Product Review Archives - Radio Survivor

The Eton Mini Grundig Edition Is My New Travel Companion

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 05:26:09 +0000

One of life’s little pleasures is tuning around the radio dial late at night before drifting off to slumber. I especially enjoy this while traveling, touring foreign radio dials, encountering strange and distant signals.

This means that a small portable radio is my constant traveling companion. I prefer to travel light, so said radio must also be as tiny as practical. In the last couple of years the Tivdio V–115 has been my choice, given its small size, AM, FM and shortwave tuning, reasonable sensitivity and ability to record air checks to a microSD card. I’ll refer you to my YouTube review for more details.

Even so, my ears are always wandering, urging my eyes to admire other receiver suitors. About a month ago the Eton Mini Grundig Edition caught my attention, and at a sale price of less than $25 delivered. Grundig is a venerable name in radios, and the Mini has received decent reviews, so I bit.

Small and Capable

The radio lives up to its name, measuring up to about the same size as an iPhone SE, including a decent speaker and retractable antenna. It comes with a nice nylon case to help protect it in your bag.

Though the Mini includes shortwave, the coverage is more limited than my Tivdio, only covering two bands, from 5 – 10 MHz and 11.65 – 18 MHz. That said, shortwave is more of a “nice to have” than a necessity for my travel radio, so this limitation is fine with me.

Taking it along for an extended trip to New York City and northern New Jersey, I was impressed at how well it pulled in FM stations inside my Midtown Manhattan hotel. It was no problem tuning in public radio WNYC, along with college radio from NYU, Columbia University and Fordham. The same could not be said of the room’s supplied clock radio.

Though small, the Mini’s speaker is adequate for a travel radio, with pleasing sound that’s loud enough for hotel room listening. You’re not going to disturb your neighbors, and that’s probably a good thing. I also appreciate its simple thumbwheel tuning. It’s not quite as convenient as the number direct-dialing keypad on my Tivdio, but the Tivdio’s buttons are stiff and make a loud click, which can annoy others around you if you’re scanning the dial wearing headphones.

For late night listening a sleep timer is a necessity, since I’m likely to drift off, sometimes to the soothing sounds of inter-station static. The Mini comes so equipped. I also appreciate its control lock that prevents it from turning on inside my baggage, draining batteries and annoying fellow passengers.

Patience Pays for DXing

After dark is the time for AM band DXing, and here I found the Mini’s performance curious. When I first spun the dial, I was only picking up the strongest local stations. Then I started clicking through frequencies more slowly, stopping when I heard a faint signal. Leaving the radio tuned, the signal grew in volume and strength – patience paid off. I suspect this is an artifact of the DSP-based tuner, keeping the volume more muted with a weak signal so as not to assault the listener with loud static, then gradually increasing sensitivity as needed.

Moving from noisy Manhattan to the relative quiet – both in terms of noise and RF interference – of upper Passaic County, I enjoyed many fun DX finds. Keeping the gradual technique in mind, I had no problem bringing in signals from Quebec, Michigan, Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, Upstate New York and Boston. I didn’t formally log the stations because I was already tucked into bed with the lights out.

On Halloween night I dived into the shortwave band a little after dusk, wondering if I might encounter some pirates. I wasn’t hopeful, and so I wasn’t disappointed when none emerged from the ether. I was, however, pleasantly surprised when Radio Havana came blaring through at 6 MHz.

At home in Portland, Oregon, I’ve found shortwave reception inside my house to be very hit and miss, and mostly miss. I do think geography is partly to blame. New Jersey is simply closer to many more shortwave stations than Oregon. Nevertheless I was impressed with how good the Eton Mini’s indoor shortwave reception is.

On the whole, the Eton Mini Grundig Edition proved itself a capable and pleasant traveling companion. The one thing I miss is the easy ability to record airchecks direct to a memory card like my Tivdio can. However, I think the Mini outclassed it with AM sensitivity and selectivity, provided you’re patient and allow maybe a half-minute for a station to slowly come into focus through the static. Also, the Tivdio’s recording circuit can be a source of interference, which means it can thwart recordings of weak signals which will just disappear when you hit record. Moreover, if I’m listening to the Mini through the speaker I can make quick-and-dirty aircheck recordings using my smartphone or a portable voice recorder (yeah, I often travel with one of those, too).

There are better performing portable radios, and ones with more features or frequency coverage. But I don’t think I’ve encountered one this small and also this good. Carry on and tune in.

The post The Eton Mini Grundig Edition Is My New Travel Companion appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio Survivor Recommends: How To Start Podcasting

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 09:02:52 +0000

On this week’s show Eric and I answer another frequently asked question we hear: how do I start podcasting?

We give some basic advice to get started, focused on the basic gear you need, along with hints and tips along the way. To complement that segment I’ve put together some of that advice here, along with some suggested equipment. At the end are links to some more comprehensive resources if you want to really dig in.

This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive guide, nor a step-by-step guide or manual for starting a podcast. Instead, these are some pointers for getting started.

The equipment suggestions aren’t intended to be definitive, or even the very best you can get for any given price-point. Rather, these are items that will get you off the ground and running. There are many varied opinions, and plenty of reviews on the web and YouTube if you want to truly maximize.

A Note About Gear

There’s an understandable tendency to worry about equipment before ever getting started podcasting. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you need the best microphones, mixers and headphones first, or else your podcast can’t possibly be good.

The good news is that’s not true. Really decent gear can be had for very little money, and many now-popular podcasts got started with bargain-basement stuff. If you’re a real bargain hunter you might even be able to equip yourself with used gear from a thrift store, or (even better) a local music store.

While a $300 microphone can sound better than a $15 one, the difference is subtle. And a lot of people may never notice. You might impress some audio nerds with the $300 mic, but unless they’re your key audience, it’s probably not worth the extra cost.

Moreover, many podcasts go away after a few episodes. If it turns out that podcasting isn’t for you, do you want to have hundreds or thousands of dollars of equipment gathering dust in a closet? You can always upgrade strategically down the line. And, it never hurts to have extra microphones. So if you upgrade mics, it just means you have some spares for extra guests or emergencies.

All links to equipment are Amazon affiliate links. Radio Survivor gets a commission on every sale, at no cost to you.

Step 0: You’ll Need a Computer

Before I get started, these instructions assume you own or have access to a computer you can install software on (or already has audio editing software). Though it’s possible to podcast using a phone, tablet or Chromebook, these methods have unique challenges and workflows. Luckily, you don’t need a brand new top-of-the-line computer. You can get by with a machine that’s under 10 years old, and running almost any variation of Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Your local library or community center may have just what you need.

Step 1: Get a Microphone (or Microphones) and Headphones

Sounds pretty basic, eh? But having an actual microphone in front of your mouth is the single most important thing to having a clear, pro-sounding podcast. Headphones are key because you really do need to hear yourself in real time, so you can identify any noises and be sure you’ll be audible. To get started almost any headphones will do.

If You’re Hosting Alone: Get a USB Microphone

A USB microphone connects directly to your computer, requiring no other equipment. However, it’s only good for one person – unless you and your co-host are very close friends and don’t mind sitting really close.

For the most part, you can’t connect two USB microphones to a computer and expect to use them simultaneously with any ease. (There are ways to accomplish this with some software and operating systems, but it’s quirky and beyond the scope of this article.)

If You Have 2+ People Recording Together: Get a USB Mixer and Microphones

You really want every person talking to have their own microphone. Like it’s name implies, a mixer puts these microphones’s signals together for recording.

Mixers use more traditional microphones that have an XLR connector, so you don’t want USB microphones. There are some models of USB microphone that also have XLR. These are fine, but you need to be sure they actually have that connector.

Your mixer should have enough microphone inputs for as many people as you want to record at one time. Inputs are usually in multiples of two. The cost differential between a two-input and four-input mixer is small, so I’d opt for one with at least four, just in case.

Decent microphones can cost as little as $15 and as much as $1500 or more. To get started I see no reason to spend more than $25 or $30. The microphones at these levels are similar to the kinds you’d see on stage at a small club or music venue. The technical term name is a dynamic cardiod microphone (this means it requires no power, and has a relatively narrow pick up range).

They’re all variations on the venerable Shure SM58 design (which itself only costs about $100), like the Behringer XM8500, which I’ve used for years, and only costs $20. Again, you should have one microphone per person.

Step 2: Install Audacity On Your Computer

Audacity is free, open source audio recording and editing software. It does everything you need to record and edit your podcast. It also works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – pretty much any computer.

You will also want to download and install the LAME MP3 encoder, since your final podcast file will need to be an MP3.

There are other audio applications out there, and there are apps you can use on a tablet or Chromebook. But Audacity on a computer is simplest way to get started. Plus, because Audacity has an enormous worldwide user base, it’s very easy to find tutorials or get help online.

Alternative Step 1 and 2: Get a Digital Audio Recorder

You can use a digital audio recorder to record a podcast instead of using a computer. One big advantage that Eric points out is that it’s less likely to crash than a computer. It’s a single-purpose device and isn’t also trying to run a web browser or games. The disadvantage is that nice ones can cost more than the mixer and microphones, and you’ll most likely still need a computer for editing and uploading your podcast.

Option 1: Low-Cost Digital Audio Recorder with Built-in Microphones

Recorders with built-in microphones can be a good all-in-one solution for recording yourself. The Zoom H1n and H2n have decent microphones and can even record directly to MP3 if you think you can do it in one-take, both for under $200. There also similar models from other brands listed below.

In a pinch you can record two people with these recorders. It works better for an interview situation where you can point it back and forth between yourself and your guest. This is better than just having the microphone in the middle, where it will pick voices up less clearly and will also pick up lots more room noise and echo.

That said, the H2n does this a little better because it has microphones on both sides, so you and a guest or co-host can each talk into one side. I’ve owned an H2 for a decade and does this on many occasions, with some success. Though I still wouldn’t want to record all my podcast episodes this way. The method still isn’t as good as having a mic right in front of your mouth.

Option 2: Digital Audio Recorder with XLR Mic Inputs

You can use an external SM58-style mic with a recorder that has XLR inputs, like the Zoom H4n Pro. They also have built-in microphones, so you have options. With this type of recorder you get the best of both worlds, though once you buy microphones you’ve probably spent more than if you bought a mixer and mics.

However, one of the biggest benefits of a digital recorder is that it’s super-portable. It’s very easy to record interviews or episodes outside your home/office studio, without lugging around a laptop and extra gear.

Step 3: Get a Podcast Hosting Service

Once someone has started recording and editing their podcast, they usually ask us: how do I get my podcast onto iTunes or Apple Podcasts?

The thing to understand is that iTunes is not a hosting service, like YouTube. It’s just a directory of podcasts. You actually have to host your podcast on the web with a service, then submit it iTunes.

There are many services out there, and the better ones will make this as easy as possible for you. We at Radio Survivor just moved our podcast from SoundCloud to Blubrry, which has very good customer support and will submit your show to iTunes and other directories, like Stitcher. Libsyn is another host that’s been around since the early days of podcasting and continues to update its service.

There are lots of other services out there, and plenty of reasons to choose one or another. We don’t want to recommend one over another because we haven’t tried them all. The only counsel we’ll give is to avoid SoundCloud. At one point several years ago SoundCloud started courting podcasters, adding podcast-friendly features. But since then the company hasn’t really kept up with the times, and has run into financial trouble.

Some website hosting companies, like Squarespace, include podcast hosting features, too. These can be a good choice for getting started, though may not be the best choice for a show that gets really popular. The podcast-specific hosts are designed to scale with you.

Note that most good podcast hosting services come with a fee. That’s because they’re mostly small companies focused on podcasting, rather than arms of big tech giants that can pay for everything with advertising revenue. Of course, the benefit is that you won’t suddenly have an ad stuck in your podcast like with YouTube.

Step 4: Promote Your Podcast

Once you’ve recorded and edited your first episode, then uploaded it to a host and submitted it to iTunes, Stitcher and other platforms, now it’s time to tell people about it.

The big difference between podcasting and radio is that a listener is much less likely to stumble upon a podcast. On the radio you always have the chance that someone will scan the dial or hit seek and find your station. But podcasting doesn’t have the same kind of browsing experience.

While Apple Podcasts and Stitcher both have front pages that feature new, interesting and popular shows, the editors have to choose from amongst thousands of podcasts to feature only dozens. There certainly is a chance you might get featured, but if you’re just starting out you shouldn’t count on it.

Instead you should go find your audience. Think about who would enjoy or benefit from your podcast and tell them about it. They might be in an online community, or maybe they already follow you on social media. And don’t discount people in your own geographic area. Just because podcasts are potentially global doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote your show locally. Plain old face-to-face contact and word-of-mouth are still valuable. Make up fliers or business cards so you always have something to leave with a person you just told about your podcast.

Final Tips

If you’re recording your podcast on a computer, quit all other apps.
That includes web browsers and email apps. You don’t want these apps to either crash – possibly destroying your recording – or making noises that might interrupt your show. This is particularly true if you’re using an older computer.
Record in a quiet place.
It doesn’t have to dead quiet, but especially try to avoid things that hum or cycle in and out, like refrigerators. When we’re in a noisy environment our hearing is designed to tune out the noises, but a microphone doesn’t, and those noises will be much more prominent in your recording.
Record in a smaller, deader space.
The smaller the space, and the more stuff that’s in it, the less echoey it’ll be. A small bedroom, that has lots of furniture, is probably better than a big living room with wood floors. To test: clap your hands. Do you hear a lot of echo? Then find a better space. If you’re recording alone, try an old radio correspondent’s trick: record in a closet.
Get close to the microphone.
Though you want to avoid making lots of mouth sounds, the closer you are to the mic, the clearer your voice will be. It will also be louder than other noises.
Listen to yourself.
Monitor with headphones while recording, then listen closely during editing. Use headphones for editing, too. Listening to yourself will help diagnose and avoid noise problems, and also help you learn good mic technique.
Use microphone stands.
SM59-style stage microphones are designed to be hand-held, so they’re pretty good at minimizing handling noise. However, they’re not wholly immune, and the handling noise is much more obvious in a quiet recording space than in a noisy music venue. Using a table-top or free-standing mic stand eliminates this problem.

Beginner’s Podcast Equipment

Here are some suggestions to get you started. This isn’t necessarily the best gear around, but it all works, and won’t cost a fortune.

USB Microphones – $100 and Under
- Blue Yeti
- Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB Cardioid Dynamic USB/XLR Microphone (can also be used with a mixer)
- Samson Meteor Mic USB
USB Mixers – Under $100
- Behringer Xenyx Q802USB (2 mic inputs)
- Behringer Xenix Q1202USB (4 mic inputs)
- Monoprice 615808 8-Channel Audio Mixer with USB (4 mic inputs)
XLR Microphones – Under $50 each
Podcast Hosts
Learn More About Podcasting
- The Podcast Method, by Dan Benjamin
- School of Podcasting
The post Radio Survivor Recommends: How To Start Podcasting appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio Review: The Tivdio V-115 Records Airchecks on the Go

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 00:58:52 +0000

On a trip last fall visiting my parents in northern New Jersey, during the evening the I tuned around the AM dial and encountered some fascinatingly unique local stations. I wished I could record some airchecks but didn’t have any easy way to do so, and I couldn’t find any sort of online program archives.

That set me looking for a portable radio with recording capability, and I found the Tivdio V-115, which received some good reviews from other radio nerds, a number of which can be found at the SWLing Post. It turns out to be a powerhouse of a little radio, available for under $20 on Amazon here in the U.S.

Here is my video review, followed by my review summary:

Pros:

Very compact and portable
Receives AM, FM and Shortwave
Digital tuning with DSP
Fantastic sound for a small radio
Records radio to MP3 on microSD cards
Will function like an MP3 player with better speaker sound than most smartphones
Rechargeable battery, powered by USB
Sleep timer

Cons:

Headphone sound is sub-par and doesn’t work with smartphone headphones that have an integrated microphone
Buttons are stiff and make a loud click when pressed
Only the strongest shortwave stations come in with the short built-in antenna

As mentioned in the video, here’s our podcast interview with Radio Jay Allen with his advice for improving your radio reception, and his FM radio recommendations: https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2017/03/14/podcast-84-improving-radio-reception/

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Jay Allen Tested All the AM Radios For You

Paul Riismandel — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 05:43:25 +0000

Though FM has a part of the dial reserved for non-commercial radio, along with the LPFM service, there are still plenty of interesting sounds to be found on the AM dial if you’re willing to do a little scanning. Having a good AM radio will make this a more pleasant and successful endeavor.

We met radio testing guru Jay Allen on our podcast last week when he shared advice for improving reception of lower powered FM stations. But, as he told us, his real specialty is AM receivers, and I certainly learned about Jay from his epicly exhaustive AM radio “shootouts.”

Jay just posted his newest, most updated AM Radio Shootout, pitting more than 100 different models–new and vintage–head to head. Along the way he explains the technical qualities of radios that make them perform better, but in plain English that any radio lover should be able to understand.

As it turns out, one of the Jay’s five-star AM receivers amongst “the Crème de la Crème” is also one of the top radios he recommended to us for FM reception, too: the C. Crane CC-2E. I own an earlier version of this receiver (the CC-2) and can attest to how well it brings in both AM and FM signals. It’s my go-to for bringing in distant signals and the new LPFMs here in Portland, OR.

A few more of his top FM radios also rank highly in the AM Shootout. The Sangean PR-D4W garners four-and-a-half stars, and the HD Radio capable Sangean HDR-16 and HDR-18 rack up three-and-a-half stars, along with stablemates Sangean WR-50/WR-50P.

All available new, these radios seem like good choices if you’re looking for a good all-around performer for college, community and low-power FMs, as well as AM.

However, Jay doesn’t limit his tests only to new radios, and there are many great options that are used or vintage. Heck, you might even unknowingly have a great AM radio stashed on a shelf or in the garage.

Get the whole list at his site, Radio Jay Allen.

The post Jay Allen Tested All the AM Radios For You appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Reasonably Priced Turntables for Your Radio Station

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 00:59:36 +0000

I fear I didn’t write last month’s post on good inexpensive turntables soon enough. To the surprise of many, Amazon announced that its top selling item in electronics during the 2015 holiday season was a turntable. Unfortunately, it was a too-cheap, plastic, vinyl-chewing record player that barely costs more than two new LPs. My only solace is that radio stations and new LPFMs won’t be suckered into using this kind of player on air.

Further evidence of vinyl’s exploding popularity is seen in the just-announced revival of the venerated Technics 1200 DJ turntable. But here’s the rub: it costs $4000, well out of reach of too many college, community and low-power stations.

It makes you wonder – there has to be good radio-ready turntables somewhere between the $50 price tag of Amazon’s top seller and the four grand for the new 1200. As luck would have it, there is.

A couple of manufacturers have been making good quality 1200 alternatives for more than a decade, and there is one new entrant that looks to be a truly worthy successor. And they all cost well less than $1000.

So, here’s my guide to inexpensive DJ turntables that are ready for use in your radio studio. Unlike those I recommended for home use, I haven’t used all of these myself. However, those I haven’t either come from brands I have experience with, or are well-reviewed by sources I trust.

All of these turntables are direct-drive. Even though some of these manufacturers call their belt-drive models DJ turntables, I cannot recommend them for studio or real DJ use. That’s because belt-drives don’t tolerate back-cueing well, and that’s necessary to properly cue up a record for near-instantaneous playback on air. They also start up more slowly, making it difficult to get a nice clean start to your track.

Reasonably Priced Radio DJ Turntables:

Audio-Technica AT-LP120 – Typically around $250
I recommended this turntable in my inexpensive turntable post, and it’s good both for home and studio use.

Stanton T92 Direct Drive Turntable – $299
Stanton makes a wide variety of DJ turntables, several of which have straight tonearms, designated by “STR8” in the model name. These are designed primarily for scratching, therefore most suitable for club DJs that do more than just cue up and beat match records. This kind of straight tonearm is harder on records than traditional “S” shaped ones. Therefore the T92, which has an “S” tonearm is a better choice for radio studios. I haven’t used the T92, but I used the previous model for years in a radio studio and found it to be sturdy and as easy to use as a 1200, with fine sound for broadcast. My impression is that the Stanton is a little more durable and studio-friendly than the Audio-Technica above, but I’ve never really pitted them in a head-to-head comparison.

