Electronics Archives - Radio Survivor

Podcast #341 – The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape

Eric Klein — Wed, 15 May 2024 03:30:49 +0000

Journalist Marc Masters joins us to discuss his book, High Bias: the Distorted History of the Cassette Tape. We dive into how the oft-maligned cassette influenced the music industry and our culture by inspiring musicians, taking music to the streets and returning power back to listeners.

Show Notes

Show Credits:

This episode was produced by Paul Riismandel
Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Paul Riismandel
Edited by Eric Klein

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Podcast #328: Media Archaeology and Other Networks

Jennifer Waits — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 02:25:34 +0000

The Radio Survivors return with a new episode! For this edition, recorded in July, 2022, our guest is Lori Emerson, Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab (the MAL). She’s also an Associate Professor in the English Department and Director of the Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance Program at University of Colorado at Boulder.

Lori joins us to chat about her current research into “other networks” and her work at the Media Archaeology Lab, which she started in 2009. Full of media from the past (computers, phones, radios, recording devices, books and more), the MAL “is a place for cross-disciplinary, experimental research, teaching, and creative practice using one of the largest collections in the world of still functioning media.” In our discussion, we also explore technology history, talk about Lori’s recent broadcasting experiments, and learn about the ways that experimental poetry is connected with vintage computers.

Show Notes:

Lori Emerson‘s website
Other Networks exploration on Lori’s website
Media Archaeology Lab website
Lori Emerson’s Twitter
Sarah Grant, “Plant Nodes”
Danja Vasiliev, “Netless“
Emulated versions of bpNichol’s “First Screening” (1982-83, written in Apple Basic for Apple IIe)
One Laptop Per Child Mesh Network Wiki
libi striegl and Lori Emerson article “Anarchive as technique in the Media Archaeology Lab | building a one Laptop Per Child mesh network” (PDF download, requires Academia.edu registration)

Show Credits:

This episode was produced by Jennifer Waits
Hosted by Jennifer Waits and Paul Riismandel
Edited by Eric Klein

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Happy International Minidisc Day – A Post-Modern Revival

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 03:22:39 +0000

As we enter our second decade of everything-digital-on-demand, the desire for tactile media only seems to grow new buds. By now the vinyl resurgence is old news, and while mainstream publications still gasp or tsk-tsk at the cassette revival, I think we can safely say the tape medium has retaken a beachhead, too.

Today is all about the minidisc. Quite literally, because it’s been declared International Minidisc Day.

Yet, even I, a longtime minidisc user and aficionado, find this new holiday a bit curious. Before I explain, a little history is in order.

Long a format of choice for grassroots and independent radio production, the humble minidisc bridged us from the end of tape days in the early 90s to the full maturation of solid-state digital audio recorders in the mid- to late-2000s. Sony, the format’s originator, imagined the little digital discs as an eventual replacement for the compact cassette. In 1992 this was a plausible proposition, because it offered near-CD quality digital recording in a smaller and more robust package. Sony – and a few other labels – even released several dozen pre-recorded minidiscs to provide an alternative to pre-recorded cassettes, already in steep decline.

But in the days before CD-Rs and iPods it was minidisc’s digital recording capability that was the real attraction. Due to that, MD did become a cassette replacement for millions of people around the world who recorded their own mix minidiscs or just dubbed over their CDs for more convenient listening on the go.

Even In its heyday of the 90s and 2000s minidisc never really took off as a medium for distributing music. I knew plenty of musicians and radio producers recording on the format, but the end products ended up on the radio, on CDs and eventually online.

This might seem odd, since independent musicians and labels distributed on cassettes from the 70s through to today, and once CD-Rs came down in price in the late 90s, they, too, spawned their own music underground. But not minidisc… at least not in the United States.

It’s true minidisc was never as popular in the U.S. as in Japan or the U.K., even though millions of recorders and players were sold here. It’s just that they never reached the kind of per capita penetration of cassettes, CDs or even 8-tracks. It seems to me that running a minidisc-only label even 2003 would have been just too limiting, though I don’t doubt that there must have been some limited or one-off releases.

