Grace Digital GDI-IRCA700 Wireless Internet Radio Adapter with 3.5-Inch Color Display Featuring Pandora, NPR, and SiriusXM (Black)

I'd been looking for a compact network receiver which could retrieve audio files from my music server and deliver them to sound systems in various rooms of the house. Though there are several such products out there, most of them either require an external display for browsing the server or expect you to control them with a smartphone or tablet. I wanted one with an onboard display, so that anyone could operate the system without needing their cell phone (with the necessary app).This little goody by from Grace Digital appeared on Amazon a couple weeks ago. I had a few questions about it, which Amazon forwarded to Grace Digital. They answered promptly, and to my satisfaction, so I ordered one.It is a great little receiver!Linking it to my Wifi network was quick and easy. When first powered on the Primo displayed all the wifi networks in the neighborhood. I selected mine, and a login screen (bright, crisp color display) appeared with all upper and lower case characters, numerals, and common symbols. You select by spinning the large knob on the front panel, and press the knob when the desired character is highlighted, continuing until the complete passphrase shows in the text box. Then select "Enter" from the keyboard, and the Primo makes the connection.I then selected "Music Player" from the main menu, "UPnP Servers," and both my running servers (WMP and foobar 2000) appeared in the list. Ten seconds later Sade's "Smooth Operator" filled the room.The main menu also has links to most popular Internet radio stations (Pandora, Sirius, etc.), and literally thousands of local stations. I don't plan to use those much, not being fond of MP3s, but many users will.The internal DAC --- a Wolfson WM8731SEDS, according to Grace --- is not top drawer, with a S/N of only -100db and max sampling rate of 96/24. For comparison I connected the Primo to my Emotiva Airmotiv 6's on my PC system, which are normally driven by an LH Labs Geek Out, which uses a 384/32+DSD ESS Sabre DAC, and while the Geek exhibited more "air," the Primo output was certainly acceptable. Didn't try the Primo on the "big" theater system.For some reason the Primo does not display cover art for albums streamed from the local server, even though foobar is programmed to send them (and my Kindle HDX displays them from foobar).If Grace offered a digital output so that an external DAC could be used, the product would be just about perfect. I thought about withholding a star because of lack of a digital output, but that is not fair --- it is what it is, and for what it costs, it performs admirably.The Primo is now feeding my living room system, an old Sony GX67ES receiver (from the early 90s!) and a pair of Klipsch RF-7IIs.Amazon seems to be sold out as of today (7-12-2014), but other vendors still have a few. Well worth the money.

I've had the Primo for about a week, replacing the Logitech Squeezebox I had for almost 4 years. Before that, I had a Roku Soundbridge for several years. I've used all primarily to stream from a PC on the network. I've used them 10% (or less) to stream Internet radio.Both the Soundbridge and Squeezebox were much more stable and reliable than the Primo. I could turn them on and start playing (or resume a previous queue) within a few seconds with no problems. The Primo has been much more problematic, it almost seems like a beta version.Setup of the Primo was the easiest part. I plugged it in and turned it on. It found the network quickly, and once I used the painful keyboard interface to enter the password, it logged in quickly.Then on to the weak interface... Clicking past 7 or 8 icons to the Music Player icon, I when through 2 or 3 more menus to get the list of music servers. Then I clicked through more menus to get to the music, then list of artists. I have a fairly large library, and it took a minute or so to load the list. Much slower than I was used to. I was able to play all the songs of an artist or album, but it wasn't obvious how to add to a dynamic playlist (called the Media Queue on the Primo). Once I figured that out, it turned out to be too cumbersome to actually use until I tried the iOS remote app (Gmote). More on that below...Day to day usage has actually been worse than initial impressions. Most of the time when I turn on the Primo and it will start connecting to the network, it will either 1) take a long time (several minutes with a spinning icon) or 2) restart completely and go back to the standby mode with a clock. After 3 or 4 tries it will come back to the icon screen where it should be.Counter to the Soundbridge and Squeezebox, which retained the previously selected music server, the Primo makes you reselect the server when you come back in. It sometimes keeps the songs in the Queue, but not always. Also, it frequently turns off shuffle and repeat, which I then have to go back and turn on again. The other devices always kept those setting, and always retained the previous playlist.The one positive part about the Primo is extremely buggy as well...the iOS 'Gmote' app. The app quickly found the radio on the network and has a pretty good interface. I love that it shows you the list of songs in the queue, and you can quickly skip to different songs easily. But, unfortunately, it looks like a beta product, too. You can use the app to add songs to the Media Queue, but the app crashes almost every time I try it. It works ok for selecting an existing playlist from the media server, and selecting songs once they're in the queue is nice. But that's just about the only feature that works well for me. Turning the Primo on and off from the Gmote app doesn't work well at all (I never got it to turn back on).Overall, the Primo looks good on paper, but is half-baked for me. I'm disappointed that devices that predate it by 5 to 10 years worked much better in practice.