Audio Technica AT-LP1240-USB Direct Drive DJ Turntable – $399
This one is bigger, sturdier and about four pounds heavier than either the AT-LP120 or Stanton T92. Important for club-style DJs, its motor has a lot more torque, allowing it to come up to speed faster. In these regards the LP1240 is much closer to a vintage 1200 and probably a better choice for a studio where vinyl gets used often. The USB function is not really useful for radio, since most DJs will want to record what goes out on the air, not just the output of one playback device.

Pioneer Pro DJ PLX–1000 Direct Drive DJ Turntable – $700–800
This turntable, newly released in 2014, is probably the closest thing to a true Technics 1200 replacement available today. It’s even heavier and more powerful than the AT-LP1240, and the price–which is nearly double–reflects that. What you should get in return is a turntable that will provide years, if not decades, of trouble-free service, requiring little more than replacing styluses and cartridges on a regular basis. However, since it is a new model, this prediction is only a guess; nobody’s had one long enough to know for sure. Also, I’ve not had my hands on one nor listened to it myself. But Stereophile Magazine’s Herb Reichert has, and he gives it a glowing review not just for DJs but also for sound-obsessed audiophiles.

A few final notes…

Get a real DJ cartridge. This is the little box that holds the stylus (a/k/a “needle”) and is responsible for creating the actual audio signal. You want one made for DJing because they’re designed to tolerate back-cueing and a higher level of overall use and abuse. The Shure M44–7 is a standard for good reasons – it works, it’s sturdy and it sounds good. And at about $50 it’s a relative bargain. It isn’t the very best cartridge for lots of scratching or battle-style playing. But if your DJs are doing that, they should bring their own cartridges because they’ll burn through yours fast. Plan to replace these every one to two years, depending on use.

Also, have plenty of replacement stylii on hand. They are delicate little things that are easy to damage, especially when dozens of different hands are all over them every week. Be prepared to replace them at least twice a year, or whenever they start to look worn (or break). Furthermore, you’ll keep them longer and protect your records if you give them a cleaning every couple of weeks or so.

Finally, you will find other turntables marketed for DJs, sometimes at bargain prices. If they are direct-drive they might hold up for you in a studio environment, but be careful of the adage, “you get what you pay for.” I’ve used DJ turntables under the Gemini and Numark brands and found that the least expensive ones, priced under $200, are lightweight and plasticky, and therefore too easy to knock around.

They might be adequate for previewing records off air or even digitizing tracks, but I’d be hesitant to put them in the air chain. These brands’ higher end turntables may be better, but then you might as well spend the same money on an Audio-Technica, Stanton or Pioneer.

The post Reasonably Priced Turntables for Your Radio Station appeared first on Radio Survivor.

I’m Going Nuts for this Little Acorn Radio

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 03:36:18 +0000

I must have been a pretty good boy in 2015 because on Christmas morning I found in my stocking a cute wooden radio that is shaped like an acorn, and is about the same size. It’s made by the Dutch company Kikkerland, which also puts out other small novelty accoutrements, like robot tea infusers and luchador bottle openers.

My wife gave me this awesome present with the intention of it being a travel radio–and because it’s irresistibly adorable. You see, I actually traveled more in this past year than any year prior, and especially for overnight and weekend trips I try to pack very lightly–but I still want a radio. But does it actually work?

Yes. It works surprisingly well.

The acorn is FM only, and measures about 1.5“ in diameter there’s not a lot of room for batteries, connections or controls. It just has one multi-function control button, a speaker on the top, and a single 1/8” headphone jack. That jack does quadruple duty. Most obviously, you plug in headphones there. However, using a supplied cable, you can plug in the headphone output of a smartphone or computer to use it as a speaker. When plugged in the cable or headphones serve as the radio’s antenna. In fact, it only functions when a cable is plugged in, and automatically turns off when you unplug it.

You also charge its battery using a special cable that has the 1/8" plug on one end and USB on the other. It charges up pretty quickly – in less than an hour. Once fully charged it plays at least two hours. I didn’t track the play time too closely, and most of my listening was for more like a half-hour at a time.

The lack of an actual radio dial could be a deal-killer. I’ve used other inexpensive “auto-tuning” radios before and generally been disappointed. Basically the only control you have is to seek up or down the dial, and hope you hit something. With my expectations already set low I was pleased to hear this tiny receiver lock onto to station after station, including three of my favorite local non-commercial stations, community radio KBOO and XRAY, as well as jazz KMHD. XRAY is an impressive get because the station operates only a legacy class D 10-watt signal and a higher-powered translator repeater. It was the translator at 107.1 that came in, I believe, based upon the other stations that I received around it.

As with any FM radio, the position of the receiver and the antenna make a big difference. But even in my first-floor apartment I was able to get quite listenable sound from about 12 stations.

With a speaker that can’t be more than 3/4" in diameter you shouldn’t expect rich, room-filling sound. The acorn radio’s sonics are roughly equivalent to a smartphone speaker. That means it’s additional functionality as a speaker for another device is of limited use, unless that device doesn’t have its own speaker, or that speaker is somehow even tinier and softer. Though, the lack of loudness is compensated by the fact that you can put it just about anywhere, even a shirt pocket.

Listening with headphones the sound is much fuller. It’s still not as good as my iPhone, but the latter is a multi-hundred dollar device. I’d say with strong signals the acorn’s fidelity is pretty equivalent to most pocket-sized radios I’ve used. It’s quite pleasant sounding, though with a lack of deep bass, and quite adequate for both talk and music.

And it’s a little wooden acorn that most definitely will accompany me on every trip because it takes up less space than a travel-sized bottle of shampoo or granola bar. Now, truth be told, for trips lasting more than a weekend I may still bring a bigger radio with an actual dial and a bigger speaker. But even at home I’ve taken to keeping the acorn receiver on my desk and using it just because it’s so darn convenient.

Is this the best portable radio I’ve ever used? No. If you want AM reception, more precise tuning or a louder speaker you’ll need to look elsewhere. But you’ll be hard pressed to find the same combination of cuteness and dimunitivity in a radio that actually works this well.

The next time you see a weirdo walking around with a little wooden acorn pressed up to his ear, that’ll probably be me.

The post I’m Going Nuts for this Little Acorn Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Like vinyl? Here Are Recommendations for Good, Inexpensive Turntables

Paul Riismandel — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 23:31:58 +0000

As radio lovers, we here at Radio Survivor are also music lovers, as music is an enormous component of so much great grassroots radio. And so much of that music is found on vinyl, whether digging through dusty crates or finding obscure new releases from small labels. While I don’t take a strong position in the vinyl vs. analog debate, my experience is that a nice vinyl LP played on a decent turntable is an enjoyable experience that can be transcendent.

If you’re going to listen to vinyl, or play it on the air, it’s important to have a decent turntable. I find it ironic that the resurgence in interest in vinyl records has also caused the market to be flooded with cheap, plastic turntables that don’t sound particularly good, and also damage your records. It’s all the more ironic when you consider that somewhere someone has purchased a new LP for $20 or $30, but then is slowly destroying it by playing it on a cute, but poorly-built plastic record player that barely cost twice as much.

I last touched on this subject more than five years ago, and believe it or not, there are now even more high-quality, nice-sounding and inexpensive turntables available. More than any time in the last 30 years. That means you aren’t forced to buy a cheap plastic record player just because you can’t spend $500 or more. In fact, I can heartily recommend several turntables that cost as little as $100, and no more than $300. That’s equivalent to just 5 to 10 new LPs.

With the holiday season upon us, a record player may also be on your wish list, or the list of someone you love. So I do want to steer you away from the plastic wonders you’ll find on sale at your local department store or online. They won’t sound very good, they won’t take advantage of vinyl’s strengths, and many of them will actually harm your records.

I’ll even put a finer point on it. Regardless of price, if it were my money I would avoid any record player with the brand name Crosley, Jensen, or Ion, which are the most popular cheap, plastic brands. Furthermore, don’t even bother with any record player with “retro” or “classic” in its name, encased in a olde timey wood cabinet or suitcase, or crammed into a unit along with speakers, a cassette deck and CD player. While there may be a hidden gem within this lot of plastic dreck, these record players are pretty much the same design as the ones in cheap plastic stereos from the 80s, which were partially responsible for giving vinyl a bad name way back then.

Here are my recommendations on reasonably priced turntables for both home use. I have heard all of them, and so can vouch for their quality. This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list. So if you have others to recommend, please let us know in the comments.

For a variety of reasons I do not recommend these for on-air use, because they do not have the features that radio DJs require, nor are they necessarily designed to stand up to studio-level wear and tear. Note that some of these turntables require something called a phono preamplifier. You’ll find my recommendations on those at the end.

I will follow up this post with one about more pro-level decks that are good for studios.

Paul’s Recommended Budget Turntables:

Audio Technica AT-LP60 – Typically around $100
This is the least expensive new turntable that I would recommend. While there’s still a lot of plastic, the tonearm and platter are both metal, and it uses a real decent quality cartridge with an easily replaceable stylus (a/k/a “needle”). It plus into any stereo with an auxiliary input, because it has a phono preamplifier, which is needed to boost the relatively low-level sound of vinyl to something that matches the output of a CD player or iPod. It will be gentle on your vinyl, and even automatically starts and stops playing at the touch of a button. The sound is nice, if not particularly rich and involving, and it does a good job of minimizing clicks, pop and surface noise. Plus, it blows any Crosley playing out of the water.

U-Turn Orbit Basic Turntable – $179
This turntable was launched with a Kickstarter, and is designed and made in Cambridge, MA. It’s a bare basics turntable, no auto-start or stop, and you have to lift and set the stylus on the record yourself. But the sound is a very clear step above the Audio Technica turntable, or just about any other player in the price range. With the U-Turn and a nice, clean LP you’ll really start to hear what makes some people crazy for vinyl. You’ll need a phono preamp to connect it to your stereo or powered speakers – see my recommendations below.

Pro-Ject Elemental Turntable – Typically around $250
ProJect Essential II Turntable – Typically around $300
My first truly high fidelity turntable was also the first turntable made by Pro-Ject. About 20 years ago the company started making no-frills turntables that delivered high quality for high value. After 12 years of service (and mine was used) I only just retired it because I finally upgraded. Yet, my old Pro-Ject still soldiers on for a new listener, as it had surprising resale value. That all goes to say that I highly recommend Pro-Ject turntables. Either the Elemental or Essential will really show off your vinyl, and do represent a true step above the U-Turn (as good as it is). They are also simple, with no automation. But this also means they are likely to outlast most other consumer electronics you may own. Like the U-Turn, you’ll need a phono preamplifier.

Audio-Technica AT-LP120 – Typically around $250
Here’s another Audio-Technica, only this one is more a DJ style turntable that I could also recommend for light use in a radio studio. It is also all-manual, and pretty heavy-duty in its construction. While those are plusses, it wouldn’t be my first pick for home use, especially as my only turntable. That’s because I don’t think it quite brings out the finesse and subtly of vinyl the same way as the Pro-Ject and U-Turn turntables. Because vinyl is an all-physical medium, I find that absolute simplicity makes the sound better, and both Audio-Technica turntables have a little more complexity that also muddies the sound a bit by comparison. However, if durability and convenience are more important to you, then I don’t think you can go too far wrong with the AT-LP120. It does have a built-in phono preamplifier, along with USB, though the former is more useful than the latter.

Paul’s Recommended Phono Preamplifiers

If you’re using a stereo that only has a “line in” jack but no inputs labeled “phono” then you will need a phono preamplifier. This is not necessary with the two Audio-Technica turntables I recommended. A phono preamp amplifies the signal and adds a little EQ to make the signal work well with any amplifier. These are my recommendations for under $100

TCC TC–750 – Typically under $50
This is a simple, no frills preamp that sounds better than any other you’ll buy for under $50. Preamps do shape a turntable’s sound, and this one does little harm–much less than any others in this price range.

U-Turn Pluto – $89
If you can spring for the extra $40 then I’d get this preamplifier from U-Turn. It matches the simple, but high-quality design philosophy behind their turntable.

Pro-Ject Phono Box – Typically around $100
This is the same preamplifier I used with my Pro-Ject turntable for a dozen years, and it’s a definite step up from the TCC. I think it works particularly well with Pro-Ject turntables, but wouldn’t hesitate to use it with any player. I can’t really compare it to the U-Turn Pluto. They both sound good, and I haven’t heard them side-by-side.

Have any questions about turntables? Are there turntables that you can recommend? Let us know in the comments:

The post Like vinyl? Here Are Recommendations for Good, Inexpensive Turntables appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My Sonos Is an Internet Radio

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 13:00:56 +0000

At the end of last year I bought a Sonos Play:1 speaker and a Sonos Connect stereo component to add super-simple on-demand music streaming to a couple of rooms in my apartment. I’ve really enjoyed how well the platform seamlessly integrates with services like Spotify, TIDAL, Slacker, Pandora and Deezer Elite, while also easily tapping into my personal digital music library. What I didn’t expect is that because of Sonos I now listen to even more internet radio.

I’m not just talking about the major streaming platforms, but honest-to-goodness online radio stations. Using Sonos daily means I have seriously upped my diet of far-flung stations like WFMU, KEXP and CHIRP, while spicing things up with the amazing and eclectic ad-free music channels offered by Soma.fm, jazz from Radio Swiss, along with a little Art Bell on Dark Matter.

Read on to learn why Sonos has become my favorite way to tune in internet radio.

What Is Sonos?

Sonos is a wireless speaker and audio system that’s been around longer than just about any competitor. With Sonos you buy a speaker or stereo compontent that connects to your wireless network to stream music from internet services or from any computer on your network running the free Sonos app. You then control your Sonos devices using either that desktop app or a smartphone app.

I like Sonos for two basic reasons: the app is very intuitive and it sounds really good. for instance, to my ears the $199 Sonos Play:1 speaker sounds at least as good any powered speaker I’ve heard at even double its cost, and it easily surpasses just about any Bluetooth speaker for raw fidelity.

I should note that Sonos does not support Bluetooth–it only streams over wi-fi. However, since the app will stream any music that’s stored on your computer or mobile device, the lack of Bluetooth is hardly a problem for me. Plus, Sonos doesn’t recompress music like Bluetooth does, which is one reason its sound quality is better.

Like I mentioned, I have the Play:1, a small powered bookshelf speaker which lives in my home office, streaming background music for much of the day while I work. The Play:1 is mono, but you can buy a second one to create a stereo pair.

I also have the Connect, which is a small audio component that I’ve attached to my main stereo system in the living room, where I’ve already got an amplifier and speakers. In addition Sonos offers the larger stereo Play:3 and Play:5 speakers, as well as the Playbar soundbar to add to a home theater.

For streaming music I use Deezer Elite, which is a full CD-quality uncompressed service that currently is only available in the U.S. to Sonos owners. You can read my previous review of Deezer Elite and Sonos to learn how they work together.

Tuning In All the Stations

I do most of my radio listening with the TuneIn service. Connecting supported services, like TuneIn, is as simple as selecting it in the app’s preferences, and then entering in account information, if necessary. Once you’ve connected the service then you can browse or search it within the Sonos app to find just about any station. Besides just playing a station, you can choose to add it to your Sonos favorites list or your TuneIn account’s favorites for easy recall.

For jazz lovers TuneIn offers two Blue Note records curated stations that are exclusive to Sonos: Blue Note 101 features classics from the label’s entire catalog, and Born In Blue focuses on funky tracks.

TuneIn is not the only radio game for Sonos. For free streams the platform also supports iHeartRadio, Songza, Live365, and Radiononmy. Podcasts are available on TuneIn, Stitcher and Souncloud, while Soundcloud is also basically the YouTube of audio. If you like to buy independent music on BandCamp you can even stream the tracks you purchase. All these services function as simply and easily on Sonos as TuneIn.

Even More Radio

I’ve also been enjoying the stations offered by Dash Radio, a relatively new radio network. Dash is only available via its own website or apps, but also can be connected directly to Sonos. The network came on my radar when it announced the return of East Village Radio. That station is now one of my favorites, along with Dash’s Los Anarchy station, which features just punk and thrash metal, helping me relive my 80s and 90s youth. All of Dash Radio’s stations are commercial-free (don’t ask me how they’re financing the operation), and the majority of them lean more towards electronic music, hip-hop and R&B.

Mixcloud is another cool radio-like service that links to Sonos. It lets DJs and stations upload full sets for archive streaming, sort of like a podcast service for music. For blasts of ’80s and 90s alternative rock on vinyl I love theme shows put together by Little Records, and I appreciate getting a taste of electronic music from the UK on the Solid Steel show.

Why Sonos Is Great for Radio

Sonos is great for radio for the same reason it’s great for listening to streaming music, or tracks from my music collection. In addition to having an intuitive interface, Sonos lets you search across all connected services, rather than having to search them one-by-one.

Sonos favorites can have tracks, albums, artists or stations from any service. That means I can have an album from Deezer next to a track from my music library, next to a bookmark for KEXP. It’s that feature, in particular, that has upped my internet radio listening, because I’ll look to my favorites to find something new to listen to and often end up choosing a radio station, whereas otherwise I might have chosen an album instead.

Because it’s so easy to use, and sounds so good, my Sonos has become the most-used entertainment appliance in the apartment.

While I wouldn’t necessarily have sought out Sonos just for internet radio listening, in retrospect I don’t think that’s an absurd idea. For instance, Amazon’s #1 selling digital radio, the Grace Digital Wi-Fi Music Player costs only $55 less than a Sonos:Play 1, and for me the Sonos’ extra functionality–like the ability to have all your Sonos devices play the same stream in complete sync–makes it worth the extra money.

I think it’s fantastic there are so many ways to listen to internet radio now–from mobile devices, like an iPad, to set-top devices, like a Chromecast. Add Sonos to that list, especially if you also want some really nice sounding speakers as part of the price.

The post My Sonos Is an Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Digital Watch: Apple’s Beats 1 Radio Is Safe as Milk

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 10:01:01 +0000

Yesterday I shared my initial impressions of Apple’s Beats 1 Radio, and why I think it’s decidedly global orientation is its most interesting quality. Now I turn a critical ear to the actual programming and sound quality.

Originally I planned to write a review of Apple Music for today’s feature. But after spending additional time with Beats 1, I felt like I needed to write a follow-up examining how even if it is interesting, it’s not otherwise all that great. For all the excitement about Apple Music, at heart it really is just another streaming music service that doesn’t differ very much from all of its competitors. Beats 1 is receiving more attention, in part because this offering actually does differentiate Apple’s music services from most of its competitors. So I think it deserves a deeper dissection.

Here’s the thing: even if Beats 1 were on the broadcast dial near me I would still find it interesting, but not at all outstanding. That’s because for all the hype and somewhat wider playlist, it only seems a bit exceptional when compared against the intensely poor-to-mediocre state of American commercial pop radio.

Beats 1 Radio: Safe as Milk

For all the celebrities, and all the hype, Beats 1 still hews to a very conservative framework that emphasizes the mainstream and heavy rotation. On its launch day the station aired promos making a big deal about debuting a new single from Pharrell Williams, which included sound bytes of the multi-talented artist gushing about how thrilled he was to receive the backing of Beats 1.

Someone with absolutely no knowledge of the last five years of popular music might be forgiven for assuming that Pharrell is some new, up-and-coming artist, giddy from the excitement of having his star chosen to shine. Of course, the reality is that he’s a proven 11-time Grammy-award winning singer, songwriter and producer. Talented as he may be, Beats 1 promoting Pharrell’s new single on launch day is–to steal a phrase from Captain Beefheart–safe as milk.

While I enjoyed the variety of genres and sounds that exceeds that of typical American radio, over the course of about four hours of listening the station’s heavy rotation reared its ugly head, and became annoying. By the time I heard songs like The Weeknd’s new single “Can’t Feel My Face” four times before I got tired of the repetition and turned it off. Sure, that’s no worse than your typical CHR stations–but it sure ain’t better enough, either.

