I think the phrase "It’s like TiVo for internet
WHAT’S HOT
radio" sums it up pretty well. With Replay Radio you can schedule
any internet audio stream to be recorded on a regular or one-time-only
basis, and converted into the highly portable, and Pocket PC-friendly,
mp3 format. It is a great way to listen to internet radio shows and
stations "on-the-go" while having the power to ZAP the commercials
via your favorite Pocket PC media player.
It should be noted that Replay Radio is a desktop
SETUP
program, not a program for the Pocket PC. However, as will be detailed
later, it can be a great compliment to your device. Installation
is mostly straightforward. You will be asked to set up your recording
folders (for temp files and for saved recordings) as well as your connection
speed. Near the end of the install process, Replay Radio will need to
test your PC’s audio resources.
After a few minutes, the program should be able to
detect the proper audio source from which to record.
For my PC, it chose "Wave" which plays every sound
that comes through the speakers on your PC. Depending
on your PC’s configuration, you may have different
results.
PRODUCT FEATURES
Main
Window with pop-up Tip
Once the program has
been successfully installed, a Replay Radio pop-up a tip (which can
be disabled) with helpful information will greet you. You won’t have
any shows or stations set to be recorded, so the first thing to do is
click "Add Show."
Add
Show Menu
From this pop-up menu
you can either go to a list and select a new show to record, a new station
to record or add your own show.
Updated Show & Stations window
Regardless of which
you choose, Replay Radio will need to connect to home base to retrieve
an updated Show
& Station list. If you are on a network proxy or use a personal firewall, you
may need to make changes so the program can "phone home".
Once the Shows & Stations list has been updated, you can begin adding
them to your schedule.
Pick A
Show Screen
Pick A
Station Screen
The Show & Station
List is Replay’s equivalent of "TV Guide." With it,
you can begin selecting the internet audio stream you want to record.
Most well-known talk radio programs are already in the list, as are
many music programs.
Using the Find Tool
The list
is extensive, and quite a chore to browse through. Thankfully, the "Find"
tool is available. Just enter a keyword and click "Find."
Click "OK" once you have a show you want to record.
Scheduled Show Settings
screen
Having
selected a show, you will now be presented with the Show Settings screen.
This is where you begin to customize your listening experience. The
fist tab is a summary of all thesettings on the other tabs. Any of these
can be changed by selecting another tab to view.
Tuning Tab
The Tuning tab lets
you make changes to how the stream is captured. You can use Windows
Media, Real or default. It is usually set for the right program, so
you seldom need to make changes here.
Schedule Tab
The Schedule tab is
the key tab, because this is where you set the proper time for your
recording to begin and end. Again, if you selected a program from the
list, it will most likely be correct. However, if you only want to record
it once a week, every other day or one time only, this is where you
make those selections. I recommend adding 5 minutes to the start and
end time, just in case the system clock is a little bit off.
Output
Tab
On
the Output tab you can select how you want the program
to be recorded. All audio is recoded as a WAV file
first, then converted.
- You can have it saved as MP3 format,
or a WAV file, then added to iTunes (and thus, your iPod) or have
the program burn it to an audio or MP3 CD. The MP3s are encoded using
the LAME encoder and the resulting file sounds great. You have the
option of CD, FM radio or 2 AM radio audio quality for your MP3s.
The MP3 settings inform you of the probable file size requirements,
so keep in mind the better the quality, the bigger the file. I would
like to have had the ability to enter my own MP3 profile, and save
it for later use. - There is also an option to convert
your resulting WAV file using customized .bat (batch) files (detailed
in the help docs). This would allow you to convert your audio to another
format (such as WMA, OGG, or others) via any command line encoder.
It is good to have this as an option, but it would be easier to configure
other audio formats within the program. - "Compress Speech" is best
used for talk radio programs to listen to the show in less time. I
tested this option and didn’t care for it. It seemed to make the show’s
content too choppy.
Recording Tab
The Recording tab allows
you to customize your radio program even more. The
official documentation describes these options very
well, so I will present that information here.
