WHAT'S HOT

SETUP

    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

• 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.

HELP SUPPORT

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

BUGS AND WISHES

PURCHASING

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

OVERALL IMPRESSION