for the
Coastal Empire & Lowcountry
Listen on your Internet Radio
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High-Quality
online radio stations for the Coastal Empire & Lowcountry Listen on your Internet Radio |
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Thinking about buying
an internet
radio? Here's a little info about what to expect. If you already know about internet radios, and just want links to the streams, click here.    The modern internet radio is an awesome piece of equipment. It allows you to listen to radio stations from all over the world, including ours! They come in all shapes and sizes - and prices - from about $100 to 6 or 700 dollars, if you go for a high-end system that does a lot more than just be an internet radio. Some are suitable for use as a clock radio, and all of the units we tested sound surprisingly pretty good. If you have a home stereo receiver, you can connect from the headphone jack of the radio to an unused input on your home stereo and enjoy any of our stations, or any in the whole world, for that matter, from the comfort and convenience of your living room. You can also get a set of computer speakers with a subwoofer for about $50 to $75 and plug that into your internet radio's headphone jack for awesome, room-filling sound and a rich, hi-fi experience! The first two Internet radios pictured above (Wolverine & iLuv) support a wired connection or a wireless Internet connection - the Grace Digital unit is wireless-only. All of them sound pretty good all by themselves just sittin' on a table, and, as mentioned above, can be connected to stereo systems for awesome sound. They start at about $115 for the leftmost unit to about $179 for the rightmost. The one in the middle runs about $130. All 3 units include a handheld remote control. You can find less-expensive Internet radios, but be careful. Click here for more on that. Some radios have a port on the back where you can plug in a network cable, but you're probably not going to want to run a cable over to the nightstand for your internet clock-radio, so you'll want to connect to a wireless router which, by rights, should be your wireless router using your Internet connection. Hooking-up to your neighbor's wireless network to get access is not legal, even if you have your neighbor's consent, so we don't recommend you go that route.  If you don't already have a wireless router, your favorite big box or office supply store has them in stock, and a suitable wireless router should cost around $35 to $50. There are also routers which can cost significantly more than this, but they have functions that are well beyond the average need, usually special business functions (like ours, for example) or serious internet gaming. Most homes should be fine with an inexpensive wireless router. Be sure to set up security on your wireless router! You don't want people hitchin' a ride on your internet connection or browsing your personal files. *** Your wireless router is connected to your DSL or cable modem, then to your computer, and it requires a little personal setup, as detailed in the instruction manual that comes with it. Some units come with installation programs on a CD Rom to simplify the process. Once your wireless configuration is complete, it's time setup your radio. Your owner's manual has all of the specific details, but they're all pretty similar, in terms of adding stations. We've tested, so far, 3 different radios with our streams, units by Grace Digital, iLuv and Wolverine. We like them all, but for different reasons. The Grace Digital is the most-capable, but this probably won't affect most listeners. The iLuv makes a nice clock radio, and the Wolverine has a kind-of a retro look to it. All of these radios will allow you to drill-down to stations by format or geographical location, but you probably won't find our stations. We've discovered something about the folks that run these websites: they work on their own schedule, and when you ask them to add a station to their menu, they'll do it when they get around to it, so you'll likely have to add our stations yourself via their websites. Each internet radio brand is supported by some website. Some websites support more than one brand, but the important thing is to use the website supported by your radio(s). The web address will be in the owner's manual. Please note that these websites are not affiliated in any way with Savannah Radio Online or any of our stations. When you get to their website, you'll have to create a user account for yourself and add your radio to your account (the details are in the manual). At this point, you can build your own personal list of your favorite stations, then access them easily from your radio. If your radio has presets, you'll want to add these stations to your presets. Then you won't have to wait for your radio to download a fresh list from your web host every time you want to go to another station. The details are - you guessed it - in your owner's manual. This is also beneficial in the case that your web host's website goes down for a while. We haven't seen this happen yet, but if their site goes down and you don't have presets, you won't be able to use your radio at all, so use your presets! There are several websites which support internet radios, but only one which supports your internet radio. Their websites are listed in your owner's manual. We'll give you links that you can click from here for the ones that we know about. If your's isn't listed, feel free to drop us a note and we'll add it. Click the links to visit the sites: Grace Digital uses (usually) Reciva and occasionally vTuner iLuv uses Frontier Wolverine uses vTuner Each of these sites will have a link or button you can click to get registered. Once you're registered, you'll just need to login, add your radio to your account, and add your stations. Additions or changes that you make on these websites are usually available to the radio immediately - there's no waiting to listen to your favorite stations. We did, on one occasion, have to unplug the radio for a moment to sort-of re-boot it, but this was a rare and isolated incident. In order to add stations to your radio, you'll need to provide the addresses to the streams. You'll have to enter these addresses on the website that supports your radio (see above). You can right-click any of the links, below, then select either Copy Shortcut or Copy Link Location. You can then paste that shortcut into the listen-link that you create on your radio's website. Or, click here to see the full-text of the links. If your radio is a Grace Digital or other Reciva-based radio, try these links: Savannah's Cool Oldies Wave1049Online The Bridge Use the following links for all other radios, including iLuv & Wolverine, or any other Frontier-based or vTuner-based radio: Savannah's Cool Oldies Wave1049Online The Bridge If you're going to connect your Internet radio to a good speaker system, or a stereo, use these links: Savannah's Cool Oldies Wave1049Online The Bridge The Grace links sound great and use less bandwidth, so use them if you can. Otherwise, use the other links. Thanks for troubling yourself, and thanks for listening! Jim DeLara (If you need some help with this, please email me) *** Quick geek-note: If your wireless supports something called WEP encryption don't use it. Use WPA or WPA2. If this is not an option for you, then you need a newer wireless router, not only for security reasons, but also because your internet radio might not connect to WEP even if it acts like it will. Buyer beware. WEP can be cracked in about an hour, on average, if someone clever enough (and physically close enough) wants your data badly enough. While WEP is much better than not using security at all, it's out of date and shouldn't be used except as a last-resort. Back to wireless routers ***Geek note II: There are less-expensive Internet radios than those pictured above, but choose carefully. This is not an attempt to steer you toward a more expensive radio - we just want you to know what you're getting into. As mentioned, the radios pictured above can be connected to an existing stereo system and sound really good. If this is what you plan to do, to connect your Internet radio to an external amplifier (like your stereo system) and pretty much leave it there connected forever to that amp, then you can jump down to a lower-priced Internet radio for less than $100 - we've seen them as low as $70. You don't necessarily need good sound quality on the radio's built-in speaker(s) if you aren't going to use them anyway. But... some of the less-expensive units don't have a wired-Internet port, which isn't a problem if you intend to use a wireless Internet connection. They sound like a cheap clock radio and have little or no bass response, which isn't a problem if you're going to just hook it up to a stereo system or public address system anyway. Then, they tend to have chintzy little two-line displays and are a little more difficult to set up.. Once you get them set up, though, they're fine as long as they stay put. If you take one to another location (i.e., out-of-range of its existing wireless connection), it has to be set up again, so buyer beware. It won't need to be set up again to move it from the bedroom to the kitchen, for example, but it will need to be set up again to go off-site, such as to your workplace or another house. So, to summarize, the units pictured above sound good, are reasonably easy to set up, and they'll work with a wired or wireless Internet connection. A less-expensive unit doesn't have exceptionally good sound quality, is a bit more difficult to set up, and may not support a wired Internet connection, but it's not-so-bad if you don't care about sound quality or you're going to connect it to a stereo system. Just be careful. Read your sales information thoroughly so that you know what you're going to get and don't end up with something you won't be happy with. |
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