Cynical Censorship

During DJ Zane Lowe’s introductory set he enthused over playing a track from Dr. Dre’s seminal G-Funk album “The Chronic.” He complained about the record being markedly absent from streaming music services up to now as he talked over the unmistakeable opening beats of “Let It Ride.” Dr. Dre, of course, is a co-founder of Beats Music, which Apple acquired to create Apple Music, and is now an Apple employee. Consequently, “The Chronic” is now an Apple Music exclusive, though other online radio stations are free to play any song on the album, provided its not on-demand.

I was a little disappointed, however, when I realized I was hearing the heavily edited radio single. At one level I understand how Apple probably wants to keep Beats 1 as family friendly as possible. However, given the lyrical content of most pop music–including this track–this is an extremely flimsy and translucent fig leaf. Bleeping the f-word in “Let It Ride” is like watching a television edit of Pulp Fiction that dubs in “freaking” and “crud” but leaves all the violence intact (and I’ve seen that version).

There’s nothing particularly “family friendly” about that approach either. It only barely meets the already flimsy version of non-indecent required of FCC licensees. But, Beats 1 isn’t broadcast, and doesn’t have any obligation to meet that standard. If “decency” is a sincere concern, then one might argue that it entails more than just some f-words. Instead, I’ll offer that apparently adhering to the FCC standard of decency is cynical and unnecessary. If there’s a fan of Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” who hasn’t heard the album in all its profanity-laden glory I’d like to meet her and offer her a pair of magical golden Beats by Dre headphones that filter out every naughty utterance known to humanity.

Nothing New

Even if Beats 1 Radio as a whole isn’t cynical, it does fall far short of revolutionary, or even exceptional. SiriusXM subscribers have had access to multiple stations full of Beats 1 style music for over a decade–most without any useless broadcast-style language editing. Satellite radio has been featuring celebrity DJs across all genres the entire time, even offering many–like Bob Dylan–their own channels.

Slacker Radio is another service that is built on curation, again with many popular music artists and celebrities invited to program stations and programs. In fact, looking across the streaming music service landscape you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t offer some of the features of Beats 1, even if not all in one live streaming station.

Any argument for Beats 1 exceptionalism pretty much falls apart when you look at the wider world of online radio. There are dozens upon dozens of stations that offer carefully curated variety, live hosts and even celebrity DJs all day long. Just looking at the US, I can name some outstanding non-commercial stations with strong online presences that qualify: KEXP, KCRW, WFMU, and The Current. Sure maybe their celebrities are a little smaller and genre-specific, but they matter to these stations’ listeners. And then there’s online-only operations like the recently launched Dash Radio, helmed by well-known DJ Skee, with stations curated by artists like Snoop Dogg and Odd Future, along with the resurrected East Village Radio.

Low Fidelity

If I was disappointed by Beats 1 choosing to censor songs, I was even more disappointed by the sound quality. Listening to the station on my iPhone 5 using both earbuds and speakers I found the fidelity to be about a match for most commercial pop stations on iHeartRadio–that’s not a compliment. The dynamic range is highly compressed, and I heard lots of artifacting in the high end giving too many tracks a shimmery sound that generally indicates lower bitrates, or several stages of compressions wherein an MP3 gets played and then recompressed to another MP3 or AAC stream. It made me wonder if the DJs are using a full uncompressed CD-quality source (or even actual CDs) or compressed tracks from the iTunes store.

Now, I’ve certainly heard worse sounding internet radio, but there’s no way I would call Beats 1 high fidelity. That’s somewhat ironic, given that Apple has always touted sound quality as a virtue of its music offerings, and Beats by Dre headphones are supposed to offer enhanced fidelity. Using a pair of Beats, or any decent headphone, to listen to Beats 1 would be a disappointing experience.

As a control I listened on Apple Music to some tracks I heard on Beats 1, including “Let It Ride” and “Can’t Feel My Face.” Hands down, the Apple Music tracks sounded tremendously better, with no glaring compression artifacts or high end distortion. Even though these were all pop songs with already compressed dynamics, it was a much more pleasant listening experience on Apple Music.

My conclusion is that Beats 1 suffers from two constraints. First, it’s clear that the station uses the kind of heavy-handed processing used by most big pop stations, which makes the station jump out when scanning the dial, but is fatiguing to listen to for hours at a time. Second, I’m pretty sure Beats 1 streams at a pretty low bitrate, adding to the distortion and degrading sound quality. This is probably to save bandwidth and costs, since Apple is streaming the station out worldwide. Nevertheless, it’s still a disappointment.

Not Much of a Threat

Even with the backing of Apple, it’s hard to see Beats 1 Radio as much more than a curiosity. I doubt it will become a serious to rival Pandora. Instead, after the newness wears off, I suspect interest in Beats 1 will subside. As I said yesterday, the service isn’t much of a threat to any truly independent internet radio, though it does pose a reasonable alternative to listening to any US CHR station online through a platform like iHeartRadio or CBS’s Radio.com. However, for the moment those platforms are girded by offering a wider variety of formats.

On the one hand I kind of wish Beats 1 were more audacious and boundary-pushing. On the other, I’m kind of glad it isn’t, since the service already benefits from Apple’s market power to put it on millions of mobile devices by fiat. While I do use Apple products in my work, I’m not a fanboy, cheering on the company’s dominance over every arena it enters. I prefer diversity and a media landscape that isn’t consolidated into an oligopoly.

On the bright side, perhaps Beats 1 will function as a kick in the pants to the otherwise moribund state of American commercial radio online.

And maybe Snoop Dogg will give up the chronic.

The post Digital Watch: Apple’s Beats 1 Radio Is Safe as Milk appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My TiVo Roamio is an Internet Radio

Jennifer Waits — Sat, 11 Apr 2015 23:05:01 +0000

After putting up with painfully slow DSL Internet service for the past few years, my family just switched to cable and in the process moved to cable TV. I have always been a huge television consumer and was the master of my video cassette recorder (VCR) back in the day. Digital video recorders (DVRs) came on the scene just in time for me, as I had a frustrating period in the 1990s when my cable TV/VCR situation couldn’t handle heavy nights of taping multiple shows on different channels. I remember being addicted to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and having class at the same time and being frustrated by the limitations of VCRs at the time.

I got my first TiVo in 2002 and fell in love. Finally I could record multiple shows at the same time, search for shows by genre or channel, and so much more. After a few blissful years and an upgrade to HD TV, I had to abandon my TiVo for a few different (and inferior) DVRs. It was never quite the same.

This week I rekindled my relationship with TiVo. After setting up our new cable service, we installed the TiVo Roamio. When I perused our cable channel guide last night, I initially thought that we no longer had music channels like we did with our former satellite service. Curious about that, I started searching around and found a “music/photos” section on the TiVo menu.

It turns out that my TiVo Roamio is an Internet Radio! On the music menu, I have the option of tuning in to Live365, Pandora, and Spotify. I can also check out podcasts from the Podcaster menu.

So, today, my 9-year-old daughter and I took our new TiVo Internet Radio for a spin. Although I have been an early adopter as far as television, I’ve fallen behind when it comes to Internet music, being more of an old-school radio gal. Ironically, TiVo may change all that.

TiVo was my Gateway to Pandora Radio

It’s weird to admit that TiVo was my gateway to Pandora, as I set up my first Pandora station today. Although I’ve always eschewed these computer-generated music playlists (how can they possibly compete with human-curated content?), my daughter and I had a lot of fun creating various Pandora stations.

The Pandora set up was super easy, as we were prompted with an on-screen sign up option. After retrieving a code listed on our TV screen, I was able to set up a free Pandora account on my computer. Moments later we got going through the TiVo interface. I started things off by building a station based on one of my favorite artists, Smog. The playlist launched with a Smog track and then transitioned into familiar (and expected) favorites by Neutral Milk Hotel, Cat Power, and Bonnie Prince Billy, before transitioning back to another Smog song (one of my favorites, “Bathysphere”). Although I didn’t discover any new music through this short stint with “Smog Radio,” it was a satisfying listen, taking me through music that I already like.

Growing impatient (because she wanted to take control of the TiVo), my daughter asked for a turn. Instead of letting her try out Pandora, I asked her to take a look at Live 365 for me.

Perusing Live 365’s Radio Options on TiVo

I’d taken a cursory look at TiVo’s Live 365 offerings last night and was pleased to see that I could tune in to a wide variety of stations, including some college radio stations (in the “alternative” and “freeform” sections). My daughter checked out the main menu and initially chose “classical.” After an unsatisfying listen to “All Relaxing Classics” (she said, “This looks weird” after seeing the album cover artwork), she changed her mind and said, “I want to listen to blues. Wait? Is there more? I want to listen to jazz.”

So then she did a survey of various jazz station options on Live 365. I had to laugh when she asked, “What’s the difference between soft and smooth jazz?” as I don’t see much of a distinction myself. After trying out “Soft Jazz FM,” “Smooth Jazz 247,” “Soft Jazz Mellow Blend,” “The Jazz Mix,” and “Jazz all the Time,” she came up with her answer, saying, “Clearly soft and smooth jazz are not good at all, they should be called bad jazz.” She liked “The Jazz Mix” a lot more and said, “Overall this is really awesome.” We both enjoyed “Jazz all the Time” the most, but by this point my daughter said, “I need to listen to something else besides jazz.”

We then switched over to the menu of Pop stations on Live 365 and my daughter selected “the Rhythm of the City” station. As we launched it we heard an ad for the Live 365 Android app and then a Geico ad, followed by yet another ad. My daughter grew frustrated with the whole endeavor, exiting the station before we even heard a track.

I asked her if we could try some college radio and she relented. We went to the Freeform category and chose SFCR/KUSF-in-Exile, our local San Francisco community radio station (which is made up of many former college radio DJs from KUSF-FM). I recognized the DJ’s name that popped up on our screen (Fari), but the interface was a bit confusing as it wouldn’t have been clear to most that we were looking at a show name as opposed to a track name. After listening to a track that “sounds very Spanish,” according to my daughter, she was ready to move on, saying, “Now, I want to make my own music one.”

Before steering her back to Pandora, I made my daughter take one more detour to Podcaster.

Podcaster – It’s Like Radio on TV!

On my initial look at TiVo’s Podcaster last night, I was amazed and amused that I could listen to radio podcasts through my TV. There’s popular stuff in the Featured section including “The Adam Carolla Show,” “the Moth Podcast,” “the Nerdist,” and “Radiolab.” You can also listen to sports, comedy, entertainment, and music podcasts, as well as to a bunch of NPR podcasts (I’m listening to a NPR “Pop Culture Happy Hour” podcast about Stan Freberg as I write this). There’s also an option to type in RSS feeds for other podcasts, so in theory you can listen to whatever you’d like through TiVo (is this what Paul dreamed of last year, when he wrote that podcasting needed to enter every room of the home?).

But what’s really surreal, is that from the Entertainment menu you can tune in to “Old Time Radio Suspense” and “Old Time Radio Thrillers.” Sadly, I got an error message for both podcasts (“Sorry, there was a problem accessing this podcast. Please try again later.”), but I can’t wait to check again to see if I can really listen to old time radio on my TV.

My daughter was pretty confused by Podcaster, saying, “I thought you were able to do podcasts on the TV. When you can do a video and put it online and it will be live.” She plowed through anyway and selected “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” She noticed an episode about a plane crash and asked if she could watch it. After listening for a bit she said, “It needs to have pictures.” I then broke the news to her that podcasts are just audio. After hearing that, my daughter told me, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” so I let her go back to Pandora.

My Daughter Learns that Pandora isn’t really On-Demand – Where’s “Skyfall” on “Skyfall Radio”?

After our brief tour of Podcaster, we returned to Pandora. My daughter was desperate to create her own station and decided to do one based on the Adele song “Skyfall.” The station launched with a James Newton Howard track (“The Hanging Tree”), which my daughter recognized, telling me, “It’s from the Hunger Games. I like it.” We then heard tracks by One Republic, Garbage, as well as some by Adele. Overall it was a mix of songs that my daughter knew and songs that she didn’t know. Ultimately, though, she was a bit frustrated because she really wanted to hear “Skyfall.” After skipping through a few tracks and still not hearing the song, she retreated to her room so that she could hear “Skyfall” on her own devices.

I Learn that Pandora Really Can Be a Discovery Tool

After my daughter left the room, the addictive nature of Pandora became apparent to me. I kept thinking about other stations that I wanted to create and was curious to hear what other tracks Pandora would come up with. For my next station, I picked another old favorite, the 1990s band Tiger Trap. Although the station started out with some familiar bands, including the Crabs, Heavenly, and Chin-Chin, I was also happy to hear some bands that I was less familiar with, including Veronica Falls and Cloud Nothings. I’m guessing that since I chose a more underground artist for my station, I was presented with some more adventurous options than my daughter’s more mainstream Pandora channel.

When in Doubt, There’s Always YouTube, even on TiVo

As I was finishing up this story, I was listening to a New York Times music review podcast through TiVo. My daughter wasn’t all that interested in listening to music critics chatting about Sleater-Kinney’s new album, so she grabbed the remote control and scrolled to the main TiVo menu in order to select “Find TV, music, and videos.” From that screen she had the option of searching on YouTube. Of course that’s now the ultimate music library for the 2000s, so she searched for “Skyfall” and finally had her moment of satisfaction, getting the chance to listen to the exact song that she wanted to hear when she wanted to hear it.

And Don’t Forget MusicChoice, Digital FM, and even Spotify….

After spending much of the day investigating our music/radio/podcasting options on TiVo, we still haven’t explored it all. In order to make use of Spotify we need to sign up for a Spotify Premium account. I think we’ll have to leave that for another day…

And, by the way, after checking out all of these newfangled online music options, I found out that our TV does actually have standard TV radio fare, including “Music Choice” stations across a range of genres, as well as some digital FM stations, where I can tune in to local San Francisco Bay Area stations like KQED, KSJO, KPFA, KOIT, KUFX, KFRC, KDFC, KFOG, KITS, KSAN, and more.

Who knew that there was so much radio on my TV.

The post My TiVo Roamio is an Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Review: TIDAL Streams Uncompressed Music to More Devices, but Not Worth It for Everyone

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 07:15:18 +0000

TIDAL–recently acquired by rapper/entrepreneur Jay-Z–is one of two uncompressed streaming music services available in the US. Instead of serving up tracks compressed using so-called “lossy codecs” MP3, AAC or Ogg Vorbis like Spotify, Beats Music or Rdio, uncompressed services stream full CD-quality music for higher fidelity.

Deezer’s Elite service beat TIDAL to the uncompressed punch by just weeks last fall, and I reviewed it in November. I recently took TIDAL for a spin and can share my impressions of its sound quality.

TIDAL received much more press and many more reviews than Deezer Elite when it debuted. That’s almost entirely due to the fact that TIDAL is not tied to any particular hardware. Deezer Elite, on the other hand, is only available on Sonos wireless audio systems. TIDAL is available on Sonos too, so I tested it using the same Sonos Connect, Yamaha Aventage A–1000 receiver and Polk RT600i tower speakers I used to review Deezer Elite. Taking advantage of TIDAL’s multi-platform advantage, I also tried out TIDAL on my MacBook Pro and iPad.

On the internet arguments over sound quality can be as partisan as politics, with many tech reviewers, in particular, deriding audiophiles who claim to hear better sound from lossless music, vinyl, or high-resolution digital audio. Let me say up front that while lossy compressed music from MP3s and AACs files can be very good, uncompressed CD-quality music ranges from being a touch better to significantly superior. This difference can be subtle, but it isn’t always. It’s important to have decent stereo equipment or headphones. Listening over laptop speakers or through cheap earbuds seriously limit the ability to experience uncompressed music.

Comparing TIDAL and Deezer Elite

Listening to multiple tracks on both TIDAL and Deezer Elite though my Sonos system I heard no identifiable difference. For all practical purposes they sound identical. Provided that both services started with the same CD or digital file provided by the label, that is what one should expect. I could imagine that one might find some tracks or albums that do sound different, perhaps due to slightly different master sources, but I doubt that this would be due to any generalized gap between Deezer and TIDAL.

TIDAL on a Receiver and Speakers

On the same system I then compared TIDAL to Spotify tracks and MP3 and AAC encoded tracks in my own music library. Like Deezer Elite, I found that TIDAL consistently sounded better than the lossy compressed tracks, with the differences ranging from subtle to quite noticeable. In general, TIDAL provided a more spacious, three-dimensional soundstage, whereas Spotify sounded as if my speakers were closer together. The lossy versions could get a bit grainy at the high end, on instruments like the cymbals.

TIDAL on MacBook and USB Audio Interface

I moved to listening to TIDAL on my MacBook Pro Retina (1st generation) using the web player on Chrome, the only browser that supports uncompressed streaming. First I used a PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL USB audio interface. This device is intended for both audio recording and listening, and supports high resolution audio up to 24 bits at 192 KHz (CD audio is 16 bits at 44.1 KHz). My headphones were a pair of Sony MDR–7506, a standard in radio and music production that provide pretty neutral reproduction, with good isolation from outside noise.

With this combination TIDAL sounded quite good indeed. I’ve really been enjoying the album “Mehliana: Taming the Dragon” from jazz pianist Brad Mehldau and percussionist/composer Mark Guiliana. It seamlessly blends contemporary electronic sounds with a jazz approach in a recording that I think has more dynamic richness than similar mashed-up efforts like Flying Lotus’ also-brilliant “You’re Dead.”

Listening to the track “Hungry Ghost” on TIDAL it sounded very lively, with tight but strong low bass and smooth treble. Moving to Spotify the soundstage condensed–like I’d experienced listening over speakers–and that tell-tale graininess and shimmeriness turned up with the often-hectic cymbals. Over headphones the difference in the treble, in particular, was more obvious than with speakers.

I also checked out Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne,” which reveled a very distinct placement of instruments in space when streamed from TIDAL. Spotify sounded quite nice on this track, with the high end remaining quite clean–a little more so than with “Hungry Ghost.” The soundstage once again collapsed a little, but subtly.

TIDAL with a MacBook’s Built-in Audio

While TIDAL is attractive to music lovers and audiophiles who are willing to shell out $100 to $1000 for an upgraded USB audio interface, it’s not unlikely that many other listeners (including, occasionally, audiophiles) will listen using their computer’s built-in headphone jack. So I tried this route as well.

Listening to TIDAL using my Sony headphones connected directly to the MacBook Pro’s headphone jack the sound took a noticeable step down right away. On “Kid Charlemagne” it sounded as if the whole soundstage took a shift to the left, and the high end got grainier. Towards the end of the track when all the instruments and players are going full tilt things get less distinct; more “wall of sound” than the typical Steely Dan precision.

Switching to Spotify over the MacBook Pro’s headphone jack it was difficult to hear much of a difference compared to TIDAL. Only when the background singers come in at the end could I perceive even less precision than with the uncompressed version. But, truth be told, I had to listen intensively to pick that up. It’s not the sort of thing I’d notice under most listening.

Listening to “Hungry Ghost” it sounded as if the MacBook’s headphone port shaved off some of the high end–things were not nearly as clear as with the AudioBox. Moving the Spotify this effect was a bit more pronounced. Not as minor a difference as with the Steely Dan track, but still quite subtle.

TIDAL on iPad

Finally, I tried out TIDAL on my Retina iPad (1st generation), using my Sonys plugged into its headphone jack. I used this combination because I don’t own an external audio interface that easily connects to the iPad, and because even more people are likely to use their mobile devices’ built-in headphone jack than an external interface. The TIDAL app can stream in lower bitrate lossy quality for use in bandwidth-constricted mobile environments, so I made sure it was delivering full CD quality.

The iPad’s sound was markedly superior to the MacBook Pro, which reflects my overall experience with Apple iOS devices; their audio reproduction is generally better than the built-in audio on nearly any computer. The soundstage opened up again on both tracks, and there was no weird shift to the left. The high end was also clearer, though not as clear as the AudioBox. Bass, in particular, had less authority than the AudioBox, coming off as a bit more tubby and sloppy, yet still better than the MacBook’s built-in audio.

