A digital radio for the iPhone crowd?

Last summer, I was much annoyed by a publicity campaign by some broadcasters saying "Yes to digital radio". Not because I am against digtital radio, but because it was disingenious. Digital radio is already here. What they actually meant, was, "No to analog radio": They were asking for permission to turn off regular FM transmission so that all listeners would be forced to purchase a digital radio, which in Europe means a DAB radio. Their arguments were mostly wrong, to wit, that DAB means better sound (it does not, DAB is normally sent at a sound / bitrate quality similar to good FM) and we would get more channels (some will, but most only marginally: the proposed DAB band is already full with 16 channels, while I currently get about 13 FM channels and not quite the same ones, many get more.) And, of course, DAB radios are still pretty expensive, more likely above 100 euro than below 50. Multiply that by the number of FM radios you have in your kitchen, bedroom, car or cabin which you will have to replace, for no apparently good reason.

Anyway, the campaign worked and it is decided that FM will be cut off in this country in 2017. That is still some time off, but in spite of my irritation, I decided to experiment a little in this direction. But to make it worthwhile and to mask my DAB annoyance, it would have to be something of real new value; meaning internet radio (which is also digital, but unrelated to closing down FM).

Command-line radio
So, when my fifteen-year old bedside radio started to grow a bit wonky, I started looking around for a "triple radio", FM, DAB and Internet. I already had an internet-only radio that I got while in the US (Grace Digital, $300), but clearly adding terrestial radio was useful. Such triple radios do not of course cover the lower range of the price spectrum, but I wanted to see what was available and how they worked.

The Grace radio works fine, but is not overly user-friendly. It is based on a two-line command-line interface which you control through a wheel dial, navigating up and down lists and "typing" by locating each letter with the dial. For presets beyond the first three, you must use the remote, which by and large does not respond to double-digit choices. Once in a while, however, the radio happily turns itself on and keeps going until someone comes along to turn it off. It apparently did so when I was away on holidays and must have driven my dormitory neighbour nuts, blaring incomprehensible Norwegian 24/7 through the paper-thin walls until I came back and could turn if off. By which time she had moved out.

Anyway, the command-line works, and once you got through the setup, the radio did its job quite well within its limits. Also, as I started looking at ads for internet, DAB and triple radios, they all seemed to work pretty much in the same way, although some had a larger display with four or five lines, all seemed to be based on a command-line interface reminiscent of 2-inch computer screens of the 1980s. Price-wise, triple-radios run from about £100-150 up. Functionally, they allow you to search the radio's [online] database for internet stations by name, country, type of content, etc., and often transfer music over wifi from your PC/Mac, hook up your iPod etc.

Pure Sensia
But scanning through these fairly similar-looking offerings, suddenly one stood out as really a radio for the iPhone crowd: Pure Sensia. A British product, it was also almost the most expensive I found, at £250, but gorgeous, shaped like a rugby ball with the front cut off for a large colour 6-inch touch display. Instead of a dreary LCD line with bluish letters, you get a real menu, a list which you flick up and down like on your iPhone and tap to make your selection. Flick left and right, and different options and gadgets appear. You turn it on and off by waving your hand above the radio (literally). So, I did not actually need it, but I wanted it. Lust won over sensibility. I got one.

So how well did it do in practice? Well, the start was a disaster. After unpacking and turning it on, finding the 16 DAB stations and entering my wifi details, it at once asked if I wanted to install a system update (an internet radio is of course a computer, and updates over the air). This was to improve responsiveness in the touch-screen, which was said to be under par, so I said yes, it waffled away, and then said, "Unable to complete" on an otherwise blank screen. Power down and up again, but no go. The old system was gone and the new was "unable to complete". Reset? Check the manual (online on their website): "Go to the menu such and such on the Settings screen". What settings screen? The only screen was "unable to complete". Never mind, what about the hardware reset switch? Nowhere to be seen. A little hole for the paper clip? There was a little hole, but it made no difference - actually there was just a screw in the bottom of it.

So, checking the online knowledge base, it did have the answer: "If you get the "Unable to complete", download the system update to your Windows PC, attach this by USB cable and run the installer.exe." What Windows PC? This is the radio for the trendy, Jonathan Ive-inspired iPhone crowd, the iMac of radios, and they thought I owned a PC? Well, we do have some on the campus I could access, so I took the radio with me to town. But, no way. The installer is an .exe, and we mundane lab users are not allowed to install .exe files on campus PCs. Well, so. Time to test out the VM Fusion PC emulator with Windows 7 I had bought but not really used (what do I need Windows for? Anyway it takes half an hour to boot and brings the rest of my Mac to a virtual halt, not pleasant). But here, I apparently needed it. But wait, did the Sensia update  run on Windows 7? It was very specific, and yes, XP, Vista or Win 7, 32-bit-version. Since my Mac is Intel, I had installed the 64-bit version of Win 7 (which I probably shouldn't have, seeing the performance, but you can't downgrade easiliy). Would that not work? I emailed Pure customer service, which kindly confirmed that it would not. Only 32-bit.