Coming back to today, Minidisc Day, the funny thing is that the celebration is modeled after Record Store Day, in that record labels are releasing albums on minidisc today. However, unlike Record Store Day, there are no actual brick-and-mortar retail stores participating, as far as I can tell. Instead, small independent labels are selling tiny runs of discs from their Bandcamp or web stores. Quantities seem to run in the tens up to maybe 100 per.

It’s funny because it’s actually kind of a new thing to have a minidisc label, rather than a revival. The labels and releases appear to be dominated by the vaporwave genre, which is itself an extremely post-modern reinterpretation of 1980s and 1990s music, culture and cliches through contemporary musical technology. Clearly there’s a strong harmony between the medium and the message that would make McLuhan smile.

Those 1990s pre-recorded minidisc releases were actually pressed like CDs in factories. All evidence indicates those pressing plants have been offline for nearly two decades. That means today’s minidisc releases have to be recorded onto blank discs, more like cassettes than CDs. Also like cassettes, this is something that an artist or label can do entirely themselves, or can outsource to a few companies that mass produce minidiscs. The advantage of the duplicators is that most will silk-screen art on the disc housing and print up professional looking cases. Those preferring the DIY look can of course just fire up their recorder and inkjet printer.

The International Minidisc Day labels and artists come largely from the UK, where most of those duplication houses also are. As I mentioned before, on a per capita basis minidisc was more popular there than in the U.S. Thus I suspect it has more cultural pull and the nostalgia is more prevalent than across the pond.

Although my minidisc players don’t get much use these days, except to archive old recordings, the whole enterprise of Minidisc Day makes me smile. I’m guessing that a lot of the artists and participants may not even have been alive when minidisc was invented, or even when it was popular(ish). That matters not to me. The point is to have fun and make things. By that score, mission accomplished.

That said, I don’t anticipate Minidisc Day to become even as popular as Cassette Store Day. There were never as many minidisc players as cassette players, and because they haven’t been manufactured in nine years, the number of working units will be in constant decline. Even though decent cassette decks also haven’t been manufactured in at least as long, you can still go to a local discount store or Urban Outfitters and pick up a player.

But I don’t think scale matters for this project. It’s a marriage of early-internet, home to minidisc fan sites, and contemporary internet, which takes for granted the rapid emergence of international memes-turned-movements. Not everything has to, or should scale. God knows that’s the story of most of my hobbies and passions.

¡Viva la minidisc!

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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.

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No, Vinyl Records Aren’t Outselling CDs – Do the Math

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 06:01:02 +0000

Last month news spread that, “Vinyl Is Poised to Outsell CDs For the First Time Since 1986,” as Rolling Stone reported. The source of that prediction is the recording industry’s own mid-year report, which showed vinyl sales racking up $224.1 million on 8.6 million units in the first half of 2019, creeping up on CD’s $247.9 million on 18.6 million units.

You don’t have to stare at those numbers long to notice one disparity is significantly bigger than the other. It’s true that vinyl records accounted for only $23.8 million fewer than CDs. But the units moved tell another story. In fact, more than twice as many CDs were sold than vinyl records – 116% to be more precise.

I don’t know about you, but that looks to me like vinyl records are still a long way towards outselling CDs. Rather, each of those records sold generated more revenue than each CD, $26.06 per record vs. $13.32 per CD.

Those numbers should look pretty accurate for anyone who’s bought new music lately. Whereas in 1989, when the CD was ascendant and a new record generally cost at least a few bucks less, the situation has reversed in the intervening three decades. And that makes sense if you account for the industrial history at work here.

As vinyl sales dropped in the 90s in favor of digital discs, companies pressed fewer records, and pressing plants gradually shut down. While CD sales have slowed in the last decade, they haven’t yet experienced the kind of drop-off that vinyl did. Although the last ten years have seen a vinyl resurgence, aging plants struggled to keep up with demand, and new plants came on line, all increasing costs. CDs, on the other hand, became a mature technology, with production costs having pretty much bottomed out in the early 2000s, and not having increased much since then.