Switching to Spotify I heard pretty much the same shift in quality that I heard with the AudioBox, though the difference between TIDAL and Spotify was somewhere in
between the AudioBox and the MacBook’s built-in.

Conclusion: TIDAL Delivers What It Promises

On the whole TIDAL delivers what it promises: CD-quality streaming audio. Like Deezer Elite it sounds better compared to lossy compressed streams from other services like Spotify, or digital tracks from iTunes or Amazon. I have no problems recommending TIDAL if you have audio equipment that will reveal and take advantage of the bump in quality. That caveat, however, is pivotal.

Who Will Benefit from TIDAL

At $19.95 a month, for someone who will do most of his listening on a laptop through its tinny built-in speakers or built-in headphone jack I’m not sure TIDAL is worth the extra cost compared to other services. Although I didn’t have a Bluetooth speaker on hand to test it, my past experience with Bluetooth speakers is that most don’t even extract all the quality available with Spotify or Rdio, making TIDAL even more superfluous.

Someone who will do most of her listening with a higher end mobile device and good quality headphones may in fact benefit from TIDAL. That said, if that were my primary listening set up I’m not entirely sure I’d enjoy enough of a difference to make the extra $8 to $10 a month worth it.

I think the person who listens at home over speakers with a good quality digital audio system has perhaps the best chance of fully enjoying TIDAL’s bump in fidelity. Yet, like all things audio, this experience is subjective. If you’re someone who enjoys listening to Spotify and finds no fault with it, I’m not here to convince you to switch.

Instead I would encourage anyone considering TIDAL (or any subscription streaming service) to at least do a free trial, or even subscribe for just a month. In the end, it’s up to you whether the added bits are worth what can add up to an additional $120 a year.

All I can say is that I hear a difference with TIDAL that represents an improvement over lossy services like Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody. For my money, and for listening with equipment that takes advantage of that extra fidelity, that price difference would be worth it. Your mileage may vary.

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Amazon Prime Music Stations Review

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 07:01:43 +0000

In the world of streaming music services Amazon Prime Music is more like the bubble gum in a pack of baseball cards. It’s not the reason you buy the pack, but you’ll probably chew it anyway. Introduced last year, Prime Music serves up commercial-free, on demand music to subscribers to Amazon Prime, which also has a Netflix-like streaming video platform alongside its signature free two-day delivery service.

On Monday Amazon added the new Prime Stations feature to the iOS versions of the Prime Music app along with the web player. It’s Amazon’s version of a lay-back experience letting the user pick a genre or seed artist to launch a stream of music. Take a dash of Pandora and add a little bit of Slacker or iTunes Radio, and that’s kind of what you get–except it’s not necessarily any better than these.

Since Prime Stations is only available as a paid service there are no commercials and the use has an unlimited number of skips. However, there are a few caveats compared to the competition.

Sized up against the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Pandora or Rhapsody, Prime Music’s one million track catalog is small, with many more artists missing, or only represented by just a few tracks. That means fewer selections are available in Prime Stations, too.

Unlike these other services, you can’t just choose any artist or genre to launch a station. By my count there are around 100 artists and 32 genres, which is not a paltry number by any means. There’s also no ability to mix together artists or genres like Pandora offers.

One complaint is that there’s no way to search for available stations, you can only browse. Purusing genres isn’t too much of a chore, but searching for an artist you want to hear is. Inexplicably, if you do a regular search for an artist who happens to have station that fact isn’t indicated in the results–you just get a listing of available tracks and albums.

Additional customization is limited to giving a track the thumbs up or thumbs down. When you give the thumbs down Prime Stations removes that track from the station altogether. However, it seems like the artist may stay in rotation, and I’m not sure you remove one you can’t stand.

Like Spotify’s radio feature, Prime Stations lets you add any song to your library or to a playlist. Then any music in your library can be streamed on demand, or downloaded for offline playback on your mobile device. That makes music discovery a little smoother, since you don’t need to purchase the track or album, as long as you remain an Amazon Prime customer.

A nice extra with Prime Music is X-Ray, which displays lyrics in sync with the music, although it’s not available with every song. As somebody who mishears nearly all lyrics, I appreciate being disabused of thinking Credence sang about the “bathroom on the right.”

To my ears the fidelity of Prime Stations is pretty equivalent to the paid versions of its competitors. My understanding is that the highest bitrate setting delivers 256 kbps, the same as what’s sold in the Amazon digital music store. That is quite adequate for most non-critical listening, certainly meeting the expectation of most listeners.

As a Prime subscriber I will probably use Stations only occasionally, since that’s about as often as I use something like Pandora. In fact, I’ll probably use it instead of Pandora, simply because it’s ad-free, even if the customizability isn’t as good. But I’m not somebody who has spent a lot of time making Pandora stations, so for me the trade off is worth it.

The addition of Stations to Prime Music isn’t in itself a reason to subscribe to Amazon Prime. It adds just a little more value to overall Prime service. If nothing else, having Prime Stations may be a discouragement for a Prime subscriber to also pay for Pandora One or another streaming service, provided she hasn’t already invested a lot of effort customizing it.

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Building My First FM Radio – Wonderology’s Snap, Plug & Play Radio Kit

Jennifer Waits — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 14:00:55 +0000

After a frustrating first attempt at building a crystal radio with a radio kit over Christmas, I was excited to move on to the simpler-sounding Snap, Plug and Play Radio kit from Wonderology. Marketed as a project for ages 8 and up, the box touted that you could “create your own working FM radio!”

Wonderology Snap, Plug and Play Radio box. Photo: J. Waits

My 8-year-old daughter was also looking forward to helping me with this project since it seemed to be much more straight-forward than the crystal radio kits that I had. Although it’s less of a science project, the Wonderology kit is visually pleasing and simple to assemble.

Assembling the panels of the radio. Photo: J. Waits

In less than half an hour we snapped together the blue square plastic panels in order to form the radio cube. One panel contained the speaker.

Assembling the radio. Photo: J. Waits

On the top panel we installed a plastic piece that various wires plug into (the “hub”). Next to it, we snapped in the volume control slider. On other panels we attached the tuner and battery pack. We then started to attach various cords from the components (antenna, tuner, battery pack, volume control, and speaker) into the hub.

Attaching wires to Wonderology radio. Photo: J. Waits

Components can be attached and easily removed from the plastic cube in order to get the radio working. After experimenting with various configurations, we turned on the radio and heard a voice. In a very odd coincidence, the first sound that we heard was from the radio station where I volunteer and DJ – Foothill College radio station KFJC. The voice of long-time KFJC host Dave Emory emanated from the radio’s speaker and we were amazed.

Since then, however, I’ve only been able to get the radio working sporadically. When it did work, there wasn’t any volume control, the station was either on at a loud volume or off, nothing in between. We were able to tune in a handful of stations on the radio, but the tuner isn’t very precise, so it’s hard to tell what channel you are tuned to.

Although this project was initially satisfying since it is very easy to assemble and we were able to get an FM signal, it’s different from the crystal radio kits because it’s not really a science experiment. We didn’t learn about radio while constructing it, but it is a funky looking radio!

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Building My 2nd Crystal Radio – Slinky Crystal Radio Kit

Jennifer Waits — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 11:17:13 +0000

This week my dad and I made a second attempt at building a crystal radio using one of the kits that I got for Christmas. Readers might recall that back in December we made a radio using the Elenco Crystal Radio Kit. This time around we tried out the Slinky Experiment #151 Crystal Radio Kit.

Slinky Crystal Radio Kit. Photo: J. Waits

Initially my dad had been less interested in the Slinky kit because it did not include a pre-wound copper coil (which the Elenco kit had), but we trudged on anyway, hoping that this time around we would successfully build a working radio. The kit, which is recommended for ages 8 and up, promises that it will allow one to “make your own real working radio without batteries!”

Back of Slinky Crystal Radio kit package. Photo: J. Waits

After examining all of the pieces, we decided to start assembling the plastic radio base first so that we knew what we were dealing with before we started preparing the tuning coil. It was pretty simple to bend the panels to form the radio’s base, although the plastic looked a little bit warped, so things weren’t exactly fitting together as squarely as they should. My dad wanted to do this part first so that he could ascertain how much clearance we needed to leave on the edges of the tuning coil, so that it would fit into the base.

Slinky Crystal Radio Kit parts. Photo: J. Waits

After partially assembling the base, we started the most arduous part of the project: winding copper wire onto a cardboard tube to create the tuning coil. The instructions state, “adult supervision is advisable for this task. Winding the coil must be done very carefully and precisely, or your radio will not work.”

Paper tube and spool of copper wire. Photo: J. Waits

We placed a rubber band (included with the kit) about half an inch from the edge of a cardboard tube (similar to a sturdier toilet paper tube). Although the instructions didn’t mention it, my dad thought it would be a good idea to place a second rubber band on the other end of the tube BEFORE we started to wind the wire. We figured out the amount of empty space required on each end of the tube when we tried inserting the tube into the plastic base and then placed the rubber bands accordingly.

Slinky Crystal Radio instructions. Photo: J. Waits

The kit included a small bobbin-like spool of copper wire. That wire needs to be carefully wound around the paper tube, without any overlap. In order to do this more precisely, the instructions recommended attaching the spool onto a pencil which is secured between two heavy stacks of books. The idea is that this can secure the spool so that one can slowly wind the wire onto the tube.

Attaching the spool of copper to a dowel. Photo: J. Waits

My dad was skeptical about this method (you might recall that he’s an engineer) and suggested that we instead set up two clamps on his workbench in the garage. He grabbed a dowel rather than a pencil (telling me that pencils aren’t the best choice since they are typically hexagonal), slipped the spool over the dowel and then clamped it on both sides.

Measuring 3 inches of wire off the end of the tuning coil. Photo: J. Waits

Satisfied that the coil could move freely, but not too fast, we began the process of winding copper wire onto the paper tube. My dad held the tube, keeping his thumb atop the wire as he wound it. The first rubber band is used to secure the edge of the wire so that it doesn’t come off.

Starting to wind the tuning coil. Photo: J. Waits

Although the instructions aren’t explicit about this, the included drawings show that around 3 inches of wire should be left loose off of the coil. I kept a fingertip (actually a fingernail) atop the spool so that we could slowly unwind it without unloosening all of the wire.

Nearly done winding the copper wire onto the paper tube. Photo: J. Waits

Make sure you have plenty of light and patience as you start the coil winding part of this project, as it took us at least 30 minutes to complete. When we reached the end of the wire, we rolled the second rubber band over the edge of the coiled wire, leaving about 3 inches of wire loose at the end.

Completed tuning coil. Photo: J. Waits

As my dad wound the copper coil, he got into a rhythm, telling me that it got easier as he went along. We were pretty satisfied with the winding and didn’t see much overlap or gaps in the wires, especially towards the end of the coil.

Putting the tuning coil into the plastic radio base. Photo: J. Waits

After winding the tuning coil, we inserted it into the blue plastic base that we had partially constructed earlier. We then inserted coil wire through labeled holes in the base. About an inch of one end of the wire then had to be sanded so that plastic insulation material could be removed.

Crystal Radio Kit parts (rubber bands, connecting wires, earphone, diode) . Photo: J. Waits

Following this step, we prepared the earphone, diode and connecting wires. I created small loops at the end of the diode wires and connecting wires by winding them around the tip of a pencil. At this point we were back working inside the house in a dimly lit room and I realized that good light (and good vision) was a necessity for this part of the project.

Getting the tuning bar and other components in place. J. Waits

The remaining steps were delineated pretty clearly in the instructions. I needed to put specific wires through specific holes in the blue plastic base and then had to slide a metal tuning rod through a hole in the base. After slipping the small metal tuning ball onto the rod, we were ready to start making connections with all of the wires. I have to note (as was the case with the last kit that we tried), that we needed to use a wire stripper (luckily my dad has one) to remove the plastic covering from the ends of many of the wires, as there often wasn’t enough bare wire to work with.

Attaching the diode. Note the screws. Photo: J. Waits

While the previous radio kit that we assembled used pronged brass paper fasteners to make the connections, the Slinky kit used a sturdier bolt, washer, and nut combination. I carefully followed the instructions and slipped the looped ends of various wires onto a bolt with a washer on it. After securing the connections with a second washer, I connected the whole assembly into one of the holes on the radio base and secured it with a nut. Wires often slipped off while I was doing this work and I found myself getting frustrated, especially since I was having trouble seeing and also because it can be challenging working with such tiny pieces.

Diode is now connected. Photo: J. Waits

In the process of making these connections we attached the diode to the outside of the plastic base, looping its wire with a connecting wire on one side and with an earphone wire on the other side. After making a total of 5 different connections with various wires and components, we closed up the base of the radio.

The final task was to sand off a strip of the copper tuning wire that would be directly below the tuning ball so that the ball could make contact with bare wire and hopefully pick up a radio signal. The instructions said to rub the tuning ball along the wire in order to make a light mark. Although I tried that, I never saw a mark. Instead, I rolled the tube a bit and sanded the wire in the place where it seemed the tuning ball would hit. I’d recommend folding the sandpaper and doing the sanding with the sharp folded part of the paper.

Finished Slinky Crystal Radio. Photo: J. Waits

It was now the moment of truth. We brought the radio to a cold water faucet and touched a connecting wire to the faucet while I held the other wire in my hand. We moved the tuning ball across the copper coil and…

…heard nothing in our earphone.

After trying several other faucets inside and outside, we still didn’t hear anything. One challenge was that the remaining connecting wires were very short, which made it difficult to hold everything in place while trying to listen. If we had a longer wire, we could have rigged up a better antenna. Additionally, I’m not entirely sure if I sanded enough insulation off of the copper wire.

While doing the project, my dad talked again about soldering, saying that the results would be more reliable if we had soldered the connections.

Diode. Photo: J. Waits

We are determined to eventually make a working AM radio, so I did some investigation after this 2nd failed attempt. Online reviews for the Slinky kit were dismal and I only found a few people who actually got it to work. As with all crystal radios, another important factor is proximity to an AM transmitter, so that could be part of the problem as well. Several reviewers said that the diodes in their kits were defective or were of the wrong type. My dad had actually noted at the beginning of the project that he thought the copper in our diode looked shorted.

Ultimately, I think Slinky’s labeling of the project as an “experiment” is something to keep in mind. I started the project not knowing if the radio would actually work and in the process learned a bit more about what to look for in future radio projects. I’ve already got my eye on a kit that requires soldering. Stay tuned…

The post Building My 2nd Crystal Radio – Slinky Crystal Radio Kit appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Building My First Radio – Elenco’s Crystal Radio Kit

Jennifer Waits — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 14:00:25 +0000

I’ve always wanted to build a radio and luckily Santa brought me three radio kits last month. So, the day after Christmas, I enlisted my dad and my daughter to help make a few. For my first project, my dad and I constructed a crystal radio using a kit made by Go Lab/Tree of Knowledge and distributed by Elenco.

Crystal Radio Kit. Photo: J. Waits

Designed for ages 8 and up, the Elenco Crystal Radiokit’s box (the packaging looks slightly different from the one that I link to here, but the components look the same) warned, “This product is intended for use by adults and children who have attained sufficient maturity to read and heed directions and warnings attached or enclosed.”

Since this one looked more complicated than some of the others, my dad and I embarked on this project while my 8-year-old daughter was off playing at the park. My dad is an engineer and built radios in his youth (and also attempted to build a crystal radio a few years back–more on that in another post), so I was appreciative of his technical know-how.

Components of radio kit. Photo: J. Waits

As we examined the parts included in the Crystal Radio kit, my dad was thrilled to see that it included a pre-wound coil of copper wire. That was part of the reason why we attempted this kit first, as another kit that I have requires one to wind the wire. After taking a look at all the pieces, we got underway with building the radio.

Our first step was to release about 6 inches of wire from the pre-wound coil. Probably 4 inches of wire was already released on each side, but we assumed that we needed to release more (in retrospect, I wonder if that was actually the case). To do this, I had to remove some tape holding the wire in place. As soon as I removed the tape, wire started to rapidly uncoil from the tube. In a panic, I put my hand on the wire so that the entire spool wouldn’t uncoil. This was the first instance of us realizing that the instructions could use a few extra tips and tricks.

The dangers of releasing the wire from the coil. Photo: J. Waits

After rewinding the wire that needed to be back on the spool (which we never got as perfectly wound as it was out of the box), we decided to affix some tape to it so that it wouldn’t unspool again. Then, after a few more steps, we attached the coil to a plastic triangular base. It was a bit hard to get into place, so my dad suggested that we rub wax on the plastic parts and that helped considerably).

Attaching the variable capacitor. Photo: J. Waits

We then attached a variable capacitor on the bottom of the base, using screws to secure it in place. Following that we attached a triangular cardboard card, as well as a dial for our radio.

Attaching the radio dial. Photo: J. Waits

We had to then push the capacitor wires through various holes and then attach the earphone wire. Then things got tricky. We had to attach and thread through specified holes various wires for an an included diode, the antenna and for an earth wire, while also threading coil wires through different holes. Although we were given step by step instructions so that we could make the proper connections, confusion ensued because there were multiple numbering systems. It was also challenging because many of the wires were white, so it was hard to keep track of the purposes for each wire. If I were to do this again, I’d probably use different colored permanent markers to label the different wires.

Threading the capacitor wires (white) and the earphone wire (orange). Photo: J. Waits

Steps were numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and on the radio base there were holes that were numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. We assumed that the steps corresponded to the same order as the holes, but after building a few connections, we realized that they did not.

Additionally, after making various connections (with the earphone wire, the diode, the coil wire, antenna wires, capacitor wire, and the earth wires), some holes had multiple wires threaded through (between 2 and 4 total), making it hard to discern which wire was for which purpose. To make the connections, we attached brass paper fasteners to washers, as you can sort of see in the picture below. Additionally, some of the wires were not stripped enough on the ends to make proper connections, so my dad used his wire stripper to remove some of the coating on the wire.

Threading wires. Photo: J. Waits

After we realized that we had threaded some wires into the wrong openings, we redid some of our work. Finally, we were done making the crystal radio and we were eager to try it out.

Per the instructions, we took our radio to a metallic, cold water tap. We held the earth wire to the metal tap while holding the antenna wire into the air. With great anticipation, I put the earphone to my ear and listened intently. I turned the dial, hoping to hear a signal, but got silence.

Completed crystal radio. Photo: J. Waits

After several hours of work, we were proud to have completed all the steps, but were disappointed to not hear anything on the radio. It’s possible that we messed up the wire connections or are having issues because our copper coil overlapped in parts. It also may be the case that we weren’t close enough to an AM radio transmitter in order to pick up a signal. I didn’t even hear static, so I’m not entirely sure. The included booklet doesn’t provide much in the way of troubleshooting tips, but it does give some suggestions on how to improve reception using different antennas (aerials) and grounds. It also gives a nice overview of how radios work.

In any event, it was a fun process making this radio and I’m still hopeful that I will be able to eventually build a radio that can pick up a signal. Note: this kit was recommended for ages 8 and up. Due to the insufficient directions, I wouldn’t advise giving this kit to young kids.

After making the crystal radio, I moved on to an easier kit, which I will write about in another post.

The post Building My First Radio – Elenco’s Crystal Radio Kit appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Streaming Uncompressed Music Is Here: A Review of Deezer Elite

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:14:24 +0000

Interested in CD-quality uncompressed streaming? Also check out our review of TIDAL.

In September European music streaming platform Deezer entered the US with its Deezer Elite service which delivers true CD-quality uncompressed sound. Currently Deezer Elite is only available to owners of Sonos wireless audio systems.

The Sonos system has been around more than a decade. It consists of speakers and audio components that connect wirelessly to play music stored on your computer or mobile device, or to stream internet music and radio services. Sonos uses wi-fi rather than Bluetooth, which permits the system to handle the uncompressed audio streams of Deezer Elite that require five times the data.

I had the opportunity to audition the service for a couple of weeks using a Sonos Connect and a Sonos Play:1 wireless speaker. The Connect is essentially a component that you connect to an existing hi-fi to use the Sonos system with your own speakers and amplifier, while the Play:1 is a standalone powered speaker that connects to your wi-fi or wired network.

