

But I wanted some things not addressed by such a setup:

1. Reduced clutter. Didn't want to deal with separate power cords, speaker cables, wall mounting, etc.

2. Access to my entire MP3 collection.

3. Internet Radio.

The Soundbridge Radio gives me all those things and the bonus of an alarm clock.

Setting it up was easy. Being an IT professional, I'm a little more savvy than the average person, but I didn't have to crack a manual to get it hooked up and going. It all just worked.

Sound quality is in the ballpark of other boutique table radios like the Tivoli, Cambridge Audio, and Bose, with the plus over some of these models of having stereo speakers. It's a trifle boomy and won't rattle any windows, but sounds good at low to medium volumes.

FM reception requires external antenna (included).

There really isn't another product in this category. You can either buy a standalone player and hook it up to a stereo or buy a conventional table-top radio. So it was nice to see that the Soundbridge Radio does the job well.

I had a specific purpose in buying the radio. I wanted a clock radio with a wide variety of classical music. I have successfully , but laboriously loaded in a great set of stations from around the world. There are few tricks in finding the compatible streams and being certain that you have a strong wi-fi signal near the point of use.
I needed to add a second router on the side of the house near the bedroom. After 2 months of steady use ,the radio is reliable, has good tone, an easy-to-set alarm clock and a very workable remote control.
Have your laptop nearby for station setup. Be ready to post a question on their support board if things are not working perfectly and plan on keeping your station selection fairly constant, rather than switching things around all the time and you will be very happy. If you set it up for a less technologically savvy family they will be happy since it is very simple to operate.
I did not set up the unit with a server. I will leave it to others to help you on that issue. I have used the SD card with mp3 files and that worked perfectly.

What a great invention. Easy to set up even with WPA security on my Wi-Fi system. Great sound. Easy to add other internet radio stations to the box.

I've never reviewed anything before, but I had to put in a good word for this radio. It is even better than I hoped it would be. I had it set up and working within 15 minutes, and it has worked perfectly ever since. It takes me back to the days when shortwave was popular, I get stations from all over the world, but now with excellent audio quality. The radio itself has great sound, and the AM and FM are quite good too (if you want to bother with them given the number of stations on the Internet). The interface, both with and without the remote, is well thought out and intuitive. I can also easily control the radio from my computer.

If you love listening to the radio, buy this one right away! You'll love it!

I just received my new Soundbridge Radio Friday and now it's Monday and I still can't get it to work. I waited a week for it to get here and was excited to get it, but its been one fustration after another because I can't get this to work with my wireless router (linksys). I tried to call Roku, the manufacturer, but you can't talk to anyone there, you have to email them and wait for a reply....by email. I bought this from Atlanta Network Technologies and guess what, they won't talk to me either unless I want to order something else. Wow the customer is King right? These guys just want your money and show no respect for the customer, don't deal with them.

Day 7 (May 25, 2007) of the radio nightmare... I emailed Roku for help and 2 days later a tech emailed me with a suggestion. Didn't work, so I emailed him back...waited 2 days and got another suggestion. By this time we both know that somethings wrong with the unit setup (the IP address of the radio is 0.0.0). So I loaded a patch to the SD card, but the radio won't recognize the card. Emailed the tech (note you cannot email them directly but have to go through a general mailbox and hope he gets it promptly) and he promised to call me today....It's now the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend and 3:25PM PST so it looks like he took off for the weekend and left me in the lurch. Man I would go out of business so fast if I treated my customers this way! If I didn't like this radio I would have sent it back by now, but hope springs eternal. I'll keep you posted on the continuing saga of "Roku Customer Service it's not a slogan, it's a Joke."

Well the tech called today just after the last post and he spent over an hour with me getting the radio up and running, he was great! Now if I could have talked to him a week ago this would have been a much happier experience. It goes to show you that Roku is shooting themselves in the foot with this "support at a distance" policy. I suppose it saves them some money (?), but who knows. I think it's enlightened self interest to have a robust and serious customer support department, but happy customers who recommend your company because of great support doesn't seem like a profit center to these guys, time to wise up. Rick

I've owned this radio for about a week. It is a pleasure to use. The audio is fantastic. I think the sound is comparable to my Bose Wave Radio- this unit has excellent base as well. Everything worked right out of the box with absolutely no issues. In addition to being programmed with some good internet radio stations, it is very easy to play MP3 files, podcasts from iTunes right on this radio using wireless technology.