At core, this disparity is due to the fact that vinyl now costs more to manufacture than CDs. On top of that, I suspect that demand and the popular perception of records as a more premium product conspire to help push and keep prices higher.

So, it isn’t really the case that vinyl is outselling CDs. “Outselling” means that something is exceeding something else in volume of sales. Instead it’s the case that vinyl is outearning and generating more revenue than CDs.

Based upon those per-unit revenue numbers, if vinyl were actually proportionally on pace to outsell CDs in volume sold, they’d be generating more like $438 million on about 16.8 units.

Picking Apart False Narratives

Why do all this nit-picky math? Because I think a false narrative is being spun here. It’s the narrative that CDs are dying at such fast pace that even a once-thought-obsolete technology like the vinyl record is going to surpass it.

I care because it’s the same kind of narrative that’s been used to smear radio for the last generation or so. This, despite the fact that some 90% of the population still listens to terrestrial radio.

Now, I’m not a luddite (which seems like a strange thing to call someone who’s defending the digital compact disc). I don’t dispute the fact that radio listenership and CD sales are declining. Given the ubiquity these technologies enjoyed in the year 2000, pretty much the only way to go was down, especially with the proliferation of new, often more convenient and diverse technologies. But that slide does not mean the technologies are dead or obsolete.

I have a particularly sore spot for FAIL culture and tech triumphalism, which go looking for receding tech or trends to pronounce ready for the trash heap of history. The pernicious aspect of this is that it causes some folks to think maybe they’re backwards or out of it for continuing to enjoy their CDs or radios.

For CDs specifically, what I see happening is people dumping their perfectly good collections, ones that were often painstakingly acquired and curated, and at great expense. I get that streaming is more convenient; I listen to more streaming music than CDs. But even if I’ve pared down the collection, I’m not going to just chuck away favorite albums like that. You never know when Spotify is going to lose the rights to your beloved music out of nowhere.

History Repeating Itself

I’m having flashbacks to the early 90s, when I knew so many people dumping their vinyl collections – often for free or very little money – in favor of rebuying many of the exact same albums on new, supposedly superior, shiny digital discs. Being both a poor student then, and also vinyl enthusiast, I scooped up dozens of great albums for a fraction of what they originally cost or even what they go for now, new or used.

I’ve definitely talked to other Gen Xers who admit to now rebuying yet again favorite old albums on vinyl reissue, that they once had on CDs that replaced their original vinyl copies. Oy, the revolving door!

Look, if you’re into downsizing and Marie Kondo-ing your music collection, I have no beef with that. Streaming Spotify takes up significantly less space than any CD or vinyl collection. As long as you understand that some albums may mysteriously disappear from your streaming playlist and are fine with that, then forewarned is forearmed.

But dumping CDs because there’s a popular misconception that they’re inferior or obsolete, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me. Especially since decent CD players are easier to get and less expensive than all but the flimsiest record players (never mind smartphones), not having a player shouldn’t be your excuse. In fact you probably have a CD player and just haven’t realized it – it’s your DVD or Blu-Ray player.

18.6 Million Is a Hell of a Niche

I have no doubt that physical media will become increasingly less prominent and more niche. But still, 18.6 million CDs sold in 6 months (some 37 million in a year) is a hell of a niche!

Even if most people stop buying new CDs altogether, there are still billions of discs on the used market, in flea markets, thrift shops, garage sales and free bins. In fact, the online music database and marketplace Discogs says CDs saw the biggest increase in sales amongst all formats on its platform in the first half of the year. Unlike the RIAA’s numbers, which only count new product sales, Discogs counts both new and used.

While vinyl records were the most popular physical music format on Discogs, keep in mind that the medium is twice as old as the compact disc. We should expect there are at least twice as many of them out there to be traded and resold.