In this review I am focusing on the sound quality and fidelity of Deezer Elite, since that is the chief advantage of the service compared to its major competitors, like Spotify. Recently another uncompressed streaming music service, Tidal, also debuted in the US (check out our review). To the best of my knowledge these are the only two uncompressed subscription music services available in the US.

This was my first time using Sonos. The Deezer Elite experience is presently tied to the system, so my review will also cover some aspects of it. In a separate post I will review other more general aspects of the overall Sonos system. In that review I will cover the Sonos Play:1 speaker.

For the purposes of clarity and transparency there’s quite a bit of detail to this review. You can jump right to my testing results and conclusion if you’d prefer.

The Argument for Uncompressed Music

I am a music lover, and I also appreciate high fidelity music reproduction. One quibble I’ve had with the shift to digital music files and streaming is the reliance on lossy compression technology, like MP3. Such compression reduces the size of a file by throwing data away that theoretically is not perceived by the human ear.

Now, the best implementations of lossy codecs, as they’re called, indeed can sound very good. At the same time, in my experience that gain in data efficiency comes at some sonic cost, that can range from very subtle to annoying and glaring, compared to an uncompressed CD version of the same music.

It is true that CD itself is a compromise–as every music storage and playback medium is–but one that works well and is capable of very realistic sound reproduction. It is, in most cases, the standard by which we compare most commercially available digital music.

At this point in time, my primary complaint with compressed music is that lossy compression is increasingly unnecessary. When MP3 first gained popularity in the early 2000s most computer hard drives were less than 1/10 the size of today, iPods and smart phones did not exist, and most households used dial-up to connect to the internet.

With such constraints in downloading, storage and streaming lossy codecs were a good solution. But today computers routinely come with a terabyte of storage, capable of storing more than 1,500 uncompressed CDs, while home broadband connections easily can handle the data rates required for uncompressed music streaming.

I also have an economic complaint. When buying digital music I think it’s absurd to pay nearly the same price for an MP3 or iTunes version as the CD, when I’m getting only about 25% of the data, and at a sonic compromise.

That’s why I think the time has come for uncompressed digital music to become more broadly available, and why I was interested in trying out Deezer Elite. I wanted to hear for myself if uncompressed streaming audio offers a perceptible advantage over the more common compressed services.

Testing Conditions

When I talked with Deezer US CEO Tyler Goldman he told me that his company chose Sonos as the exclusive partner for Elite because he believes it offers the best end-to-end solution. Ostensibly, this means Deezer can better ensure that subscribers are listening using equipment able to deliver the requisite fidelity. That should also avoid complaints from listeners using tinny laptop speakers or cheap bluetooth speakers.

Now, one can use the Sonos Connect with any amplifier and speakers. But given its $349 price there’s likely little risk that someone would bother connecting it to a cheap, substandard stereo.

For most of my listening I connected the Connect to my main system, which is based around a Yamaha Aventage RX-A1000 receiver and Polk RT600i tower speakers. For comparison purposes I also used my Yamaha Aventage BD-A1010 blu-ray player, which handles most high-resolution formats and to my ear plays CDs very well, with involving and detailed sound. While not necessarily high-end equipment, I would characterize this gear as solidly high quality and quite capable of revealing the nuances of most music sources.

The Sonos Connect has both analog and digital outputs, and comes with a set of stereo RCA cables included. My best advice to anyone who buys a Connect is to immediately replace these cables with something better. I used a pair of high-quality, but inexpensive 22-gauge Monoprice cables and experienced an immediate improvement in detail, especially in the low and mid bass. You could spend more, but even this modest upgrade made significant improvements.

I also tested the Connect using its optical digital output connected to my Aventage receiver’s digital input. The Aventage has very nice Burr-Brown digital-to-analog converters (DACs) capable of resolutions up to 24 bits at 192 KHz sampling. CDs and Deezer Elite have a resolution of 16 bits at 44.1 KHz sampling, which means the receiver is more than capable of handing this audio data. I wanted to see what, if any difference, bypassing the Connect’s own digital-to-analog converters would make in the sound.

For all listening I put the receiver into “Pure Direct” mode. This disables all tone control, EQ and DSP settings, which should provide the most uncolored amplified sound that is closest in quality and character to the input signal.

Using Deezer Elite means using the Sonos system, which requires using the Sonos app on a Windows or MacOS computer, or on an Android or iOS device. The documentation for setting up the system was straightforward, and I was able to get both devices connected to my home wi-fi and up and streaming music within about 15 minutes.

Sonos supports more than two dozen major online radio and streaming services, including 8tracks, Slacker, Pandora, Spotify, DAR.fm, iHeartRadio, TuneIn Radio, Rhapsody and SiriusXM. Sonos also plays music from your device, or from a music server. Each service requires a one-time setup to authorize Sonos to access your account. Many services with both free and paid options, like Spotify, will only stream to Sonos for paid subscribers.

I connected Sonos to my Amazon Music account and a Spotify Premium account for the sake of making comparisons to Deezer Elite.

But How Does It Sound?

Ease of use counts for a lot, but for me, at least, it’s not enough if the system doesn’t sound good. In short, listening to Deezer Elite over the Sonos Connect sounds very good. Most of the time I can hear an improvement with Elite compared to listening to MP3s, AAC tracks from iTunes, or compressed music from Spotify. The degree of difference depends on the source material. Some MP3s or Spotify tracks are more poorly encoded, while some original recordings suffer more from MP3 or AAC compression than others.

I listened to tracks using both the analog RCA output on the Connect and over its optical digital connection direct to the DACs in my Aventage receiver. By and large I had a slight preference for the digital output, finding the placement of individual instruments in the soundstage to be just a touch more precise while still sounding integrated. I’m not necessarily surprised by this, since the receiver had a retail price of about $1100 when new–nearly four times the cost of the Sonos Connect.

At the same time I have to stress that this preference is slight, and really only important when doing focused, close listening. When putting on music as a background to reading or other activities the difference pretty much fades away for me.

Listening to Music

Steely Dan is one of my favorite classic rock bands. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s meticulously orchestrated and recorded albums make good examples for testing. I listened to tracks off the well-mastered “Citizen Steely Dan” box set, released in 1993, to compare Deezer Elite with my own CDs.

Listening to “Kid Charlemagne” on Deezer over the Sonos’ analog output I was immediately drawn into the track, with good timing, clear unmarred sound and a nice three-dimensional soundstage. Switching to the digital output, the soundstage got a little deeper, a little more like a live studio performance.

By comparison, the CD on my Aventage blu-ray player had even more definition. Drum fills sweeping across the kit were precise; with my eyes closed I could more clearly imagine hear where each drum was located in space. With Deezer the sweep was still quite lively and 3-D, just a touch less precise.

I chalk up this difference primarily to the excellent DACs in the blu-ray player, which I prefer over those in the receiver. If I were able to connect the Sonos to use the blu-ray’s analog output I suspect I would hear a slight improvement.

I then auditioned the same track on Spotify Premium through the Sonos Connect. That service delivers 320 Kbps Ogg Vorbis audio, generally regarded to be at least as good as MP3 at the same bitrate.

With Spotify the soundstage seemed to collapse, almost as if the speakers moved closer together. Instruments panned more strongly to either side, like the hi-hat, remained firmly planted, but there seemed to be less space in between the left and right speakers. To Spotify’s credit I didn’t detect much high-end shimmer or graininess. However, the difference in quality between Deezer Elite and Spotify Premium was much more obvious than the delta between Deezer and the CD.

Moving to a more contemporary album, I checked out Arcade Fire’s “Reflektor” from 2013. While I really like the music on this record, I feel like it suffers from too much dynamic range compression, all too common on recordings from the last decade. So I was particularly interested in how this might affect my listening tests.

I started with an MP3 of the title track that purchased from Amazon that I played from Amazon Music through the Connect. This is the version of the album I’m most familiar with, and it sounds good, though it can be a little fatiguing when listening at higher volume because of there’s so little dynamic range.

Moving to Deezer Elite, once again the soundstage opened up a bit, the placement of instruments became more precise, creating less muddiness than the MP3, especially in the midrange where vocals, guitars and synth battle it out. In particular the tenor saxophone line is much more defined and clear with Deezer. Still, the difference between Deezer and MP3 was less pronounced with this track than the difference between Deezer and Spotify with “Kid Charlemagne.”

Shifting to something entirely acoustic, I chose “So What,” from the Legacy Edition of Miles Davis’ iconic album “Kind of Blue.” Listening to Deezer Elite the soundstage had both good depth and height. Miles’ trumpet is on the same side as Paul Chambers’ bass, yet both are distinct and don’t compete. Things get more challenging when John Coltrane comes in for his solo, accompanied by Bill Evans’ piano. Despite Coltrane’s powerful blowing, it doesn’t overcome the piano, with Evans’ comps ringing with clarity and natural timbre.

Compared to the CD I was hard pressed to hear a difference. There was a touch more air with the CD, and a tiny bit more definition to the brushes hitting cymbals. But that’s about it.

Moving to Spotify Premium the bass gets a little more tubby, and Miles’ trumpet seems to get smeared in space, becoming less distinct. Coltrane’s sax seems to mask the piano, losing the attack of some of Evans’ notes. I had no difficulty hearing a significant difference between the Deezer Elite and Spotify Premium versions with this track.

Summing Up Results

On the whole Deezer Elite really does deliver CD quality streaming music, and the Sonos Connect plays it well. The Connect’s analog output is the system’s biggest constraint, but the one most easily overcome, especially now that very high quality standalone DACs are available, and many amplifiers and receivers have digital inputs. And, again, I have to emphasize that the analog output’s limitation isn’t a major concern to me, but may be more critical to some audiophiles.

I hear a definite improvement in overall sound with Deezer Elite compared to compressed music files or compressed streaming services, like Spotify. Across the entire frequency spectrum there is more definition, allowing individual instruments and voices to be more distinct, with more three-dimensional depth.

The difference is less pronounced at lower volumes or with background listening. But folks who enjoy just listening to music as a foreground activity should appreciate the boost in quality.

Since Deezer Elite is only available through Sonos, my interaction with it was primarily through the Sonos app, which makes it operationally similar to Spotify and other services. At least for the music I am interested in, the Deezer catalog was roughly equal to Spotify. There are bands I wanted to hear–The Beatles, Metallica and King Crimson–that I could not find on Deezer, but they are also not available on Spotify. Though her music is not my cup of tea, I should note that Taylor Swift’s first four albums are on Deezer, while she has pulled her entire catalog from Spotify.

Elite subscribers can also use Deezer via smartphone app and web interface, but these methods access only the Premium Plus service, which delivers 320 Kbps MP3s.

Final Conclusions

If you’re a Sonos user who has resisted subscribing to a streaming music because you don’t want the compromise of lossy compressing, then Deezer Elite most certainly deserves an audition. It is also merits a trial even if you’re already a subscriber to another streaming service. At a price of $9.99 a month with a full-year commitment there’s no price premium compared to competitors. The month-to-month price of $14.99 is still pretty reasonable.

The bigger question is if Deezer Elite is enough of a draw to entice someone to buy into the Sonos system. Frankly, I find myself more convinced than I anticipated. I enjoyed how the service sounds, but also how seamlessly it works with Sonos. Of course, it works no more or less smoothly than Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio or Slacker. But those services don’t offer uncompressed audio.

With the debut of Tidal there is now a competitor to Deezer Elite that is not tied to one brand of hardware. Given that Tidal offers the same uncompressed music format as Deezer, I have no reason to believe that there will be significant fidelity differences between the two.

Your choice would more likely depend on whether or not you have a Sonos component, and how willing you are to buy one. I also understand that Tidal may soon be available on Sonos, too. That equipment flexibility comes at a cost, however. Tidal costs $19.99 a month, which is twice that of Deezer Elite with a year commitment, and still $5.00 more than paying for Deezer month-to-month.

In the end I’m pleased to see uncompressed streaming audio become a viable and serious option for music lovers and audiophiles who don’t want to be limited to lossy compressed files in order to enjoy the benefits of near-instant access to catalogs of millions of tracks.

If you have a Sonos system or are considering one I would seriously consider a Deezer Elite subscription. If you don’t have a Sonos but have your interest is piqued by Deezer Elite I would definitely recommend visiting a dealer to audition it for yourself.

The post Streaming Uncompressed Music Is Here: A Review of Deezer Elite appeared first on Radio Survivor.

My Chromecast is an internet radio

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 16:01:01 +0000

This post has been updated for December 2014 with many more great radio and music apps for your Chromecast.

Like a lot of other folks, I’m guessing, I received a Google Chromecast in my stocking this past holiday season. It’s a neat little device the size of two thumb drives that plugs into your TV’s HDMI port letting you send all sorts of video content directly to your set. What’s impressive about it is, first, it only costs $35, and second, it greatly simplifies the process of getting internet content on your TV.

This being Radio Survivor, I’m concerned about playing internet radio with my Chromecast. Using a TV to play internet radio may seem like overkill compared to just hooking up your smartphone or tablet to speakers. But with the declining popularity of home stereos, in many homes the television is the main entertainment center, connected to sound bars or home theater systems to pump out higher fidelity audio. On top of that, most cable and satellite providers also offer dedicated music channels–like Music Choice, Sonic Tap or SiriusXM–often buried at the top end of the channel lists. So a lot of TVs are already acting like radios

Casting Radio from your Mobile

The Chromecast is controlled by using an iOS or Android device, or a computer running the Chrome browser. When using a mobile device you’re limited to using one of the 14 native apps available for it. Currently there are two native radio apps, Pandora and Songza. However, more native apps are on the way; both Rdio and Beats Music announced their intention to support Chromecast.

The advantage of using the Chromecast with one of these native apps is that once you start the music flowing it doesn’t continue to tie up your smartphone or tablet. What happens is that your device just tells the Pandora or Songza app which station to start playing, and then the Chromecast takes it from there, streaming music directly over the internet. In theory, at least, you can use other apps on your device, or even shut it down.

Pandora’s Chromecast button
With Pandora this functionality works just as advertised. Start the app, select a station, and if it detects a Chromecast on your network you’ll see a little icon that starts it streaming there. On my iPhone 5 I’ve successfully checked email, Facebook or even streamed a Netflix video while my Chromecast continues playing a Pandora without a hiccup. It’s slick and straightforward.

Songza, on the other hand, doesn’t untether from your mobile device quite so smoothly. In my experience the stream would cut out if my device went to sleep, indicating that the Songza app on the Chromecast isn’t working independently. This appears to be a known issue that one would assume Songza will address soon.

As one might expect, Chromecast has a native app for Google Play Music. So if you subscribe to All Access you can listen to the service’s entire library and your own playlists, controlling playback with your device. Google Play also offers a music locker service, in both free and paid versions, so that you can sync your music library in the cloud, accessible with your mobile device and Chromecast. Using Google’s Music Manager I sync my iTunes library automatically, which includes all my podcast subscriptions. That effectively turns my Chromecast into a simple way to listen to all my podcasts, in addition to my music library.

Computer + Chrome = Even More Radio

The Chromecast’s utility for internet radio goes way up using a computer with the Chrome browser and Google Cast extension. When you pull up a site that has a matching native Chromecast app it works just like with a mobile device, freeing you to do other tasks on your computer, or even turning it off, without interrupting the flow of music.

But the real bonus is that you can send the contents of any Chrome browser tab to your Chromecast. This works for audio and video content, as well as regular web pages. It means that just about any radio site that will play in your browser will also play on your Chromecast. From TuneIn to RadioSearchEngine, or a station’s own website, as long as the site has a player that works inside the browser, you can send it to Chromecast.

However, if the station needs to launch an external player app like iTunes, Windows Media Player or Winamp, then you’re out of luck. But that’s when a site like RadioSearchEngine or TuneIn Radio might assist. Search for your station there and if you find it there’s a very good chance either service will play it in your browser.

The downside of sending a browser tab to your Chromecast is that it does require the computer to remain on and awake, and for that tab to remain open. It’s an active, live connection, just as if you had a wired connection from the computer to the TV. Still, you can multitask, including surfing the web in other browser tabs, without interrupting the stream.

As many other reviews have noted, streaming video from a browser tab is mostly smooth, but can get a little stuttery at times. In contrast, I’ve found streaming audio only content to the Chromecast to be rock solid. Of course audio takes a lot less bandwidth along with less processing power from your computer.

Whether listening to audio from a native Chromecast app or via a Chrome tab, the sound quality has been true to the source. That is, Pandora audio on Chromecast sounds as good as it does listening directly on my smartphone or laptop. With internet stations streaming at lower bitrates (under 128kbps), the audio is just as compromised as it is anywhere else. The big difference for me is that the best amplifier and speakers in my house are connected to my home theater, and Chromecast.

Compared to Other Options

Now, there are plenty of other ways to stream internet radio to your TV or home theater. Set top streaming boxes like Apple TV and Roku both offer dedicated internet radio apps, while the AppleTV lets you stream audio (or video) directly from your iOS or MacOS device using AirPlay. However, this function is like Chromecast’s Google Cast support – your device is actively sending the audio stream, limiting your ability to shut it down or multitask. Also, most set tops cost 2 to 3 times what the Chromecast does.

I’ve also found that the set top box interfaces are less easy and intuitive to use than smartphone apps. Though, Roku, for example, has its own iOS and Android apps that let you control the box more smoothly than using the remote.

My TiVo DVR also has Pandora, Spotify and podcast apps, along with iOS and Android apps to control it. My experience, though, has been that it’s still pretty clunky to try and play music or podcasts with either the native interface or app. The Chromecast is utterly straightforward by comparison.

You could add any number of network audio devices or a modern internet-connected A/V receiver to get internet radio in your home theater. Again, my experience with their interfaces leaves much to be desired. And they’ll cost more than 5 to 10 times the cost of a Chromecast.

Probably the cheapest way get internet radio on your TV and home theater is just to run an audio cable from your smartphone, tablet or PC right in. Sure, that works, but you’ll need a long cable if you want to do it from your couch. And that alone might still run you half the price of a Chrome cast.

Conclusion

Do I sound like a fan of my Chromecast? Well, that’s because I am. It’s not a perfect device. The number of native apps is anemic, to the say the least. But Google recently opened up its software development kit to more app developers. So we should expect to see a flood of new native apps pretty soon. As I mentioned before, both Rdio and Beats Music promise Chromecast support, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see other ’net radio platforms jump on board.

As I argued at the beginning of the year, to grow as a medium podcasting needs to enter every room in the house, especially the living room. This is true for internet radio, too, even if it has a head start on podcasting. Chromecast holds some of the best potential for this to happen, simply because it’s cheap and just works.

The post My Chromecast is an internet radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Need a music automation program? StationPlaylist gets high fives

Matthew Lasar — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 12:40:40 +0000

We’ve got an interesting discussion going on our reader forum about the best automation/music library software for Low Power FM and indie radio stations. The winner, so far, is Station Playlist, a software package that comes out of New Zealand.

“We’ve been using StationPlaylist Studio, Creator and Streamer for almost 4 years at Crescent Hill Radio,” writes Kathy W. “Our entire music database is local music. Once I’ve tagged the music by one of 8 genres I have created, I can create templates for each hour of the day. This program is awesome, I highly recommend it. Great support, and after 4 years I still haven’t tapped into everything it can do.”

Ditto, says johnthebru:

“Stationplaylist is a reliable automation program with a fast learning process. At manoradio we only use it when no one is live in the studio, it runs non stop so all someone has to do is monitor and pot it up. It has great capabilities that could work as a more than entry level automation program. A read of the yahoo group will show you how programmers are using it in many, many ways. The response to problems is very fast and if you buy the highest level tier you can lock out the ability for people to mess with the details of the setup something I would recommend.

I have no connection with the company or any interest other than that of a happy camper.

I actually looked at other automation programs and selected stationplaylist. Hope this helps.”

Full disclosure, I’ve got no connection to StationPlaylist, either. In fact I never heard of it until Journogal asked for advice on a good playlist automation package. I very much enjoyed her list of requirements for her LPFM startup.

