Freecom MusicPal WLAN Internet Radio

Originally purchased to stream music from my PC to another room in the house where there wasn't a PC, I've grown increasingly fond of my MusicPal. So much so, that I bought another one for a different room.

It's a simple concept - essentially a "radio" that connects to your home wireless network and either streams internet radio stations or your own music from any DLNA server you have at home (think PS3, Windows Vista, Windows Media Player 11, Windows Media Centre edition - and I'm sure there are equivalents for the Mac).

It's small (about the size of a couple of paper-packs) and unobtrusively styled with a simple user interface and a slightly retro black/grey monochrome LCD display. Two large dials provide the main controls - the one on the left determining volume and on the right position in the current song. Two smaller buttons, one for favourites and the other for "settings" are all that's needed to guide you through everyday use. The power supply is the only cable it needs although there are sockets for an RJ45 network connection, headphones and audio line-out.

It's simply to set up - plug it in, find your wireless network and give it the appropriate pass-phrase (it supports WEP and WPA) and you're away. It gets a DHCP address and scans for any media servers you have handy. If you've no media servers you can still access any of thousands of Internet Radio Stations (provided you have an Internet connection). These are sorted by country and genre - the array is mind-boggling and the quality widely variable but you can add shortcuts to give you quick access to your favourites at the press of a button. The device can also be configured by connecting to it's built-in web server, including software updates, RSS news-feeds (so that it can scroll the latest news headlines while playing music) and Favourite lists.

Add into the mix a connection to an Internet Time server, combined with sleep and wake-up timers and the MusicPal also becomes a pretty neat alarm clock - it would be nice if you could set the music it wakes you up to as being different to that you went to sleep by - but that's surely fixable in software...

It's all good so far - and obviously I thought enough of it to buy two. But there are some gripes. The internal speaker isn't the greatest and can get very "buzzy" on music with deep bass or high notes. Secondly, the software that interprets playlists always seems to sort them alphabetically, with no option to shuffle songs so there's far more effort required in managing playlists than I had hoped.

So if you're in the market for an internet radio that looks OK, sounds OK and can also stream your own music (MP3 and WMA are supported) then the MusicPal does an OK job which could get better with software updates.

This thing connected to my wireless network amazingly easily and quickly, was as simple as typing in the WEP key. Not tried with WPA security, but I can only assume that works as well.

The web interface is great (type the IP addy into your browser) although I haven't used it as much as I expected - apart from the fiddly entering of letters (it's only got two knobs and two buttons) the built in interface is very good.

It has a very basic web browser built in, which can be enabled from the web interface. This lets you use it to view websites, but in practice it is about the same quality as the first internet phones - not much use for anything and with no images or colour. You can also set it to take RSS feeds for displaying under the clock as well as in an RSS viewer.

I normally don't like wireless much and only connected this to it because my network socket is behind my desk and I couldn't be bothered moving it. I had planned to connect this to the wired network eventually but I don't think I'll bother - its perfectly reliable on wireless.

The list of stations built in seems very comprehensive. It works perfectly with BBC Internet Radio, the negative reviewers complaining about the lack of this feature are trying to get around the fact that they are in a different country and trying to steal radio funded by the British public by using the internet version, which blocks foreign connections for this very reason.

The sound quality from the speaker is almost exactly what I expected for £60 - more than acceptable for using around the house, but not for dedicated listening. I'll certainly use it when I have the radio outside in the garden but indoors I have used the line out feature. I was a bit disappointed with this at first, but if you use the Settings menu or the web interface to select Yes to line out, it outputs only to line out and not the built in speaker. You can then set the volume to around 85% and it will give you an almost perfect line out signal for connecting to your hi-fi equipment (although you may notice a loss in quality from the compressed nature of internet radio if you have really good speakers and ears, but I certainly don't notice enough for it to bother me)

The interface is very simple - I only had to look up the instructions to find out how to turn the thing off! (hold down the volume knob for 3 seconds, another reviewer said they couldn't find how to do this). I've found it handles the spacious but still small screen very well and it's always quite easy to get to what you want to do. The interface is also very responsive - too many modern devices take ages to respond to controls but this seems very perky indeed.

The ability to connect to a media center seems to work very well, and lets you browse around the tracks available on the media server very easily. It says it only supports Mac and Windows, and includes software and guides for setting up your Windows computer as a media server to play all your MP3s on the radio.

I use Linux which is apparently not supported, but I installed mediatomb (from ubuntu repositories and probably most others, or source from their webpage) and got that to work amazingly easily. (check mediatomb process is running, if it is check log file at /var/log/mediatomb.log to find out the web address. otherwise start it with command mediatomb and the web address will be the last line output. go to that website and you can add your mp3s and then just open it from the menu on the radio. mediatomb has loads of online docs)

The system automatically picks up the exact time from a network time server on the internet(or one of your choice if you happen to have one) which is good. Not only keeps it perfectly accurate but it means you don't need to set the time to use it as an alarm clock.

Obviously its not perfect as its only £60. I'd like the line out to be a proper, static volume line out, but it actually varies with the volume control and distorts above about 90% volume. The built in speaker could be a little better, and it could have the function to wake you up to a different station from the one you were listening to last. And the front panel can smudge if you have greasy fingers and touch it for some reason. The screens backlight isn't perfect either - its not evenly the same brightness across the screen. Not enough to bother me, I don't even notice it really, and still just as readable but some people don't like that sort of thing.

Of course I had to take the amazingly low price into account when giving it 5 stars. If it cost double the price as many of the others do, I'd have given it 4. But in saying that, I bet I'd have just as many or more niggles with the expensive models and ended up giving them a lesser score.

Probably among the best gadgets I've bought in terms of its ability to just work, it ranks up there with Sky Plus and the TomTom.

I bought this as a present for my wife to use in the and around the home and it performs stunningly well. The initial setting up was a bit fiddly, but then I find many of todays digital devices fiddly to get going.
The range and variety of stations is amazing - there are literally thousands in addition to all the BBC faithfuls. [ On setting the radio into operation you will be confronted with the option to download an update to the inbuilt software - just go for the "Yes/OK" option as it only takes moments and brings all the radio station data right up to date].
No matter where we take the radio throught the house (it must be plugged into a 230V AC socket to work) reception is excellent. I'm using a "BT Voyager 2110" wireless router and the Internet radio receives solid signals everywhere throughout the house and even in those areas where my WiFi Laptop just won't work - so I'd say that the radio is very sensitive.
Sound quality isn't Hi-Fi, but then the radio isn't intended to be a Hi-Fi receiver. The sound quality, and available volume, is more than acceptable for general listening around the house and, in many instances, is surprisingly pleasant.
Do note that if the radio is switched 'on' and left running throughout the day, unless you have 'unlimited' broadband you will suddenly discover that your download allowance has been gobbled up.
[This applies to any Internet Radio, not just this specific model]
Several reviewers have muttered about poor build quality and lack of weight - well I don't share those views. There are so called "better" internet radios available but at double, treble or quadruple the price and I've not seen or heard any that perform or work any better than this Freecom MusicPal WLAN Internet Radio.
Do I recommend it ? Yes, I do, and several family friends have bought them and are equally as well pleased. It's darned good value for money.