- Recording Source:
Pick the device to record from. For recording
Internet Radio, one of these options should be
present: Stereo Mix, Wave Out Mix, Mix-record, All,
What U Hear, Stereo Out or Wave. - Test Recording
Sources: When you start a recording session, you
need to pick a recording source. Many sound cards
have several different options. Use the Test
Recording Sources button to determine the best
source for recording what you hear from your PC’s
speakers. - Mute Sound While
Recording: Mutes the speaker while you are
recording. - Disable Automatic
Retuning: Select this only if you’re recording an
archive. Automatic retuning reloads the internet
audio feed if silence is detected for a long period
of time. - Eliminate Dead
Air: Removes periods of silence from the recording.
(Works great for recording things like Police
Scanners or stations that have silence instead of
advertisements). - Create New Track
after: Automatically makes separate MP3 files or CD
tracks after a period of silence. This is handy for
recording commercial free radio or other playlists.
- Split tracks
every: Makes a new track or MP3 file automatically
after a period of time. This is useful for splitting
long radio shows into smaller segments. For example,
set this to 60 to make a separate file for each hour
of your favorite show. - Split Tracks at __
minutes after the hour: This lets you have track
splits occur at particular times. For example, if
you enter 0, 30 into these boxes, you will get 30
minute segments, starting at 0 minutes and 30
minutes after the hour. For example, if you enter "9′ as a value, a split will occur at 12:09, even if
the recording starts at 12:05.
You may discover that
the show you want to record isn’t listed in the Show List. In this situation,
you simply Click "Add Show" then "Enter Show Manually." You will then be presented with the same boxes discussed above, but
with no pre-sets. It is now up to you to enter the proper information,
but this is not too difficult. The hardest part may be locating the
stream, but Replay Radio can help.
URL
Finder Window
The URL finder is
a nice little tool that helps you find a stream’s location in a pop-up
window. Most streaming radio stations will launch a pop-up window when
you click "Listen Now." Usually, you are prevented from viewing
the source, and thus, the stream’s actual URL is not visible. With the
URL Finder you simply enter the URL of the main site, then click their
"Listen Now" button. When the pop-up starts, click "Get
Pop-up URL" to get the location of the stream. This may take some
trial and error, but I found it came in very handy.
Replay
Radio Main Window
Once you’ve selected
your shows, you can view a list in the main window. You can sort this
list view by either clicking on either the Name or Next Recording column.
Another alternative is to click on a show and use the Move Up/Down arrow
buttons. If there is a conflict of two shows scheduled for the same
time, you will see a pop-up alert – now that’s a smart program! At this
point, you are mostly done. Just "set it and forget it!" As
long as you leave Replay Radio running in the background (it can be
minimized to the tray), your shows will be recorded and stored in the
default directory. Replay Radio will even generate an MP3 playlist if
the show has more than one file created. Very cool indeed. Now let’s
delve a little deeper into Replay Radio, and see what it has under the
hood.
Replay
Tuner (Real Media mode)
Replay
Tuner (Windows Media mode)
The Main Window is filled with many options and
buttons. First, it has the "Record Now"
and "Tune to Show" buttons. Both perform similar
functions. Both tune to the selected stream and start
the "Replay Tuner" (below the main program window),
which takes on the "skin" of the media player used
(either Windows Media or Real). The main difference
between the buttons are that with "Record Now" Replay
Radio starts recording the stream you have
assigned to the highlighted program. "Tune to Show" simply tunes into the stream and plays it, but no
recording occurs.
Another button in the Main Window is "View
Recordings." This simply pops up a window with a list
of all of your recorded programs. From there you can
play them or delete them, or select programs to be
burned to an audio or data CD.
In case you might
be curious, the white bar under the show listing window is a "VU
meter" that moves when a show is being recorded. It looks odd when
it isn’t in use. I’d like to see it relocated, maybe under the "Status" window at the top and have it only become visible when recording.
Lower
Toolbar
Below the Show listings
area is a lower toolbar. Personally, I think this toolbar clutters up
the program’s interface. It could easily be removed giving the user
more screen use. I think the "Quick Record" button could be
added to white buttons up above, and the other options added to a drop-down
menu. Regardless of the layout, this is the location of several additional
functions that you will want to explore. First up is "Quick Record."
Quick
Record window
"Quick Record" lets you record whatever is coming
through your PC speakers at that moment. Be it a
voice-chat session or your CD player. The top-most
settings in this section have been covered previously,
but for the lower portion I am presenting the detailed
descriptions from the documentation.