“This is what we plan to do to date—and this is subject to change, obviously,” Journogal wrote:

“1) All our music will be digitized as time allows to .wav or FLAC files so the fidelity will be as close to the source material as it can be. We’ll probably have volunteers get their feet wet with this task, which is essential but time-consuming, especially with vinyl that has to be digitized in real time. We’ll invest in lots of storage – mass quantities of storage, as the Coneheads would say; possibly on a separate RAID drive or server – to house this music. The database we use must allow this library to be tagged and searchable by artist, era, genre, album title, song title, song length, etc.

2) Right now we’re planning for one studio, but we have contingency plans for two if things work out. Both will be connected via Ethernet to the music library for use by show hosts, and to automate the station when no live talent is scheduled. These computers will be accessible by Internet to the Station and Programming Managers via password so that they can tweak things without having to come into the station, but there will be no browser and regular Internet access on these computers. We’ll have dedicated computers in the office area of the studio for volunteers to use, and one in each studio to be used only for browsing and answering emails. This is to keep the music database and its software safe from viruses and casual hackers.

3) A third computer will be in the main office/CD and vinyl library area (with headphones but no speakers), also connected to this digitized library, and serve as a “listening post” for show hosts to audition music for their shows. A printer will be on the same desk so hosts can generate printed lists of their planned shows to take home or into the studio with them, or for reporting purposes to fulfill licensing obligations.

4) The listening area will also have a turntable and CD player so volunteers can either rip music into the station library from their own collections, or pull physical CDs and vinyl that has not yet been digitized and audition those directly on the equipment for airplay.

5) We want the software to allow program scripting and scheduling.

6) Whatever automation software we choose should also allow us to import sweepers, spots, underwriting mentions and station IDs and add them to the mix, or better yet, record them and then add them without having to go to a separate recording and editing program.

7) We want to be able to put live playlists (or a link to live playlists) on our website.

8) Integrated streaming support would be nice.

9) We want to record shows for airchecks and archival purposes and to download to the website as podcasts.

10) We want the software to support the greatest range of audio formats possible, including but not restricted to .wav, FLAC, AAC, AIFF, Mp3, etc.

And, finally,

11) We don’t want the software to require an advanced degree in Computer Science to configure, learn and operate.”

To which Brian Seim responded: “If you like scripting, Station Playlist is inexpensive but has very nice features. For budget minded outfits, it may be worth some research.”

I hate to interrupt this lovefest, but surely there must be some other playlist software package worth considering. If you know about it, please add your voice to our forum page. And thanks!

The post Need a music automation program? StationPlaylist gets high fives appeared first on Radio Survivor.

All Access brings on-demand Spotify competitor to the Googleverse

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 28 May 2013 12:01:59 +0000

Google introduced its entry into the on-demand music streaming market at its recent developer conference Google I/O. Sitting atop its existing Google Play media store, the awkwardly named Google Play All Access provides Spotify-like listening to a large music library, along with the ability to build playlists or tune in to artist-based radio stations.

Unlike many other Google services, All Access carries a fee of $9.99 a month without ads, with a limited $7.99 monthly rate available to customers who sign up now. A 30-day free trial is also available, which I signed up for so that I could audition the service this week. This single rate gives full access to the service on mobile devices as well as the desktop browser. By comparison Spotify’s ad free unlimited service is $4.99 a month, or $9.99 a month for mobile access.

Anyone who has used a service like Spotify, Rdio or Rhapsody will find All Access familiar. On a personal computer it functions through your browser–unlike Spotify–or through an app on an Android device. Although Google has not released an iOS app, an unofficial app is already available in the iTunes store.

At first listen I found the sound quality to be quite good. I’m presuming that All Access serves up the same 320 kbps MP3 files that can be purchased from the Play store. This is a higher bitrate and quality than available with a free Spotify account, but roughly equivalent to the quality heard with a paid Spotify account. However, aside from the free 30-day trial, Google does not offer an ad-supported free version like Spotify does.

Presumably because Google has been able to strike slightly different deals with music labels, I’ve found some slight differences between the library of music found in All Access compared to Spotify, but the overall coverage is about the same. While Google also sells MP3s in its play store, not every artist or album available for sale is also represented in the All Access streaming library.

Like Spotify, Google’s All Access offers radio streams that pick tracks based upon a seed artist or genre. In my experience I still think Pandora is the standard bearer in terms of serving up a wider variety of consonant artists and songs based upon your initial selections.

But one thing I like about the All Access approach to radio is that once you select a station it shows you the queue of about 20 upcoming tracks, giving you an idea of what artists and songs are next. You can even rearrange or remove tracks from the queue. Google can offer this additional level of control because All Access is an on-demand service, with different contracts and royalties than Pandora, which is statutorily limited in the user control it may offer without having to strike individual deals with record labels. This also means that Pandora offers a deeper library of music, but without the instant playability of All Access, Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody and MOG.

The All Access user interface is a little less intuitive than Spotify’s and other services’. Like many other Google services it is clean if indistinctive. On several occasions it took me some searching to navigate back and forth. In particular, I haven’t quite figured out the direct URL for the All Access service itself. The only reliable way in I’ve found is to go to the Google Play homepage and click on the banner ad offering up an All Access trial, and then clicking on “Try free for 30 days” button on that next page. It’s the same route I used to sign up in the first place. But if I’m already logged in with my Google account, I’m then routed to the All Access interface.

In the crowded on demand music service field there’s not a lot to differentiate All Access from competitors like Spotify or Rdio. I suppose there’s an advantage for someone already invested in the Google Play universe, since Google offers free cloud storage and streaming of 20,000 songs alongside unlimited storage for any music purchased from the Play store. This seems particularly useful for Android smartphone users who can then listen to their personal cloud library alongside All Access music, playlists and radio through a single app.

However, for someone who isn’t already invested in the Google Play universe, or who doesn’t have an Android smartphone, I don’t see any strong argument for choosing All Access over another service. In particular, I don’t really see a reason why a paid Spotify or Rhapsody user should switch, unless she wants to lock in the $7.99 introductory rate and save a couple of bucks a month, at the cost of losing playlists and stations saved in the previous service.

My guess is that Google sees plenty of room for growth in the on demand music market, with the opportunity to entice many new customers by virtue of the company’s ubiquity. There’s plenty of speculation that it’s just a matter of time before Apple and Amazon jump in with their own on demand services to complement their much more prominent online music stores.

It will be entertaining to see if any company offers up a true Spotify-killer, or a feature that is particularly new or innovative. In the meantime I’m not ready to hand over my monthly fee to anyone just yet.

The post All Access brings on-demand Spotify competitor to the Googleverse appeared first on Radio Survivor.

2012 Radio Survivor Gift Guides

Jennifer Waits — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 21:31:33 +0000

Happy Holidays from Radio Survivor (Photo: J. Waits)

Happy Holidays!

Over the past month we’ve been compiling gift suggestions for our radio-obsessed fans. Here’s the complete run-down of ideas for your end of year shopping.

As a bonus, if you make purchases using the Amazon links on Radio Survivor, you’ll be helping to support our efforts as well.

1. Radio Gifts from Whimsical to Erudite: My annual list of gift ideas ranges from novelty items like radio-themed jewelry and a grill with a built-in radio to scholarly tomes about broadcasting. You can get more ideas from my previous lists from 2011, 2010 and 2009.

2. Radios and Podcasting Gear: Paul recently provided some updated suggestions for radio listeners and producers, including radios, headphones, earphones, and a complete line-up of gear for podcasters. For more suggestions, take a look at Paul’s radio and gear gift guides from 2010 and 2011.

3. Emergency Radios and Radio Books: Matthew just posted some great suggestions for emergency radios. His book suggestions from last year are worth investigating as well.

What’s on your wish list?

The post 2012 Radio Survivor Gift Guides appeared first on Radio Survivor.

How the Eton Microlink Solar Powered American Red Cross stickered radio changed my life

Bob Mason — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 11:09:52 +0000

Me, myself, and my Eton Microlink

A birthday present from my best friend, a ‘portable’ radio – the Eton Microlink FR160 Solar-powered radio, with emergency crank power and an American Red Cross sticker of approval – arrived in my life, six weeks ago and has become dear to me. Astonishingly I have found myself listening, more and more, even though I have five internet devices I could listen to instead. I love this radio so much just looking at it makes me happy. I put it to bed on the window sill every night, anticipating the joy of it being all charged up by the sunshine in the morning. It never disappoints me! Why do I listen to it? What does it give me that I can’t get over the net? Why have I started carrying it around in my pack, even though every other possible way to get music or news is lighter and has a smaller footprint, and much, much more music?

It Feels So Good

First I started listening to baseball games. AM, KNBR radio, the San Francisco Giants games. Then the Oakland A’s started winning and I started listening them on KGMZ 95.7 FM. So on a perfect day I might get 6 hours in, though usually they overlap. The mechanics of the radio intrigue and compel me in a way that no keyboard, mouse, touch pad, swipe goober, or nostril sensor ever could. It’s just so not digital. It’s analog and mechanical – the on/off know and the tuning dial work the way such things always have. I feel the off on click, I feel good when I turn it off, that I’m ‘saving electricity’. Which is superficially silly – the electricity is negligible, and if I in fact run down the charge – which has never happened so far – I could charge it up. The tuning knob requires deft manual finger work to get some stations, and to keep certain ones audible. What I can get varies from place to place, with time of day, perhaps weather.

Goodbye to All That

It’s a free service (after the retail price). It has A Smaller Footprint than much tinier Devices. I don’t have to buy anything from a corporation. I don’t have to become a fan, or ‘like’ anything, or ‘follow’ anything, or register or login or create a profile or accept ‘cookies’ or supply credentials. I don’t have to debug anything. I don’t have to call technical support, ‘contact us’, email customer support, go to a chat room, scroll my way through forums or blogs, read the online manual, watch the how to video, read the allegedly frequently answered questions.

Monopoly Capitalism Still Sucks

I walk the radio around to different rooms in my house, listening as I go about my activities, keeping it off or low enough if any else is home. I could listen on the internet – but not for free. I’d have to pay major league baseball $20 a year to do that – they prevent any streaming of their games. That’s not a lot of money – it’s the price of a ticket to one baseball game, so much the worse for us – but it irks me that I should have to pay for something that is free to produce – after all, KNBR is streaming everything except the baseball games, all the technology is there. This reminds me – economically, institutionally, politically – of the situation with long distance phone calls before the advent of the cell phone. The phone company charged – a lot – for phone calls that were not in the local dialing area of the caller. In fact, there was no greater cost to transmit these ‘long-distance’ calls than local ones – all the wires were in place, and – since electricity rather famously travels at nearly the speed of light – no appreciable difference between calling from Brooklyn to Brooklyn, or Brooklyn to East Orange, or to Irvine California. But because there was a monopoly in place – you pay the long distance or you don’t make the calls – gazillions of dollars were extracted from innocent people and pocketed by the Ma Bell/ AT&T thieving corporate government supported monopoly monster, or whatever you call it.

Surprises from people, not devices

The Eton next to my coffee cup.

After a couple of months of listening to baseball games – some of it on an earlier portable radio with numbingly bad FM reception – I finally was willing to see what other things I could get on my new radio. I was very afraid of being disappointed. I have a dark and checkered past with radio listening. Maybe a bunch of people from my generation share this problem/syndrome. Once upon a time radio, FM radio, was a source of pleasure, orientation to the world, news from a point of view I could identify with, or at least didn’t cause me to foam at the mouth with angry despair. There was at one time – at least I seem to remember this – radio that had great jazz, blues, folk, alternative music and people who talked about the music in intelligent, lively, and witty ways. People who could introduce me to new things, both newly performed and things from the past I didn’t know about. Now this is mostly dead – except for mostly college-based stations that keep some of this alive. In San Francisco, I can get KCSM FM, a 24 hour jazz station. To my great joy I discovered that I can get excellent reception of KCSM on my little radio. So I had it on as I did the dishes the other night, and Nancy Wilson’s hour long series – profies in Jazz, or something like that, from NPR is think, came on. She did a profile of Benny Waters, somewhere I’d only heard of peripherally, and his story and his music came through, amazing me. I’m now chasing all over looking for CD’s I can buy, digital stuff I can listen to, etc. Only the accident of having the radio tuned in at that time could have brought me this. On YouTube or other streaming/free sources, I was unlikely to find him, for two reasons. First, he’s only one of an amazingly large group of brilliant saxophone players in the history of Jazz, and unless you hear his story – how he gave a powerful, beautiful 95th birthday concert at Birdland, returning to New York after most of his life in Europe, despite having been immobilized by a car accident and blinded by botched cataract surgery. This story, this placing in context how remarkable this man was, wouldn’t be likely to happen on YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, or other music libraries. It requires a person, telling a story, playing segments of interviews and music, creating a narrative, creating a new audio stream to discover an old one, to call your attention, to make this musician’s life and music attractive/arresting enough to make you stop and listen, and maybe then – go to the computer, try to find his music and more about him.

All right Call me a Luddite

The fact that I’ve resisted the last phase of the techno-revolution – I don’t have a smartphone or tablet – is both cause and effect of my newly reborn love of the radio. If I had a smartphone, I could listen to internet radio wherever I was – at least in theory. I of course would be listening through my headphones, tuning out the world around me, instead of infusing that world – my room most likely – with the sound. If I had my headphones on my wife wouldn’t know that I was listening and that I couldn’t hear her unless she shouted or come over and got my attention. I am therefore less connected to who/what I want to be, not more. People firmly entrenched in the networked world think they have found an access to music profoundly better than what they had before. But this is part of a huge paradox with technology and communications and all that. To the extent that you are ‘connected’ to social media, internet music/movies/photos/porno, you are disconnected from whatever else you might have been immersed in were you not immersed in this hyper-cyber reality. Music in the outer, not inner space; social, not individual listening experiences; communication by hanging out with other people in the flesh, instead of by manipulating electronic bits of text, voice, videos. People into smartworld wouldn’t be likely to appreciate my groovy little compact red and metal gray radio. They imagine that this is a choice, that their way of getting music and talk is so much better – faster, flexible, ‘customized’ – but this is not primarily because of the attraction of the music or the talk. It is more a result of being pulled into a certain way of being, centered around a smartphone, that makes it seem better to get all your needs met by the handheld invasive mobile device.

So There

My little red radio is my friend, not my boss. It pleases me to the extent that I want it to, and shuts up – shuts off – when I don’t want it. I don’t have to boot / shutdown / reboot / standby / hibernate / sleep. None of the people I know and like, or are responsible to, send me things that interrupt me on this device. It’s mine. It’s there to help me navigate my way through the enigmas of solitude, quietude, personal and social connection, without trying to be ‘intelligent’ or give me advice or wheedle me into things it wants me to like. It doesn’t even think about trying to control or monopolize my activities or my time. I can’t use it to write rants like this. Hence it keeps me out of the trouble that I am hereby getting into.

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One year in, how I learned to like Spotify – a follow-up review.

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 13:05:34 +0000

I can barely believe that it’s been over a year since I wrote my first review of Spotify, which itself came a month after the service debuted in the US. At the time I was most critical of the relative rarity of free Spotify accounts, in addition to a monthly limit of 10 listening hours with a free account. After a year of using Spotify I have to report that those two limitations have effectively disappeared.

An invitation is no longer necessary to get a free account; they’re available to anyone. I also have not yet run into any listening limits. In fact, the US version currently has no limits at all. This contrasts with the older UK version which does impose a limit that starts at 10 hours, and then refreshes by 2.5 hours each week, but never surpasses 10 hours banked up.

The other limitation that I criticized has to do with Spotify’s library of music. On the one hand, the range and depth of artists and music available is impressive. Even if your taste leans towards the esoteric and experimental you’re certain to find artists that you’re familiar with or like. But on the other hand, the gaps in the catalog can be both frustrating and confusing.

On more than one occasion I’ve gone to listen to an album, only to find that only some of the songs are available One example is Bruce Springsteen’s “We Shall Overcome” album of Pete Seeger songs, in which only 3 out of 13 songs are available. With the recent re-release of the Rolling Stones’ “Some Girls” the second disc of rarities is exclusive to premium users. There also are still plenty of artists and labels that are missing entirely, including such prominent artists like the Beatles. Nevertheless, for a free, on-demand service, these are relatively minor complaints.

In the last year I have become a regular user of Spotify. I do not necessarily listen every day, but I probably do listen most weeks. What I like most about the service is the ability to seek out artists or albums that are new to me and that I would like to sample. It’s also great for previewing new releases that I am interested in buying. Some artists or albums benefit from a few listens before their appeal sinks in. Spotify helps me give this music a fair chance, rather than trying to assess them by listening to 30 second snippets.

While there is quite a bit of debate about the fairness of Spotify’s terms and how much it pays out to labels and artists for each play, I would rather that the artist get something from each listen rather than nothing. That said, I still make an effort to buy the music that I end up listening to regularly, rather than listening exclusively on Spotify. Ethics is one reason for this decision, but so is practicality. I want the ability to listen to my music on any device, not just a computer, and that is most feasible when I buy it outright either as a CD or file download.

Now, I do understand that a premium subscription would extend Spotify’s service to smartphones, tablets and other networked audio devices, in addition to letting me cache songs on smartphones for playback offline. But this service doesn’t appeal to me for several reasons.

First, I have enough conventional stereo equipment like CD players and receivers which aren’t Spotify-enabled that I don’t want to replace or have to connect to a smartphone. Second, I’m not yet comfortable always relying on network connectivity or a networked device to listen to music. I’ve been unexpectedly deprived of a network or had a digital device fail on me enough times that I still like to rely on comparatively simple and old fashioned devices like CD players, turntables and radio for music listening.

Finally, and most importantly, with a subscription to Spotify, or similar services, your music is available only as long as your subscription is active. Admittedly, I often spend more money in a month buying music than what a premium subscription costs. But that purchased music is mine (more or less) forever, even if I never spend another dime on music again. If a period of financial strain causes me to cancel a Spotify subscription, then I immediately lose all the premium benefits.

However, to be fair, I must acknowledge that reverting to a free subscription doesn’t mean you lose access to all your music and playlists, although some percentage of it will likely go away. The generous free subscription–in the US–is certainly one of Spotify’s chief strengths, and provides a certain kind of insurance to a someone who may want to upgrade to premium service.

On the whole I am a very satisfied user of Spotify’s free service, but not at all tempted to upgrade to a paid premium or unlimited subscription. While I am occasionally annoyed by Spotify’s ads, they’re no more obnoxious than those on Pandora, and the blocks of ads are much shorter than what’s heard on commercial radio. The ability to sample music I haven’t heard before or quickly remind myself of a particular tune far outweighs the minor inconvenience of advertisements.

After a year of using the service I can see the appeal of becoming a paid subscriber, even I’m not yet ready to take the leap. In fact, I’m more likely to spring for satellite radio in order to obtain more live and curated music, in addition to live talk programming. At the same time, I can see how subscription services like Spotify are becoming a significant element of the music and media industry. I won’t be surprised, nor will I complain, if Spotify or similar services end up being bundled in with home or mobile broadband services. That is, as long as artists don’t get screwed in the process.

The post One year in, how I learned to like Spotify – a follow-up review. appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Radio Survivor Holiday Gift Guides

Paul Riismandel — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:25:04 +0000

Every year we, your humble Radio Survivors, endeavor to help our readers find unique, interesting and appropriate gifts for the radio lovers in their lives (or for yourself).When you order using one of our links to Amazon, you also give a gift to Radio Survivor, helping us pay the bills and keep the site going. It doesn’t cost you a single cent more.

Jennifer’s gift guide includes a hot calendar, radio jewelry, radio lit, along with some cool actual radios.

This year Matthew suggests eight great history books about radio broadcasting, covering everything from the culture and history of public radio to sex and indecency in broadcasting.

For my gift guide this year I recommend some really great headphones, an inexpensive USB audio interface to enhance your online listening as well as my desert island radio. I have owned or used every single one of these items, so they come mediageek approved.

