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★☆☆☆☆

“I have two WM201's which I have owned for nigh on two...”

written by Stoic on 23/12/2010

I have two WM201's which I have owned for nigh on two years. Both have been back to Roberts for repair. Both have severe intermittent problems.



I use them in France on a LAN running though the electrical mains. The technician at Roberts doesn't like this but it works for both my other two internet radios [Orange 'LiveRadio' and Scott RXi 400WL] both of which have worked flawlessly for eighteen months - both via WiFi and over the LAN!



Both my WM-201's periodically give up the ghost. They may or may not precede their silent sulk by the most awful buzzing, especially if something is drawing a lot of electrical power while the radio is playing - for example the kettle, washing machine or dishwasher, and sometimes even if it is not, (but is plugged in!)



On other occasions they pick up the signal but remain silent. I can plug in headphones though the 'Line out' socket - Not the Headphone socket , mark you and hear the broadcast but nothing comes through the speakers!



The most serious problem however is the fact that one of the two WM-201's will not allow a factory reset. This means that I cannot reset the presets I have entered nor upgrade the firmware not check on new stations nor upgrade existing channels. This is really, really bad.



The WM-201 uses a Reciva chip. This can be bad news. Look at



https://forum.reciva.com/read.php?3,63923,65689#msg-65689 for remarks.



All in all I cannot recommend the WM-201 at all. When it is working properly it sounds wonderful. It is easy to set up. It does look good. But hey - it's an expensive piece of kit and when it stops working for no reason at all then it just becomes junk. My Liveradio and Scott together cost less than the price of the first WM-201. I know for a fact that the Scott uses AWOX rather than Reciva and since the Liveradio offers only 5000 stations and I believe Reciva promotes a lot more (10,000?) I assume that it too doesn't use a Reciva chip.



Strictly speaking the problem is not Roberts - except in so far as they use a chip with known, albeit, intermittent problems. I have corresponded with Roberts and they do not acknowledge that there is a problem. They did however replace the first radio I returned even though they said they could find nothing wrong with it. That's entirely possible with an intermittent problem of course.



Roberts is not the only internet radio with problems. Check out the Reciva forum.

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