Select the desired Recording Source. Use the Test
button to help determine the best Recording Source
for capturing what you hear on your PC’s speakers.
Select Eliminate Dead Air to remove periods of
silence from the recording. (Works great for
recording things like Police Scanners). This number
is in milliseconds — 1000 milliseconds = 1 second.
Select Create New Track after to automatically make
separate MP3 files or CD tracks after a period of
silence. This is handy for recording commercial free
radio or other playlists.
Select Save Last Track to ensure that the last track
is saved. Unselect this if you’re recording
commercial free radio, and don’t want a partial song
as the last song saved. Selecting this option does
not increase the total recording time to allow for a
final track to be saved.
Select Split tracks every to make a new track
automatically after a period of time. This is useful
for splitting long radio shows into smaller
segments.
Select Compress Speech to record talk-oriented shows
so that you can listen to more in less time, with no
loss in comprehension.
This is a nice function
to have available, though I never made use of it.
Settings Tabs (animated gif)
Also on the Lower Toolbar is the "Settings" button.
This area lets you dig a little deeper into the
configuration of Replay Radio.
- "Folders" is where you
set the location for your completed files. If you use
a removable storage card with your Pocket PC, you
could insert it into your PC’s card reader and have
the files saved there. That way, you can just grab
your media card and hit the road. Or if you have the
space on your device, you could store them in your
Pocket PC "My Documents" folder and have them synch up
that way (as well as using a 3rd party folder synch
solution). Here too is also where you set the folder
for the temporary files. Replay Radio records it’s
captured audio as WAV files, which can get pretty
large, before converting them to MP3. So be sure to
pick a drive with plenty of space available. - "Tuning" lets you
set the amount of time you want the program to start
connecting to your stream before the start time.
This is handy if there is a delay in starting your
streaming audio. It also brings your PC out of
hibernation mode. "Automatically Retune" will
attempt to reconnect to the stream after a given
amount of silence. - "Connections"
lets you set your desired method of connecting to
the internet. If you have an "always on" connection,
you probably won’t need this tab. - "Sound Mixer" gives you access to some of the more advanced
settings. I never needed to make any adjustments to
these settings. - "Other" contains a few miscellaneous
settings that don’t seem to fit anywhere else. The file-naming format
gives you great control of how the resulting MP3 files are named. The default format produces a
file named like this: "YourShowName Aug 1 – 01.mp3." A number
representing the part, or track number, is always added to the end
of each show, before the .mp3 extension. Thus a show with only one
part would end in "- 01.mp3" and if it had 2 parts the second
would end in "- 02.mp3" and so on (the
online documentation provides detailed information on using these
wildcards). Also on this tab, you can also set Replay Radio to start
with Windows (which I recommend) and setup your CD burner (if you
wish for the program to burn your recordings automatically).
A
follow-up thought to the "Folders" tab above. I
mentioned at the start of this review that Replay
Radio was a desktop application, rather than one for
the Pocket PC. So I can’t really count it against them
that it doesn’t have a built-in method to send files
to the user’s Pocket PC. However, Applian does offer
the "Replay
Radio Player for Pocket PC" (not covered in this review). So it is not a huge
stretch to see that Applian is aware that many users
of Replay Radio use it in conjunction with a Pocket
PC. I hope in the future they will add an ActiveSync
component to Replay Radio so Pocket PC users can send
their recorded shows to a folder on their device in an
efficient manner. But for now, it is up to the user to
move the files.
Another item on the Lower Toolbar is the "View Record
Log" button. This launches a text file that can be
useful in troubleshooting if you have problems
recording (though I never needed to do so). The last
item on the Toolbar is the "URL Finder," which was
detailed earlier in this review.
As
of version 5.11, Replay Radio has brought back to the
program their own "Enhanced Sound Card Driver."
Use of this driver is completely optional. In fact it
is not even included in the installed program – the
Replay driver must be downloaded and installed
separately. I had no problems with Replay Radio
capturing program audio in it’s default "driver-less"
installation, except that it occasionally recorded
system sounds with the program’s audio (like mail
arriving in Outlook). The Replay driver claims, among
other benefits, to deliver "cleaner, distortion-free
recordings" and that "sounds from other programs,
including system noises, are eliminated from
recordings." Benefits and drawbacks of using the "Enhanced
Sound Card Driver" are discussed here. Forced use
of this driver was a gripe in our previous review, so
it is nice to see that it is now optional.
