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Acoustic Energy
Wi-Fi Internet Radio |
Please read the AE WiFi Radio
Update 6th March 2006 at the end
of this article
Acoustic Energy Wi-Fi Internet Radio – my view
The Acoustic Energy Wi-Fi Internet Radio is described as the world's
first radio capable of accessing over 99% of the world's Internet radio
stations - simply requiring a Wi-Fi connection.
I dropped into a John Lewis today, who had (note the tense) one of these
devices in. Before I could stop myself I'd paid for it and was heading
back to the office.
So, what's it like? (Remember it's my personal view being expressed.)
The device is about 5 inches square by 7 inches tall at the back, sloping
to around 5 inches tall at the front. It has a gloss black finish, with
a silver front/top plate - all plastic. There is a rubberised base (which
is good at preventing it from slipping round), and a rubber control knob
along with 10 buttons on the top. There's also a three line LCD panel
(one of these rows is for signal strength, etc), backlit in blue. My device
rattles and the display turns in the case so quality of assembly seems
very poor. Power is via a "wall wart". It doesn’t look,
or feel, £200 worth of kit.
I worked out how to strip it down and have found that the rattling is
the LCD panel, which is not secured at all, so it’s a design 'flaw'
rather than a unit fault. A couple of blobs of BlueTac have cured that!
When you switch it on for the first time it asks you to select a network,
which is easy enough unless you've protected it in any way. If you filter
by MAC address you'll have to go into the menu system to get the MAC address
- I'd have expected it on a sticker on the outside of the device. Then
if you're using WEP encryption you have to enter the key using the rotary
knob to scroll to A,B,C,1,2,3 etc, then press 'Select' after each character.
While this doesn't seem too difficult there seems to be what I consider
a serious design flaw - if you power off the device, rather than put it
into standby IT REQUIRES YOU TO ENTER THE WEP KEY EVERY TIME YOU POWER
THE DEVICE ON - this really is unacceptable - entering (in my case) a
26 character Hex code is not fun, or quick. This should be stored on the
device! When in standby the time shows on the display, which is always
backlit (in blue). (Please read the AE
WiFi Radio Update 6th March 2006 at the end of this article)
Having set up the device you go to the stations menu and choose your
country and wait for the station list to download (a few seconds for the
400+ for the UK). You then just spin the knob until you reach the station
you want and press 'Select' - easy. Radio Caroline connects to the 64k
Real stream. There are 5 preset buttons, which can hold 2 stations each,
so you can put 10 stations onto the presets for easy retrieval.
And now, the sound.... this is what hurts, £200 and it sounds like
an AM radio on most streams. On Virgin (128kbps) it sounds like a very
cheap FM radio - it sounds like somebody has pressed the "Alba"
button, but I can't find this to switch it out of circuit! Truly poor
and at the price very, very disappointing.
There is a headphone/line socket and feeding this out shows that the
level is low so you'll need to turn the volume on the AE up full as well
as turning the volume on your hi-fi up quite a bit. The sound quality
from this is much better so I'd guess the internal speaker(s) is poor.
Finally, and again negatively, the device seems to be very poor at holding,
or getting, a signal - I can use my Apple air-port to feed iTunes to my
HiFi with no problems - about 20 ft away from the Wireless Access Point
though down the stairs. The AE device gets no signal there. Even 3 ft
from the access point it's one bar down on the signal strength meter.
Summary
Pros
It does what it claims to do
Hundreds of stations available
Don't need to turn the PC on to use it
Cons
Expensive
Cheap appearance
Poor sound quality
Poor build quality (may just be this unit)
Need to enter WEP key every time unit is powered on
Poor signal strength
Mains powered only
Recommendation/Conclusion
If you know that this is what you want then a qualified recommendation
- it does give you, for example, Radio Caroline without turning the PC
or TV on, otherwise not recommended - there are too many major negative
points.
It isn't difficult to source decent sounding speakers (AE make some for
heavens sake!) as the sound quality is too poor, not just for the price,
but as an absolute statement. Additionally the materials used, the build
quality and appearance need to match the premium price.
From a wireless point of view the sensitivity needs to be better - the
device needs to operate at greater distances from an access point.
For me the biggest negative point of them all - from a user perspective
it is totally unacceptable to have to re-enter the WEP key every time
the device is powered on; this is most likely going to be a 26 Hexadecimal
string which can't easily be remembered. (Please
read the AE WiFi Radio Update 6th March 2006 at the end of this article)
PC Pro gave it 3 out of 6 - I'll give it 1.5 out of 6.
I hope this has been of help to someone.
David Jackson
http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo-2.cfm/Product_ID/2542
AE WiFi Radio Update 6th March 2006
I wasn't impressed that I needed to input the WEP key every time I powered
it on - I contacted AE about this, who told me this wasn't right and to
return my device.
This I did, John Lewis having no problems in exchanging it, and I can
report that my new unit does remember the WEP key (and the stations I
had put on the presets, which also weren't saving) so I obviously had
a faulty unit.
Can you therefore please scratch out my comments about the continual
re-entry of the WEP key.
Everything else I said still applies - including the LCD panel which
is not fixed down so rattles and rotates in the case (and I thought that
was a fault !). Operation and sound quality are as on the previous unit.
Let's hope there is a Mark 2 which improves improves on this.
David Jackson
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