Going off FM radio

I’ve listened to the radio for most of my life and it’s pretty much been FM.  But for a number of years now, I’ve found that the quality of radio reception has been going down.  I think part of it is that radio tuners just do not work as well as they used to.   We have 3 clock radios in the house: kitchen, bedroom, sunroom.  All of them have become mostly unusable, losing the channel when you stand to close, picking up channels from elsewhere if you positioned the antenna wrong. 

Spurred on by the poor quality of my radios, I started looking around for alternatives.  Radio stations have been available on the web for a while now, but because of the need for a computer, it did not fit in to our domestic routine.  Recently Internet Radios have started to appear, the one that caught my attention was the Squeezebox Radio from Logitech.  It caught my attention, mainly because we’ve been using the classic squeezebox to stream our digital music to our tradition stereo for about 5 years now.

The Squeezebox radio looks a lot like a retro clock radio and when plugged into your network (either wirelessly or wired) it can operate just like a normal clock radio but with a whole lot of extra feature.  I ordered a squeezebox radio for the bedroom and simply loved it, so I ordered 2 more one for the kitchen and one for the sunroom, removed the old clock radios (I keep them tucked away just in case there is a network outage).

In this blog, I am just going to talk about the Squeezebox Radio as a standalone replacement for your existing clock radios.  In a future blog, I will talk about how much more the Squeezebox Radio is when part of a Squeezebox Server home media system.

Before I bought the Squeezebox Radio, I actually bought a different internet radio, it had all the features, plus the additional feature of also have a built FM tuner.  Never having used an internet radio I was cautious and thought having built FM would be useful.  Well! This was an example of how it’s not the spec list that is really important, but how it is implemented.  My first internet radio worked fine but it was a pain to use, every time I turned it on, I had to navigate to the one channel I always listened to, about 8 button clicks.  It would also drop the Wifi encryption every month or so and it would take 5 minutes, just as I was going to bed to connect it again.  This radio got recycled in less than 5 months.

The Squeezebox Radio on the other hand was a joy to use right out of the box and it has never lost the wifi encryption.  It is a solid well-built device, here’s my list of what I like about the squeezebox radio as a standalone replacement for your existing clock radio:

1)      Looks and feels like a clock radio, controls are familiar and easy to use

2)      Wonderful sound, deep and rich for such a small package

3)      Solid, well-built and stylish

4)      Plays local stations better than off air radio

5)      Also plays stations from around the world, internet only stations and most music services such as spotify

6)      More flexibility in terms of alarm options, display options

7)      Optional rechargeable battery and remote

Setting it up is fairly easy, you plug it into power and then connect it to the internet, either by physically or wirelessly.  Once it has a network connection you have full access to local and global radio stations as well as many other.  Your squeezebox radio actually connects up to mysqueezebox.com which is a cloud based server for all your squeezebox needs, you can signup for a free account here http://www.mysqueezebox.com/index/Home and then you can control your radio using your browser if you want.

This is an ideal gift for your parents, grandparents anyone that is not really comfortable with computers, particularly if they are living far from the home.  I would recommend that you configure the wireless for them and program the preset keys for their favorite radio stations.