One item worth noting, if you have an outside audio
source (line-in, microphone) or a radio card, Replay
Radio can capture that sound as well. Either on the
fly (Quick Record) or by adding a custom show to the
schedule, and selecting the appropriate settings. That
would be an ideal way to record shows from a local
radio station that are never streamed (such as "The
Howard Stern Show").
What I really appreciate about Replay Radio is that it
is constantly being updated. Nothing bothers me more
than when a great program comes out and the developers
never work to improve it. This isn’t the case with
Applian. Since 5.0 was released in June, Replay Radio
has been updated 7 times, each update not only fixing
bugs, but adding functionality. This tells me the
developers really care about their program, as well as
their customers.
Replay Radio does not
HELP SUPPORT
ship with documentation, instead the "Help" button
launches your web browser and connects to the Replay
Radio website. This is both good and bad. Bad that you
are out of luck if you need help and can’t connect to
the internet, but good that the documentation you do
find online is very current. Support is handled with a
very good set of documentation and Frequently Asked
Questions. Any further help needs must be sent via an
online web form. No contact e-mail address is offered.
As mentioned before, online support forums would go a
long way in enhancing the use of Replay Radio.
The Replay Radio site recommends:
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 98 or later, Sound Card, MP3 Player or CD Burner (recommended
but not required).
I’d add to that a large hard drive with at least 2GB of available storage,
an internet connection (preferably high-speed) and Windows 2000 or XP
for the best experience. You will also need Windows Media player and
the Real player. Whenused with a Pocket PC, I recommend a storage card
(the files can be big from 7MB to 56 MB for an hour show, depending
on quality selected) and a 3rd party Media Player with a "Fast
Forward" function that can be mapped to a button (Windows Media
Player for Pocket PC does not have this).
BUGS AND WISHES
One gripe I have is that Replay Radio set the
ID3 tags of the MP3 file’s "Artist" field as "0_Replay
Radio." The user has no control over this. This is by
design so that in iTunes all of the Replay Radio
recordings will be be at the top when sorted by
Artist. But my device scrolls the Artist and Song
title, and I get tired of seeing "0_Replay Radio"
scroll by all the time. I’d rather see something
useful, like "Part 1 of 2." The user should have the
option of setting this field. Also, when you update
your Shows/Stations list, there is no way to see what
has been added or removed. It would be great to be
able to learn about new shows added to the list - you might just discover something great to listen to
that way. Lastly, I would like to see Replay Radio
host a user forum. There are probably a great many
shows and tips users of Replay Radio could share in a
community forum, but sadly, nothing like this is
available. As for wishes, I’d like to see an
ActiveSync method for moving recorded shows to the
Pocket PC added in the future.
You can purchase Replay Radio (credit card only) for
PURCHASING
$29.99
via the Applian website by clicking here. Delivery is by direct download only and it comes with
a
30 day unconditional money back guarantee.
To learn more about
Replay Radio visit their website.
PROS
- Attractive
interface - Very easy
to add a show for recording - Extensive
Show and Station list, updated frequently - Lots of
user-defined options
m3u
playlist files are generated for multiple track
sessions- Minimizes
to the system tray
CONS
- No
in-program help documents - ID3 "Artist" tag is not configurable by the user
- No way to
see what new Shows & Stations have been added to the
list - Only
outputs to WAV/MP3, other formats only via batch
file conversion - No user
support forums - Lower
Toolbar is awkward, tools should be hidden or
relocated
Recording of internet
OVERALL
IMPRESSION
streaming audio just does not get any easier than
Replay Radio! Simply put, I love this program. With
Replay Radio I can finally hear the syndicated radio
programs that don’t broadcast where I live. No longer
am I limited to listening to my favorite ‘net radio
show on my PC at the one time a day the show is
streaming. Now I can listen to the internet radio
where I want, when I want – and I can skip past the
commercials! With a simple to use interface and
Applian’s continued development, Replay Radio is
easily worth the $29.99 price tag. I’d recommend this
program to anyone who wants to get their internet
radio "to go."
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