Even so, nearly forty years of compact discs adds up to a nearly unfathomable amount of music out there to be heard. Moreover, a decent percentage of it was never released in another format, and still isn’t available for streaming. That means there’s a treasure trove of undiscovered or to-be-rediscovered nuggets out there for the finding.

Some of those treasures might be in your attic, basement, storage unit, or – even better – your CD shelf.

And, maybe I’m not the only digital luddite. Only a couple of weeks after the “vinyl is surpassing CD” news, Billboard reported that new compact discs from Taylor Swift, Tool and even Post Malone are flying off the shelves. This apparently is causing labels to reconsider their physical media strategy, as stores beg for more product to sell, especially of new hit albums.

Is a “CD Store Day” far behind?

Need more convincing? Earlier this year I outlined “10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)” and expanded on the topic on our podcast.

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Don’t Waste Your Money on that Bluetooth Cassette Player Kickstarter

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 23:21:50 +0000

Last week – coincident with the original Walkman’s 40th birthday – I saw all these articles reporting on this supposedly “world’s first” Bluetooth enabled portable Walkman-style cassette player/recorder, named IT’S OK (yes, the brand is in all caps). Reactions to this Kickstarter ranged from snarky to excited, but all the coverage struck me as a little too credulous.

Always hoping that someone is going to start making decent quality cassette decks or players again, every so often I search around on Amazon or Ebay to see what’s on offer. In the back of my head I thought I’d seen a cheap Bluetooth tape player before, for far less than the $75 intro price promised to Kickstarter supporters.

Turns out, my memory was correct. This Digitnow branded “cassette to MP3 converter” has been available on Amazon since August of 2018 for a price that fluctuates between $29 and $39. Over on Ebay they’re $39.99.

In addition to playing to your Bluetooth headphones, it’ll digitize your cassettes directly to a microSD card, or to your computer via USB. Two additional features missing from the IT’S OK. Now, I’ve never used the Digitnow player, so I can’t vouch for the quality of playback. But my guess is that it’s about as good as the cheap knock-off Walkman you might have bought at K-Mart in 1989, so caveat emptor. I also have serious doubts that the IT’S OK will be any better, even at nearly twice the price.

Already suspicious of the “feasibility study and first handmade prototypes” on the Kickstarter timeline, today I saw a video from YouTuber VWestlife wherein he identifies an extremely similar cassette player available on Alibaba for as little as $7 in quantity direct from China. VWestlife also points out that the IT’S OK player isn’t even in stereo, specifying “Classic Monaural Sound.”

He does note that since all the parts for the IT’S OK are readily available, the Kickstarter likely isn’t a scam. You’ll just get a flimsy mono cassette recorder/player worth maybe $20 in parts – or available from other sources at about $40 – for your $75. And you’ll have to wait until December to get it. Or you can wait until after the Kickstarter ends and get it for $88 (no kidding).

I’ll admit to being enticed when I first saw headlines about the device, but it didn’t take long for me to see that this Kickstarter is mostly hype, seizing on the Walkman’s nostalgia moment and slow news week to get some free press release journalism coverage.

I have no snark for anyone wanting a new cassette Walkman today, and wish that reputable brands like Sony and Panasonic still made them. If you’re in the market I’d first try to find a decent used one, or take a shot on any of the dozens of $20 ones scattered across online retailers and Ebay. (While you’re at it, you might as well get one with a radio.) Aside from the cognitive dissonance around the apparent anachronism of the IT’S OK player, I don’t really get the appeal of adding Bluetooth… especially in freakin’ mono.

But if you decide to bite and get one, please do let us know how it goes.

The post Don’t Waste Your Money on that Bluetooth Cassette Player Kickstarter appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Reflections on the Walkman and Radio on the Occasion of the Former’s 40th Birthday

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 06:37:01 +0000

The Sony Walkman celebrated its 40th birthday on Monday, July 1. While portable audiocassette recorder/players that you could connect to headphones had been around pretty much since the invention of the medium, the Walkman was the first one designed specifically for stereo playback on the go, for personal listening, without even a tiny speaker.

