OCTOBER 2019 MACWORLD 119Roku (which would later shift focus to
video streamers) and Slim Devices (later
acquired by Logitech). Slim introduced
such innovations as touch-screen
tuners, but Logitech gave up on
streaming hardware in the wake of its
$100 million bad bet on Google TV (the
Logitech Revue).
In fact, Grace Digital was into internet
radio so early it had to cultivate its own
database of 40,000 web radio stations
and streams from around the world. These
days, channel aggregators V-Tuner and
TuneIn do the heavy lifting for most
internet radio makers. Grace’s ever-in-flux
list now includes an additional 60,000
channels from Europe’s Receiva. “We’re
adding, adjusting about 200 listings every
day,” said Grace Digital co-founder and
CEO Greg Fadul.
Still, I was
able to stump
the system,
searching in vain
for favorite
Brazilian music
stations
BlueBossaNova,
Paul in Rio, and
Radio Rio Verde
FM, which come
up readily on
rival internet
radios. At least
Grace will work with you to fix these snubs.
On their website, I was able to enter the
URL of a wanted stream, and then watch it
migrate to the favorites lists on the radio’s
screen and the companion GD Control
app (for Android and iOS) I’d added to my
smartphone and tablet. This same custom-
added station could then be readily saved
to one of the 10 radio presets—recalled
either on the face plate with its five hard
buttons plus a “shift” key, or with the 10
dedicated, nicely sized preset buttons on
the infrared remote.
And what a pleasure it is to go
exploring for content on the radio itself,
using its selector knob to plow through a
polished menu on its uncommonly large
(3.5-inch) color LCD display. You can also
work a distinctly smaller volume knob, plusAn excellent remote
control offers direct
access to 10 presets,
plus clock and sleep
timer settings, full menu
options, track pause and
skip, and volume control.
You can also tweak EQ
settings with the remote,
although that is one
of the speaker’s less-
impressive features.