The post The Radio Survivor Holiday Gift Guides appeared first on Radio Survivor.

eMusic’s semi-curated approach to internet radio – a review of eMusic Radio

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:03:59 +0000

eMmusic is an online music store that pretty much pioneered the sale of unprotected MP3 music tracks in the early 2000s. The site has gone through ownership and business model changes over the years, shifting from its original monthly all-you-can-download plan to a number-of-tracks a month, and finally to the current X dollars a month subscription now offered. Because the big labels were initially scared of freely-trade-able MP3s, most of eMusic’s offerings were indie until a few years ago when some of the majors started to sign up. Not coincidentally, that’s also when eMusic’s prices went up, too.

Perhaps to add some additional value to subscribers’ monthly fee that buys less music than it used to, eMusic debuted its own radio service back in August. The service has always had some editorial content to accompany its download selection, with features on particular genres, subgenres or artists, as well as articles that highlight labels or particular scenes. eMusic Radio attempts to dip into that same editorial well, offering niche stations that lean towards curatorial eclecticism.

Unlike Pandora or Spotify, eMusic’s Radio “programs” (they don’t call them stations) are not user-customized or generated. Ostensibly each program is more like a DJ set, picked by knowledgeable music experts, rather than a auto-generated stream of music based upon a seed band or song. Thus eMusic offers programs like 80s One Hit Wonders, Brooklyn’s Finest and Explore Blue Note Records.

I’ve been an eMusic subscriber on and off for the last decade since I received my first free download voucher with the purchase of a CD burner. Yet the current pricing model has led me to cancel my subscription at the end of this term. Over the last six weeks or so I’ve checked out eMusic Radio to see how it stacks up against a service like Pandora or Spotify, or as an alternative to other internet radio.

On the whole I have to say that I’ve found eMusic Radio to be quite underwhelming. While the idea of having multiple curated programs at my disposal, the reality is that I’ve found most of them come up short.

Yacht Rock

The first station I tried out was disappointing pretty much right from the start. I tuned in the Yacht Rock station in order to get a fix of some smooth late 70s sounds. As both a fan of the music of bands like Hall and Oates and Steely Dan, as well as the parody web series that inspired the genre name, I was hoping to groove out to smooth music.

The set started out promising enough with the Doobie Brothers lamenting about “What a Fool Believes,” but just three songs later the same song came up again. Now, it’s a good track, but that kind of rotation makes even Top 40 radio seem diverse by comparison. Perhaps I’m not as big a fan of Yacht Rock as I thought, but I had to hit the skip button more than I would like, often because the same artist, like Christopher Cross, came up way too often. Within only about 30 minutes of listening I’d run out of allotted skips (which are limited in a say similar to Pandora or last.fm, as required by the DMCA).

The next station I tested out was 80s One (or Two) Hit Wonders. This station had a more extensive selection of tracks and I experienced no artist or song repetition over the course of an hour enjoying the likes of T’Pau, Night Ranger and Nina.

When I listened to this program in another session a couple weeks later several of the same songs came up again, but in a different sequence. Wall of Voodo’s “Mexican Radio” and Slade’s “Run Runaway,” turned up early in both sessions. The leads me to believe that these programs aren’t carefully crafted and sequenced playlists so much as a collection of tracks that are served up at random. That approach isn’t necessarily bad, but for me I’m finding that the overall number of tracks isn’t sufficiently high to maintain my interest in any given program for more than an hour total.

While listening the player app stays at the bottom of your browser window, allowing you to continue to navigate around the eMusic site. This lets you check out the artists, songs and albums you’re hearing, downloading something if the mood strikes you. However, if you leave the eMusic site, the music stops. But since you can leave the player running in a tab while browsing another tab or window this hardly seems like much of a limitation.

One thing I found annoying is that songs slowly fade in and fade out, which often means you miss a song’s intro and ending. This isn’t part of a crossfade, which would be understandable. So I can’t figure out why eMusic has decided to implement these fades, except that maybe they’re trying to avoid abrupt segues brought on by songs that end all-of-a-sudden or fade into another song on their album.

Another annoying aspect is that eMusic often forces me to re-login every time I switch stations, which really slows down the listening experience and serves as a disincentive for using the service.

eMusic only promises their radio service to work as in-browser on desktop computers. However, I was able to play it with no problem on my Android smartphone which supports Flash. The Flash-deprived iPhone was unable to play.

On the whole I find eMusic Radio to be a promising idea that has yet to live up to that promise. If I think of each “program” as something worth listening to for a single one-hour session, then it’s worthwhile. But unlike a well-used Pandora station, there’s too much repetition and not enough variety to entice me to listen to an eMusic program more than once.

Now, eMusic is periodically adding new stations to the mix, but the rate seems to be sporadic. A few new programs were added this past week after relative silence the previous ten days or so.

Another drawback is that it doesn’t seem like any additional variety is added to programs that were released weeks or months ago. To me, this combines the worst of commercial radio with the limitations of services like Pandora. I can think of many specialty internet radio shows that focus on a genre or style that manage to put out very unique and unrepetitive shows 52 weeks a year. I think it would be great to listen to the Hipster Heavy Metal Parking Lot program and get some new stuff every week, but that’s not how eMusic’s version of radio works.

eMusic does explicitly mark its radio sevice as “beta,” which may indicate that they intend to continue refining the service… or kill it off altogether. Perhaps that’s a way to lower listeners’ expectations?

Unlimited listening to eMusic Radio is free for current subscribers. Non-subscribers can sign up for a 10-hour free trial. Given there are 62 programs right now, there’s definitely more than 10 hours of listening to be had.

As a perk for eMusic subscribers their radio service is nice, but not essential. It’s certainly not something that would motivate me to become or stay a subscriber all on its own. There’s plenty of better free internet radio to be had.

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RadioFlag’s Search Engine for Radio Courts College Stations

Jennifer Waits — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:25:11 +0000

Searching Radio on RadioFlag

Amid all of the new tools for music discovery, there are many that get lumped in with online radio since they approximate a radio listening experience. Whether it’s algorithms or human DJs selecting the tunes, these customized playlists may feel like the radio of the 21st century to their users.

Since I still love old-fashioned broadcast radio, I am most drawn to the social media projects that facilitate listening to actual radio stations. Matthew’s covered the allure of the radio listening service TuneIn, which allows users to search for stations in a specific location or genre; and I’ve described my fascination with Soundtap, which has built a curated dial of underground listening options focused solely on college and community radio.

Another new project, RadioFlag, purports to be “the first live radio content search engine and listening social network,” according to its founder Tony Roman. RadioFlag’s website and apps allow users to search and flag radio content. On the surface, the RadioFlag website feels like a Twitter feed about radio stations. Through these posts and conversations, one is able to access more details about specific stations.

RadioFlag initially launched with a mobile app in April, 2011 and introduced their most recent beta website in August, 2011. Roman explained that he was frustrated because he had trouble finding the radio content that he was looking for. To fulfill that need, he decided to build a search tool that works with actual radio stations. He said that many other online “radio” tools have little to do with radio. Roman explained, “Radio at its core has a human element. It is live, interactive, unpredictable, informative, etc… These other companies in my opinion serve their audience very well, but they are not radio. They are recorded music concepts and playlist services.”

RadioFlag broadcasted its launch over the college radio airwaves of KUCI at University of California, Irvine and is also showing its commitment to college radio through a partnership with College Radio Day. RadioFlag is the “official app” for College Radio Day and they are helping to promote it to their users. They are working together on a “Spirit of College Radio Award,” which registered stations will be eligible to win.

Although RadioFlag has an interest in and ties to college radio, its tools are open to all kinds of radio stations, even those of the commercial variety. Roman pointed out that,

“We believe that when most users log into RadioFlag for the first time, they will most likely search for and listen to their favorite station, which will probably be a mainstream commercial station. However since RadioFlag places all stations on equal footing, meaning on our FlagCasts users will see flags to content on many different stations…they will then be exposed to stations they would have never discovered before, and many of those stations will be smaller stations with small budgets, but offer amazing content, such as college radio. So our goal is to create new exposure for local, indie, community and college stations that otherwise may never reach this broad listening audience.”

On RadioFlag, visitors can access radio station streams through a search tool or by clicking on a station’s icon attached to users’ comments flagged with that particular station name. Some DJs have set up profiles with information about their programs and their posts get included in their radio station’s feed, helping to connect listeners to their shows. The categories of “stations,” “users” and “interests” are highlighted on RadioFlag, whereas radio stations and radio shows are the stars of Soundtap (which limits its sphere to college and community radio).

Currently RadioFlag is full of college radio options, but that may change when more commercial stations sign up for the service. At that point, it will be interesting to see if college and community stations remain the focus of the site/apps or if larger, more popular stations will begin to dominate its news feeds and its list of trending stations. Stay tuned.

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Spotify in the US – a review: Is it a Pandora & last.fm killer?

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:01:02 +0000

Spotify is an online streaming music service that has been available in parts of Europe since 2008. It differentiates itself from popular US music services like Pandora and last.fm by permitting users to actually select the specific artists and songs to hear, rather than only relying upon an algorithm to choose music similar to a particular artist, song or style. In that way Spotify is more like a big online jukebox or iTunes, also permitting users to create playlists which can be shared with other users.

American music lovers who’d heard about the service waited anxiously to experience the kind of instant music availability enjoyed by listeners in Sweden, France and the UK. It took nearly three years, but after long negotiations with the major record labels Spotify became available in the US on July 14.

At first blush it certainly looks like Spotify poses a significant threat to streaming music services like Pandora, last.fm or Slacker, as well as subscription services like Rhapsody which also let listeners choose specific artists, albums and songs. I managed to swing an invitation to try out the free version of Slacker right after in launched stateside. After taking it for a test drive I can say that Spotify indeed does give these other services a run for the money, but I’m not certain that Spotify is ready to top them all.

As a free service it’s too limited to become someone’s go to music source the way that many people rely on Pandora, last.fm or internet radio. And I’m not yet convinced that Spotify’s paid service is complete enough for a lot of listeners like myself. Furthermore, it’s not really a radio service, so much as a very big jukebox in the cloud. Certainly there’s a lot to recommend that idea, but it’s also difficult to live up to.

Continue on to read my full detailed review of Spotify and find out what’s great, and what’s not.

Will it scale?

Most importantly, Spotify isn’t ready to become #1 because the service isn’t ready to take on enough free users to match the scale of Pandora or last.fm. Right now a free account is only available by invitation, whereas a free account with Pandora or last.fm is open to anyone. I presume this is because Spotify wants to scale carefully, rather than deal with a deluge of millions of new users crashing their systems. In fact, while free Spotify accounts were available to anyone for a while in the UK, the service is presently still only available by invitation there as well.

Prior to its US launch Spotify had 10 million users worldwide, with about 9 million of them free, ad supported accounts. By comparison Pandora has 80 million users and last.fm has 40 million. By user count alone Spotify has a way to go to beat the big two.

The Spotify difference

If you’re lucky enough to score a free Spotify account the experience indeed is different than Pandora or last.fm in several significant ways. First, Spotify requires its own application to run on your computer, with versions available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. For many users hoping to listen to music at work or school, places where one might not have the permission to install an application, this will be a barrier to using Spotify right away.

Pandora and last.fm both work inside your web browser. Now, this doesn’t mean that these services are available everywhere. Some schools and employers restrict access to streaming audio and video services. But if you’re currently a Pandora or last.fm listener at work or school it’s possible you won’t be able to install the Spotify app to enjoy that service.

MacOS Spotify app

At the same time there are advantages to having an app for Spotify. The app itself is pretty intuitive to use, borrowing quite a bit from the iTunes experience. Anyone who has used that nearly-ubiquitous Apple app or other music management software should have no problems getting started with Spotify’s quickly. Also, by not working in a browser Spotify minimizes the changes of dragging down your system or crashing your browser. The app also integrates with your iTunes library, giving you access to these tracks and playlists, too.

It’s very easy to search for artists, songs and albums. Just type in your search terms and hit enter. You’ll receive your results nearly instantaneously. Double-click on a track and you can be listening just as quickly. Compared to the web interfaces of Pandora and last.fm, Spotify is downright speedy. I’ve certainly been frustrated with Pandora and, especially, last.fm taking a long time to load a station, or failing to load altogether, sometimes requiring multiple page reloads.

Building a playlist is as easy with Spotify as in iTunes. Just click “new playlist” then select and drag songs to that playlist. It really seems like having a nearly limitless iTunes library at your fingertips. However, while Spotify has some 15 million tracks, it is not truly limitless.

A deep, but not bottomless, catalog

Just like other services there are some artists who are notably absent. Search for the Beatles, AC/DC, Frank Zappa or even King Crimson and you’ll only come up with covers by other artists. Bands like The Who or Pink Floyd have only a couple albums or a smattering of tracks available from their deep catalogs. These gaps aren’t limited to major artists either. In searching across many different genres I found that many artists only have some of their albums represented, or in some cases just a few songs from certain albums. I tried to see if missing albums were all on the same record label, but found that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Complaining about the catalog gaps in Spotify feels a bit like looking gift horse in the mouth, at least when you’ve got a free account and not paying a dime for the access and convenience. I must admit it’s nice to easily check out artists, albums and songs I’ve been interested in hearing rather than making do with thirty second clips.

The ad experience

Of course, just like its competitors (including commercial radio), Spotify isn’t really free. That free account is paid for by advertising that displays in the Spotify app and plays during the music stream. I was jarred by the first few ads I heard because they were for artists and albums that had no relationship to the music I was listening to. I just heard a whole different song start playing, making me think I’d accidenally clicked something. The first one I heard had no voiceover either, just a song snippet accompanied by display ad in the Spotify app. But because I had Spotify in the background I didn’t realize it at first.

I’ve gotten more used to the Spotify ads, but still find them to be more jarring than the last.fm and Pandora ads. On balance, the ads on the latter two services sound more like ones you hear on radio or television than the ones on Spotify.

Spotify has its (listening) limits

Like Pandora, Spotify’s free account sets a limit to how many hours you can listen to in a month. However, Spotify only offers 10 hours while Pandora offers four times as much. Especially if you listen while you work on other things, those 10 hours can run out before you know it. Last.fm does not limit listening time at all, giving it an advantage over the other two services.

Spotify offers unlimited listening on a computer in its Unlimited plan for $4.99 a month. At $9.99 a month the Unlimited plan offers “enhanced” sound quality and mobile access (more about that below). Pandora’s limitless listening is less expensive at $36 a year. This plan also includes higher quality audio, no ads and a desktop application rather than a browser-based player. Alternatively, for just 99 cents a user can keep listening past the 40 hour limit for the rest of the month, but without any of the other subscription benefits. There is no paid last.fm service — it’s completely free.

You can go mobile, for a price

Mobile devices are an area where the free Spotify service doesn’t compete at all. The mobile app is only available as a paid service with the Premium account at $9.99 a month. With that subscription you also get unlimited listening, higher quality sound files and an offline mode that lets you cache playlists on your computer or mobile device so you can listen without internet access.

Both Pandora and last.fm have free mobile apps. Pandora’s free mobile listening limits vary depending on your device and mobile service. Its $36 annual subscription removes any limit. Again, last.fm doesn’t have any limits in mobile, either.

It’s good to share

Despite the paranoia of the recording industry, sharing has been an important aspect of experiencing recorded music for decades. While Pandora and last.fm allow you to share a station that you’ve assembled, it’s not like sharing a mix CD or mix tape, since you can’t pick all the songs and artists. Spotify, on the other, let’s you share a full playlist with other Spotify users.

I think this is Spotify’s killer feature, because it most closely emulates the experience of a mix tape, as easy to assemble as making an iTunes playlist. Certainly there are other ways to share a playlist of tunes online, but most require you to either just share the list of songs which the other person would have to assemble herself. Otherwise you have to upload the song files yourself, which is something that exists in a legal grey area, at least in the US.

Share a Spotify playlist

Every Spotify playlist has a big “share” button underneath the playlist name. Click it and you can send a link to facebook, twitter or Microsoft Messenger with one more click, or just copy and paste a URL that you can send in email or post to a blog. For an example, click here for a playlist of Weird Al Yankovic polka medleys I created.

I really saw the appeal of this feature when a few of my friends first started posting playlists to facebook. It really was like distributing a mixtape to all your friends simultaneously. Well, all of your friends who have Spotify accounts, at least.

And therein lies the limitation of Spotify’s sharing. Since not everyone who wants a Spotify account can have one yet, you really can’t send that playlist to everyone you know. Also, there will probably be songs you wish to include–such as anything by the Beatles–but aren’t available in Spotify’s catalog.

The Spotify experience: a little too limited, not quite radio

I have been a Pandora and last.fm listener for about two years. I don’t use either service every day, or even every week, but there are times when I want background music with a minimum of effort and a minimum of interruption. This is when they fit the bill. I’m not a Pandora subscriber, and have only run into its monthly limit a few times. In these few cases I’ve just switched over to last.fm, even if my stations are different due to each service’s unique algorithms and music libraries.

So far Spotify has become part of my mix of services. However, I use it differently, since I can create playlists of artists and tracks that I specifically want to hear, rather than the more randomized selection I can expect with Pandora or last.fm. In that way I’m likely to use Spotify more like I use my own iTunes library. Of course, I can choose to listen to Spotify’s artist radio and get a similar experience. But as a free user I’d rather not use up my 10 hours getting an experience similar to Pandora or last.fm which have a higher and no limit, respectively.

The big question, of course, is, would I buy a Spotify subscription? I can see the attraction of the service. Having that enormous library of music available on demand, online and off, is appealing. Yet, for someone like me, that library isn’t quite enormous enough. The missing artists, albums and songs are quite tolerable for a free service, but less so when I’m coughing up a monthly fee.

Frankly, if I’d wanted a paid music service I’d already be Rhapsody subscriber. That service costs the same as Spotify Premium, offers similar desktop and mobile features, and has been available in the US for much longer. However Rhapsody also has gaps in its catalog, missing artists like the Beatles and AC/DC which aren’t found on Spotify, either.

Is it radio?

Pandora and last.fm are most appealing to me because they are radio-like and free. If I want to control the playlist, I’ll build one from my library. I listen to Pandora and last.fm when I want to relinquish some of that control and maybe be surprised. But I’m not particularly ready to pay for the experience.

I will admit that Spotify’s free service is nice to use, but 10 hours is a pretty low limit. Based on that alone I think it will have a tough fight to unseat Pandora or last.fm from a lot of music lovers’ daily listening routine.

Spotify shows promise, but is not ready to be a mainstream service accessible to most internet users. It also doesn’t quite scratch that radio itch. A jukebox is not the same thing as a radio station. For me the radio music experience is marked by a combination of predictability and surprise. I know the genre of the stations or the specific show, but I don’t know what song will come next; often it will be something I’ve never heard before. Both Pandora and last.fm provide something much closer to that radio experience, combined with a level of control that lets you filter out sounds you don’t want to hear.

While Spotify has a radio option that resembles Pandora and last.fm, there isn’t much reason to use it compared to its unique playlist building feature. There are times when you want a jukebox, and for many of us our iTunes library is actually pretty satisfying, given that it contains only music I’ve selected and acquired. Spotify comes close, but not close enough for me.

There may be many music lovers ready to just rent their music through a paid Spotify account, provided their tastes don’t stray too far from Spotify’s catalog too often. However, I truly do not know how many. I do know I won’t be one.

The post Spotify in the US – a review: Is it a Pandora & last.fm killer? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Paul’s Recommended Radios for Holiday Gifty Time

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 04:43:04 +0000

Radios make great gifts, especially for someone who is dedicated listener. Whether your favorite listener is into all-news, NPR, talk, college, community, music or even shortwave, a nice radio can really enhance the listening experience.

I own and use all of the radios I’m recommending here, so my comments on each one come from actual listening experience.

Killer Kompact for the Traveler

Tuning in local stations when visiting somewhere far from home can be a great way to learn about a place, hearing about what’s going on and tuning in some native culture. While most hotel rooms have some kind of clock radio, I find the quality of reception can be variable, often receiving only the strongest stations. That’s why I usually travel with my own small radio.