Although the Walkman is principally a cassette device, I’ve always associated it with radio. Sure, in some ways it’s almost anti-radio, giving the person on-the-go a completely individualized listening experience. The first model lacked a tuner, but it wouldn’t be long until a receiver became almost standard.

A child of the 80s, I remember lusting after a Walkman, though the first generations were priced well beyond the reach of a pre-teen. Around 1983 or 1984 nearly every electronics manufacturer made its own version, and by then I managed to save up about 25 bucks, enough to buy the bottom-of-the-line Sanyo knock-off.

As I recall, the Sanyo was on the bulky side, with just three buttons: play, stop and fast-forward. Rewind was too sophisticated for such an inexpensive device (worth about $60 in today’s dollars). If you needed to rewind you flipped the cassette over and fast-forwarded the opposite side. But it did come with those iconic cheap 80s headphones with the orange ear cushions (as seen in “Guardians of the Galaxy”).

I might have wanted one with a radio, but the extra five or ten bucks would have been too much of a stretch for this middle-schooler.

Thanks to the Pocket Calculator Show’s extensive archive directories of portable stereos I’ve concluded I had likely had the Sanyo M-G7, without radio. The lack of receiver would be supplemented by a Magnavox D1600 tiny portable AM/FM radio I received as a birthday gift. Back then I think we’d have called it a “Walkman radio,” since it didn’t have a speaker, intended only for headphone listening.

Radios like this were directly influenced by the Walkman. Tiny transistor radios had been around a couple of decades by the early 80s, and most included an earphone jack for discreet listening. But they almost always had a tinny speaker intended for most of the listening, offering overall a mono, low-fidelity experience.

New breed Walkman-style radios were headphone-only, and much tinier. That Magnavox was the size of a deck of cards, only about one-third as thick. Plus, it offered FM stereo. Though, in reality, because the headphone cable doubled as the antenna, you had to find a really strong signal to get that stereo light to go on. Even so, sometimes even the slightest movement could kill it.

It wasn’t long after getting that first Sanyo player that I desired an upgrade that was smaller, sounded better and might even rewind tapes. Thereafter every Walkman-style player I’d get would have a radio – never would I have considered one without it. That’s not just because I’m a life-long radio nerd.

Sometimes you’d get tired of the one or two tapes you have with you, and want to hear something different. Or I’d want to catch a specific show while on the school bus or out walking. Also, in the days before good rechargeable batteries, often the radio still worked decently even when worn-down batteries made Metallica sound like Leonard Cohen.

Though Walkman is a Sony trademark, the only actual Sony model I ever owned was one a heavy-duty, water-proof, bright yellow Sports Walkman from the early 90s. As it turned out, that would be my last one, for all intents and purposes. Though I’ve owned a couple more in the intervening years, they were all recording models that primarily saw duty as cheap field recorders.

By 1991 I got my first Sony Discman portable CD player, which competed for listening time with the cassette Walkman. I didn’t give up on cassettes, since these were the days before CD-Rs, and I was still a prolific mix-tape maker and trader. But since I bought most of my music on CD the Discman was more likely to be my travel companion.

One con of pretty much every portable CD player I’ve owned is that none had a radio. I seem to remember such existing, but they were far less common than cassette players with radios. I wonder if maybe the far more sophisticated CD electronics posed more interference than the comparatively primitive cassette mechanicals.

The lack of integrated radio persisted as I graduated to minidisc as my primary portable music device in 1997. Though sometimes derided as a failure, the format lasted more than 20 years, and at that time it gave me all the recording convenience of a cassette, with near-CD quality, in a much smaller package.

I remember one minidisc recorder I owned that had a radio integrated into its wired remote – a wired remote with a headphone jack was a common feature – rather than on the unit itself. Again, I think the minidisc electronics created too much interference to have it housed in the same case a radio. Though it was a clever workaround, performance was disappointing. So, it went mostly unused.