OK, Win 7 came with both options. I wasn't sure I would be flagged as a pirate since I already had installed the 64-bit, but I tried; opened a new "virtual machine" under Fusion, and installed the 32-bit version alongside the old (they now appear as two different "computers"). Windows has not complained about double-install so far, and lo and behold: The Sensia upgrade installer downloaded. It needed a spcial USB cable, but I had one of that type lying around, so it went away and did install. Bliss, the rugby ball had become a radio again, and not the £250 doorstop I had feared.

Graphical radio
So, now that scare has passed, how does perform? Was it worth it? Yes, it was. The display is divided into three graphical panels, with an icon-based "application bar" at the bottom. On the left, a list of stations (DAB, Internet, Favourites, Search results, etc.) On bottom right, a panel with information from the station playing, and on top right a larger panel with application extras. For installing settings, searching, etc., you get an on-screen keyboard a bit larger than that of an iPhone, which is quite convenient.

The screen thus displays still pictures, but not video, this is a radio! Sometimes it hesitates when I switch apps, I may have to keep my finger steady a couple of seconds before it registers the station I want, and my butty index finger often selects the wrong item in the list. But on the whole, it is quite nice, the list flicks up and down pretty much like on your smartphone, and it definitely has the "Mac and iPhone feeling" of working.

Available DAB (DAB/DAB+) stations of course download on installation, and you can select 30 favourites (from among the 16 in this country...). You can also search internet radio (unlimited favourites) by the usual criteria of country, type, etc. and name. Its selection of available podcasts is good (I use our NRK as test, many podcast apps only list a few of theirs, while Sensia seems to have a full load), and you can save them among your internet favourites. You can search and administer internet radio directly on the screen, or create an account with "the Lounge" on Pure's website and organize your list on your PC/Mac. Apparently if you have several radios from Pure (I don't) they can share the same list of favourites. (Grace, my older internet radio, has a similiar web setup). I wasn't quite happy with Lounge's user friendliness, but if so, do it on the radio directly.

The third part, FM radio, was however a wash-out. The radio found only five or six of my dozen available stations, the rest merged into a sound soup (overlapping sound signals). Further, whenever you go from FM to DAB, the radio crashes and has to be reset. So, best forget about FM here and keep your old set around if you want to listen to stations not available on DAB or internet.

Extra functions
The radio is pretty enough to be in your living room (it really is a rugby ball, sitting loose on a stand), but I needed it as a bedside radio. So, I wanted an alarm clock, on the other hand, I don't like staring at a clockface when I wake up at night. Perhaps a special nit, but I was quite happy with Sensia's solution: When you turn the radio off, the screen goes completely black. If you want to know the time, just touch anywhere on the screen - I can do that, fumbling half asleep - and the time is displayed in huge numerals you can't miss, for three seconds, then fade away. Alarms, of course, are availble of various types. Easy to set, easy to forget to turn off afterwards.

In addition to radio, the Sensia can also play music transmitted over wifi from your Mac/PC (your iTunes collection), assuming of course that the PC has software for transmission. My older Grace as well as my TV should do this, but neither worked from my Mac. The TV manual said I should install something called a "Twonky Server" on the Mac, which I did, but it could not connect. Maybe there were other third-party options, but I left it at that, not terribly important. Sensia uses the same Twonky, and I mentioned its uselessness in my conversation with customer relations. They pointed me to a beta of a new version of Twonky, and lo and behold, this worked! I can now see playlists etc. from my Mac iTunes not only on Sensia, but also on the older Grace radio. But not on the TV, well never mind that. The Sensia can also play sound from the iPod, but only through the iPod's headphone connection, not the dock, so it does not charge the iPod.

Finally, the radio also sports some apps: thus Facebook, Twitter and Picasa, which I have not used, as well as RSS feeds (headlines only, not the underlying news pages). The apps occupy the upper right quadrant, but you can expand them to take up the full screen and give you some more detail. You can type messages on the onscreen keyboard, but I suspect it is not the most convenient place to update your profile. Most useful for this type of device is perhaps the weather report (from AccuWeather). Still, while nice, I don't think the apps should be your reason for buying this radio. But it shows what can be done with an internet radio with graphical interface.

On the whole, while the "iPhone interface" may be dismissed as a gimmick, it is a useful gimmick which makes the experience of dealing with internet radio much more pleasant, and would probably be more helpful in spreading the idea of "digital radio" than any PR campaign. For the moment, Sensia is the only one of its kind, and the price line probably indicates why. But I sure hope this is the way the industry will go. For the moment, I am very happy with the splurge, in spite of the occasional freeze and sputter.

***

UPDATE
In late June, the Sensia received a (non-optional) system update over the air, to version 4. It did install without problems over my previous system 2.4. The update includes some power-saving novelties, in particular that you can now choose its stand-by behaviour between a blank screen, as described and lauded above, and a permanent clock-face display, which may be preferable if you keep the radio in the kitchen or living-room. You can choose between different interface languages, and some icons have been upgraded. The FM reception seems better now, at least it can find ten of my thirteen stations, and with better RDS reception. It still crashes on return to DAB, however, but now only after a minute or two of DAB - then it freezes and then reboots (automatically). You can of course work that way, if you are OK with the two-three minute reboot wait.