My current favorite travel radio is the Kaito WRX 911. Measuring about 4″ wide by 2″ tall and 1″ deep, it’s just a little bigger than an iPod or digital camera. It tunes in not just AM and FM, but also nine shortwave bands. It also has a metal whip antenna which extends and rotates making it much easier to tweak reception.

With such a small speaker the sound quality is nothing incredible, but it’s at least as good as a clock radio. And there’s a headphone jack for when you don’t want to disturb others. However, reception, is where the Kaito shines. I’ve had great luck tuning in low powered college, community and public stations in many cities, in addition to more powerful commercial stations. It won’t work miracles. Its selectivity–the ability to tune in less powerful stations that are next to more powerful ones–isn’t outstanding, but it’s outperformed most small portable radios I’ve ever owned. At just $20 it really can’t be beat.

Both Style and Performance

I lusted after the Tivoli Model One radio the minute it was announced some ten years ago. Its combination of understated good looks and the promise of a simple, but very well designed analog tuner set it apart from the garish plastic boomboxes and compact stereos out there at the time. Designed by the serial audio innovator Henry Kloss, the Tivoli also extracts impressively rich sound out of its relatively compact cabinet.

I bought my Tivoli eight years ago, and it has served as the primary radio in my house for everyday listening. It sounds great for voice, with a very balanced, pleasing tone. Even though it’s mono with just a single full-range music, music sounds nice as well. It’s better suited for background music than critical listening.

Its FM reception is hard to beat, and it will even accept an external antenna if you want to boost reception even more. The Tivoli’s AM reception is very good, but not world-beating for distant signals. However it does a capable job at minimizing interference and noise on the AM band, ensuring the stations you do tune in sound as good as they can.

The Tivoli Model One was so innovative that it sparked a revival in attractive, high-performance table radios. Admittedly, it’s not the cheapest radio out there. But if you told me I could only have one radio, I would not hesitate to choose the Tivoli.

For the HD Ready

When I embarked on my HD Radio journey several months ago I took the leap with the small Sony XDRF1HD HD Radio Tuner. It’s not a standalone radio, but rather a tuner that requires an amp and speakers. Yet it provides FM radio reception–both analog and HD–that rivals tuners costing much, much more.

On the analog side, it picks up both local and distant FM stations better than any radio in my house, except my Tivoli Model One, which it equals. The Sony’s sound quality exhibits the full range of what analog stereo FM is capable of. If you’re not getting satisfying fidelity, it’s more likely due to your amp and speakers, not the tuner.

I can’t really compare its HD performance since I haven’t spent any significant time with another HD radio or tuner. However, I can say that I’m able to tune in the HD channels of every station I should reasonably expect to receive. HD fidelity depends heavily on how much bandwidth the station dedicates to the HD channel. HD-1 channels sound as good as analog, if a touch quieter and noiseless. Many HD-2 channels sound quite pleasing, though not as good as either the analog signal or the HD-1 channel. I suspect that the XDR-F1HD delivers as much fidelity as the source station can offer.

Honestly, HD Radio is not a must-have. However, if you know someone who wants to hear a specific HD channel or just try it out, you can hardly do better for eighty bucks. Even just functioning as an analog tuner it’s a very good performer.

Portable Performance

While I really do love my little Kaito WRX 911, sometimes I’m willing to sacrifice compactness for a little more performance. For this I recommend yet another Tivoli radio, the company’s first portable radio, called the Songbook. This is my newest radio, which I bought just a few months ago so that I could have a radio in the office at work that I could also drag around with me as necessary.

Now, I work inside an early 1970s concrete monstrosity of a building. My office is in the interior and has no windows. Suffice it to say that it’s an extremely hostile environment for radio listening. Nevertheless, the Songbook performs very well, tuning in the stations I want to listen to most frequently. On several occasions colleagues have come into my office while it’s on and been surprised that I’m getting any kind of radio reception, nevermind such a clear signal.

The Songbook is a portable radio, using either battery or AC power, but it’s not especially small. True to its name, the Songbook is about the size of an average hardcover book. It is a very sturdy radio, covered in a rubber-like material that adds to an overall sense of solidity. Not nearly as packable as the Kaito, it’s easy to tote around. If I still owned a house it would be the radio I’d carry around with me while I did yard work.

Unlike its brother the Model One, the Songbook has a digital tuner. Still, it performs very well. However I do occasionally miss the ability to finely tune in a distant signal that is just a little more staticky with the slightly rougher digital tuner. Also like the Model One it’s not a cheap radio, but it is a piece of equipment that will likely outlast many cheaper radios by quite a margin.

So these are my holiday gift recommendations, starting as low as twenty bucks. I think any radio listener would be pleased to find any of these radios giftwrapped with her name on it. Plus, if you buy one using our Amazon links, a few shekels will go to help Radio Survivor keep surviving, at no additional cost to you. These are the gifts that keep on giving.

The post Paul’s Recommended Radios for Holiday Gifty Time appeared first on Radio Survivor.

World Series Highlighted Challenges of Listening to Radio While Watching TV

Jennifer Waits — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:06:01 +0000

World Series Cupcakes from Noe Valley Bakery. Fear the beard!

I can’t overstate the excitement in San Francisco this week as the Giants wrapped up their season by winning the World Series. As they headed into the playoffs, I started hearing more and more discussion about the relative merits of local commentators vs. national commentators.

Many people told me that they preferred listening to baseball games over local radio while watching them on TV with the audio muted. My husband described the challenges inherent in this due to the audio delay that exists over the television. While watching Game 1 of the World Series projected from a computer onto a screen, he and his pals listened to the game over local radio.

It was a surreal experience for them as they were across from AT&T Park, so could hear fan noise and home run-signaling fog horns when something exciting happened in the game, then they caught word on the radio, and finally saw it on TV. Despite these hiccups, sports fans like them plodded on, putting up with the strange experience of hearing things before seeing them.

Here are a few options for those looking to watch a live event on television (sporting events most readily come to mind) while listening to play-by-play on a local radio station.

SportSyncRadio has a built-in delay so that TV viewers can listen to a game over a local radio station while watching it on TV.

There’s also the RadioShark AM/FM Desktop Radio with Time-Shift Recording, which is an AM/FM radio that provides some of the same capabilities as a DVR, allowing you to record broadcasts for future listening. Because of this feature it lets you pause live radio and create your own customized delay.

Another way to create a delay in your radio audio is by hooking up your radio to your computer and using the free Radio Delay tool. For step-by-step instructions on how to do this, take a look at Bote’s Radio Nexus for details for both Mac and PC users.

My Home Team Radio is another portable device available to create an audio delay by hooking it up to your radio and a set of computer speakers as shown in this video below. If you’ve tested out any of these options, let us know what you think works best.

The post World Series Highlighted Challenges of Listening to Radio While Watching TV appeared first on Radio Survivor.

First day with HD Radio – not impressed

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:12:17 +0000

I spent the better part of this afternoon listening to my new HD Radio receiver, the Sony XDRF1 HD, tuning through the Chicago FM dial. There are 33 FM stations broadcasting HD in Chicago according to iBiquity, which owns the technology. I was able to tune in the HD signal for 19 of them. After several hours of listening I remain rather unimpressed by HD Radio.

My Sony XDRF1-HD tuner in its habitat.

Primary HD Channels

First off I will address the question of sound quality and fidelity. iBiquity claims “drastically improved sound quality” for HD Radio over its analog counterpart. I do not agree with this claim. Tuning between the analog and primary HD channel for each station I could perceive slight differences in sound quality between them. The biggest difference is the loss of background noise and hiss in the HD channel. Now, this is a very subtle difference, primarily perceptible during quiet music passages (which are rare on commercial FM) and voice breaks. This leads to the perception that there’s a bit more dynamic range on the HD channel, but it requires fairly high listening volume to clearly detect.

While I welcome the lower noise floor of HD, I otherwise don’t perceive any other significant increase in fidelity. On nearly every station I listened to the primary HD channel sounded nearly identical to the analog FM. Much of commercial FM is overcompressed, and I found that if a station’s analog signal was so overprocessed, so was the primary HD channel.

Sometimes I would lose the HD signal–since it’s broadcast at a much lower power level than the analog signal–and I never noticed just by listening. I had to look at the tuner’s display to know for sure. The shift between the HD and analog signals is pretty smooth sounding on the Sony tuner. I can tell when it happens, but it’s quite unobtrusive. If I’m not paying close attention to the radio it can happen without me noticing.

All of the 19 HD FM stations I received are stations that come in reasonably well in analog in my apartment in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the far north side of Chicago. The Sony XDRF1 turns out to have very good analog FM performance, bringing in the analog FM signals of these stations better than any other radio in my house except my Tivoli Model One, which is another room. Of the 10 stations where I couldn’t tune in an HD signal, 8 of them don’t come in clearly in my house in analog, either. For two stations my tuner did not indicate there was an HD signal present. More details listening notes by station are at the end of this post.

Secondary HD Channels

The other big advantage touted for HD Radio are the additional subchannels a station can have. Each HD station I listened to broadcast one or two additional channels. By and large the second HD channel had decent sound quality, but that nevertheless never matched the quality of the primary analog or HD channel. This should be expected because there is only so much digital bandwidth for each station to exploit, and the FCC requires that the primary HD channel–which must have the same programming as the analog signal–have the biggest share of the bandwidth.

The second HD channels typically sound like a good webcast station. That is, they sound like medium-quality MP3s with bitrates of 128 kbps or lower. I hear more compression and less dynamic range than the analog side, and some rolling off at the high end. Right now I’m listening to WXRT’s commercial-free HD channel 2 called “Channel X” and it’s pleasant to listen to, no more fatiguing than most web stations.

The stations broadcasting only on additional HD channel had slightly better fidelity on their HD-2 channels than those broadcasting three digital channels. Chicago Public Radio WBEZ broadcasts its Vocalo service on HD-2 and has no HD-3 channel. It sounds a little fuller than WXRT’s HD-2, with better stereo separation, a little more high end, and a little more dynamic range.

WXRT also broadcasts an HD-3 music channel which is branded as last.fm, owned by the station’s parent company CBS. The fidelity on HD-3 is greatly compromised, sounding like a webcast from the late 90s. The highs are heavily rolled off, with lots of shimmery distortion on high pitched instruments like cymbals. I find it pretty unlistenable and think it’s a waste to try and cram music on the HD-3 channel.

The stations that air talk programming on their HD-3 channels are much more listenable, mostly because voice-only programming just doesn’t require as much bandwidth and fidelity as music. WUSN airs a motorsports talk station on its HD-3 channel, and while the programming isn’t my cup of tea, I could imagine listening to it if it aired something of interest to me.

The HD Experience

Listening to HD Radio is not necessarily the most user-friendly experience. The digital HD signal is broadcast at much lower power than the analog signal–in order to lessen interference with adjoining stations. Therefore I had to adjust my antenna carefully to pull in HD signals. The Sony tuner provides a nice signal strength indicator which aids in this task, flashing an HD indicator when a digital signal is detected. You know you’ve got a HD signal tuned in when the HD indicator stops flashing, and more data–like song titles and station name–is displayed.

I have a fifteen-year-old Radio Shack amplified FM antenna that is tunable to frequency. I found with careful tuning I could successfully receive the HD channel for every available station. However, keeping that HD signal was sometimes difficult. Just walking across the room could cause the HD signal to drop out. The HD signal also seemed more susceptible to electrical interference than analog FM. For instance, my wife was shredding documents in the next room, and every time she shredded something the HD channel would drop out, then take 10 – 30 seconds to come back in after she stopped.

Now, it’s true that I live about 10 miles from downtown Chicago, where most major stations are located, on the second floor of an all-brick building. It’s not the ideal location to listen to radio, but not the worst, either. I’ll argue that at least 60% of the metro radio audience lives at least as far away as I do, so I think others’ experience would be similar to mine.

On some stations it was difficult to listen to the HD channels for any length of time. They just wouldn’t stay tuned in, no matter how carefully I adjusted the antenna and tried not to move around. It’s not a big deal if I’m listening to the primary HD channel, since the tuner smoothly falls back to analog, which sounds just as good. But it is frustrating if you’re listening to an HD2 or HD3 channel, since it goes away altogether. No slow degradation, no static–it’s either on or off.

Given the somewhat delicate nature of tuning in HD stations, I have real doubts how many average radio listeners are willing to devote the patience necessary to tune in HD channels. Sure, any radio listener is used to having to move an antenna or radio to get better reception. However, with analog a listener can hear the changes when reception degrades or improves. With HD it’s all or nothing, and therefore much more difficult to finely tune. Furthermore, hearing a crystal-clear analog signal does not necessarily mean you’ll get a clear digital signal. I can only imagine how frustrating it is to try and listen to a portable HD Radio, since just maintaining a clear FM signal with a portable can be a real challenge.

Finally, one of the great experiences of analog radio listening is scanning the dial looking for a good (or tolerable) song, or simply just trying to see what you’ll find. This is not a pleasure one will enjoy with HD radio. In my experience so far it really just isn’t practical to scan HD stations. It simply takes too long to get the HD signal locked in. Perhaps someone living downtown near the major stations might be able to do this, but I just don’t see it happening elsewhere.

Conclusion

I will continue to listen to HD Radio in order to see if the experience improves or I figure out some tricks to improving reception. But so far I find that the technology of cramming a digital signal in next to analog one has too many compromises to be successful. The bandwidth for the HD channels is not enough to offer significantly better fidelity for the primary HD channel, and the leftover bandwidth available for HD2 and HD3 provides sound quality that does not surpass what is available online or on satellite radio. Importantly, tuning in a clear HD signal can be a very finicky process that can try one’s patience. How many signal drop-outs will the average listener endure before giving up on an HD2 or HD3 channel?

Details

As I mentioned I did my listening with a Sony XDRF1-HD tuner which is generally highly regarded for its fidelity and performance on both analog and digital FM. I amplified the audio with a harman/kardon AVR25II receiver, which is a very high quality unit from the mid-90s. The receiver is well maintained and provides quite nice sound quality in plain 2-channel stereo that well exceeds most receivers you’ll find for under $1000 in the electronics store. The speakers are RTR28 bookshelf speakers and an Audiosource 100 watt subwoofer. Laying this out is my way of saying that I believe the electronics were up to task of fairly evaluating the sound quality of HD Radio.

These are the HD stations I listened to, with some listening notes as relevant:

91.5 WBEZ HD1 HD2 – HD2 had some of the best sound quality I heard on an HD2 channel.

93.1 WXRT HD1 HD2 HD3 – HD3’s music quality was too compressed and nearly unlistenable.

93.9 WLIT HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounds OK.
95.5 WNUA HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounded above average.
96.3 WBBM HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounded average.
97.1 WDRV HD1 HD2- HD2 is music, heard high end “shimmery” distortion on cymbals.
97.9 WLUP HD1 HD2 – HD2 sounded average.
98.7 WFMT HD1 – No HD2 or HD3. HD1 sound quality was the best I heard.

99.5 WUSN HD1 HD2 HD3 – HD3 had talk which sounded adequate.
100.3 WILV HD1 HD2 – HD2 was talk and sounded very good for that format.
101.1 WKQX HD1 HD2 – HD2 was music and sounded decent, but somewhat compressed.
101.9 WTMX HD1 HD2 – HD2 was 80s music, pretty highly compressed.
102.7 WVAZ HD1 HD2 – HD2 is religious talk, sounds OK.
103.5 WKSC HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounds average for HD2.
104.3 WJMK HD1 HD2 – HD2 is sports talk, sounds OK.
105.1 WOJO HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounded slightly above average. HD3 is music, sounds poor.
105.9 WCFS HD1 HD2 – HD2 is simulcast of WBBM-AM. There was a lot of artifacting on HD2, not as clear as the station’s webcast.
107.5 WGCI HD1 HD2 – HD2 is music, sounds average.

The post First day with HD Radio – not impressed appeared first on Radio Survivor.

The Romance of Radio Rediscovered on the iPod Nano

Jennifer Waits — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:12:49 +0000

iPod Nano

I probably don’t have to convince anyone reading Radio Survivor that radio rules. But just in case you need some persuading, I’d like to share a beautifully written love-letter to radio (written by a reviewer at Popular Mechanics of all places).

While checking out the new FM radio feature on the iPod Nano, former college radio DJ Seth Porges rediscovered what he once loved about radio. He writes that his listening habits expanded beyond his self-selected mp3s, broadening to include radio after a 10 year hiatus:

“…my once-rigid playlist of personal standards has suddenly been infiltrated by daily doses of NPR, college radio and the occasional classic rock riff. Yes, Apple has pushed me back into FM radio…

…there’s something inimitable and raw about radio. The way it fades into static as you drive out of a city or go too deep into a subway tunnel. The unyielding perkiness found in over-caffeinated morning-show hosts. The exceedingly obvious playlists compiled by classic rock stations.

The way college radio DJs (of whom I was once one) punctuate every other word with an ‘uhhh’ or ‘you know.’ This nostalgia is only bolstered by the fact that, for many of us, the radio was our first introduction to music.

For others, constructing a crystal radio kit was a DIY rite of passage. Sure, it’s middle-of-the-road stuff, but it’s also a distinct sort of fun that can’t be replicated by self-programmed playlists—or even the niche programming of satellite radio.”

He finishes the piece by postulating that the new Nano may even work to “introduce a new generation—and reintroduce an old one—to FM radio’s unique listening format.” And wouldn’t that be grand? Earlier this year I heard someone describe radio tuners for iPhones as being akin to transistor radios in terms of the way that they will help to transform radio listening. So, I do think he might be on to something here.

The post The Romance of Radio Rediscovered on the iPod Nano appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Slacker radio does The Crash on Blackberry Curve

Matthew Lasar — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:32:09 +0000

Problem solved! See update to this story.

Drat and double drat, I said, following the considerable amount of time it took to put Slacker radio’s app on my Blackberry Curve. It took about 15 minutes for the whole shebang to download and install, and then what? It played a tune for about a minute and crashed the whole darn operating system.

I patiently waited for my Blackberry to reboot, then tried again, thinking maybe that would fix the problem. The thing just bonked out again. Nuts.

It’s slow as poop too. Pandora is so much faster. But I’m trying the app again as I write this. Meanwhile I went over to Blackberry Cool today and it looks like I’m not the only one encountering this problem. Here’s what Ed had to report in his comments:

“Slow? Yes but also bugged up. It crashes my curve often. Still I think its great when it works. I never bothered with radio streams until slacker came out with their caching feature. I have deleted all my mp3 files from my media card to make room for stations.”

Ditto says Martin. “On a Curve the thing is almost unusable. The performance is dog slow and seems to tie up the whole device,” he notes. “I removed it figuring its probably designed for a Bold….”

Alas. But hmmm… When I fire the app up it says, “You’ll need an SD card to cache stations.” I think that might be the problem. More on this when I find out.

Meanwhile, Slacker whacked my system again. Doh!

The post Slacker radio does The Crash on Blackberry Curve appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Product Review Archives - Radio Survivor

The Eton Mini Grundig Edition Is My New Travel Companion

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Radio Survivor Recommends: How To Start Podcasting

A Note About Gear

Step 0: You’ll Need a Computer

Step 1: Get a Microphone (or Microphones) and Headphones

If You’re Hosting Alone: Get a USB Microphone

If You Have 2+ People Recording Together: Get a USB Mixer and Microphones

Step 2: Install Audacity On Your Computer

Alternative Step 1 and 2: Get a Digital Audio Recorder

Option 1: Low-Cost Digital Audio Recorder with Built-in Microphones

Option 2: Digital Audio Recorder with XLR Mic Inputs

Step 3: Get a Podcast Hosting Service

Step 4: Promote Your Podcast

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XLR Microphones – Under $50 each

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My Daughter Learns that Pandora isn’t really On-Demand – Where’s “Skyfall” on “Skyfall Radio”?

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And Don’t Forget MusicChoice, Digital FM, and even Spotify….

Review: TIDAL Streams Uncompressed Music to More Devices, but Not Worth It for Everyone

Comparing TIDAL and Deezer Elite

TIDAL on a Receiver and Speakers

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