That’s why I always had a little Walkman-style radio in my arsenal. Often used for daily public transport commutes, they were always in my travel bag to scan the dial when visiting different cities.

For a while, in the awkward time between the slow decline of the minidisc format and the rise of the smartphone I had a tiny Sansa branded MP3 player that featured a surprisingly good FM tuner. That actually got a lot of use even after I got my first iPhone, since it was the size of a couple of chapsticks, taking up almost no space in any bag.

I’m a little chagrined to admit that I don’t currently have a Walkman-style radio now. It’s true that the smartphone dominates my portable listening, and for most trips, short or long, I’m more inclined to choose podcasts or my own music. I do still travel with a radio, but these days I use one with a speaker, shortwave reception and a built-in digital recorder. True, it’s bigger than the tiny Walkman radios I’ve owned, but it does a lot more, too.

Thinking about it is making me want to get one. Turns out, there are still plenty out there, though most are from obscure Chinese brands. Looks like too small a niche for Sony anymore. That said, you can get a cute little red Sony MP3 player that has a radio for about $60, or an FM-enabled Sansa Clip Jam for less than $30. It’s just that with the MP3 players you give up AM reception.

Given that new portable cassette players are even more rare, it may well be the case that the Walkman-style radio has, or will, outlive the cassette player that inspired it.

At least until Sony decides there’s enough nostalgia dollars out there to cash in.

Feature image credit: Grant Hutchinson / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Podcast #179 – Don’t Throw Your CDs Away in 2019

Eric Klein — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 05:13:18 +0000

This episode is dedicated to the compact disc. Paul recently published an article outlining 10 reasons why CDs are awesome, and it seems to have hit a nerve, turning out to be one of our most popular. So we dive into these reasons, and even talk to a Millennial, Jacob Choplin, who also loves CDs (though not as much as vinyl).

We’re not arguing against LPs, downloads or streaming music, just advocating for the lowly compact disc. They still sound great. We hope to inspire you to dig out your collection and enjoy some tunes.

Show Notes:

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10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio)

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 06:27:43 +0000

Quite a lot of shade is getting thrown at CDs in the press these days. The LA Times reports, “The compact disc era may finally be entering its hospice stage,” while Rolling Stone declares, “CDs Are Dying Three Times as Fast as Vinyl Is Growing.” Putting aside the misleading equivocation of the RS calculation – CDs still outsell records by a generous margin – it’s clear that vinyl and even cassettes are hipper than the poor old compact disc.

No doubt, I love my vinyl, have a hard drive full of digital files and listen to online streams. But CDs still have a lot to offer. This is just as true for personal listening as it is for radio stations. Well, at least for community and college radio stations where DJs pick their music rather than just piloting an automation system or selecting from a tiny approved digital catalog.

So, before you toss your shiny silver discs into the dumpster or drop them off at the Goodwill, I want to urge you give them another look and listen.

Here are 10 reasons why CDs are still pretty awesome:

1. Used CDs Are a Bargain Right Now

This past weekend I paid a visit to the enormous Amoeba music store in Hollywood. There you can find racks upon racks of discounted CDs for $5 or less. Looking for some classic rock like Led Zeppelin III? It’ll set you back $30 on vinyl. On CD? I saw it for just three smackeroos. And it’s not just classic rock. If you’re looking for just about any popular album from the last fifty years, you’ll probably find it cheaper on CD than just about any other format, period.

You don’t even have to make the pilgrimage to Amoeba. Just check out your local record shop, thrift store or garage sale. Folks are nearly just giving CDs away. And that’s your potential gain.

2. You Probably Own a Bunch of CDs Already

They might be in the back of a closet or in a storage unit, but if you’re over the age of 30 there’s a good chance you already own a bunch of CDs that you might not be playing. Go unpack them and it’s like getting free music! Even if you don’t, chances are your parents, siblings, friends or other relatives have some CDs they’d be just as happy to give away, thinking that streams and downloads are somehow superior.

If you’re a college or community radio DJ, it’s likely your station has many hundreds or thousands of CDs.

3. There Are Tons of Out-of-Print Albums Only on CD

During the compact disc’s two decade heyday – from about 1983 to 2003, when the iTunes store went online – millions of albums were released on CD. By about 1993 record companies seriously scaled back which albums were on vinyl or cassette. By the turn of the century only a small percentage saw an analog release, or had tiny analog releases, while digital-only distribution had yet to take off. That means thousands of albums recorded during that time were pretty much only available on CD. Although many have been re-released for streaming and digital download, there are still countless out-of-print albums for which compact disc is the only way to hear them (outside of extra-legal file sharing).

This category isn’t just limited to obscurities. Even some critically acclaimed and classic albums remain unavailable except in the original CD release.

4. CDs Are Yours Forever

Sure, you can lose a CD or scratch beyond playability. But otherwise the music on that CD is yours forever. Even if Taylor Swift and Neil Young collectively decide they’re pulling all their music from Spotify, you can still hear their albums if you bought the CD.

5. A Broken CD Only Ruins One Album

CDs are more durable than vinyl or cassettes. And, although we were promised “perfect sound forever” when CDs first debuted in the 80s, we all know they can get scratched beyond playability. Still, one messed up CD ruins just one album. What happens when your USB thumb drive or hard drive full of MP3s crashes? Hundreds or thousands disappear. Regular backups and cloud storage help to prevent these disasters, but at a cost that adds up much faster than the price of a new CD.

6. You Can Sell Your CDs

Thanks to the “first sale doctrine” in copyright law, when you own a CD (or vinyl LP, cassette, book, or most physical media), you have the right to lend, sell or give away that album. The same is not true of an MP3 or digital download. Selling that file you “bought” (more like “licensed”) from iTunes or Amazon is actually called “piracy.” Of course you can copy it all you like, but good luck hocking it when you’re tired of that album (or need to pay the rent).

7. CDs Sound Great on the Radio

While the pops and crackle of vinyl have a certain charm, I defy most radio contemporary listeners to sit through hours of poorly maintained records played on misaligned community radio turntables. There’s a reason why stations rapidly adopted CDs in the 1990s, they’re easy to use and sound good on air. They also sound better than lot of digital files.

I hear plenty of poorly compressed MP3s that only get worse after put through broadcast audio processors. Streams from YouTube can border on unlistenable, taking on a gurgling shimmery underwater tonality. The situation degrades over a station’s webcast, wherein these already lossy files get encoded yet another time and further degraded. It’s true that digital files don’t have to be terrible, but it takes some care and attention to detail to ensure. CDs, by comparison, just work, and usually sound great.

8. Good CD Players Are Cheaper than Good Turntables

Although there’s been a renaissance in decent quality, relatively inexpensive turntables in the last decade, $250 is still pretty much the lowest reasonable entry point for anything durable. However, right now you can buy a pretty nice brand new Teac CD player for less than $150. And there are even decent CD boomboxes out there for well under a c-note, like this Sony. Moreover, if you’re willing to go used, these days thrift stores are filled to the brim with players for less than the cost of dinner out. Plus, even a bargain basement CD player will never ruin your CDs like a cheap record player will chew up your vinyl.

9. Blu-Ray and DVD Players also Play CDs

Even if you don’t have a plain old CD player, there’s a good chance you have a device that will play CDs, since DVD and Blu-Ray players all support the format. On top of that, because of demand these video disc players can be had cheaper than single-purpose CD players. A perfectly adequate Sony Blu-Ray can be had for under 80 bucks, while a nice Sony DVD player comes in for less than that cheapo suitcase record player at Target.

10. It’s Easy to Rip CDs to Your Computer and Smartphone

Though you can still buy some off-brand CD walkmen, you still won’t see me walking around with one. Like most folks, I listen to music on my smartphone while on the go. But that doesn’t mean I have to rely on streaming or digital music stores. CDs are a snap to rip on your computer, using free built-in software on both Windows and Macs. It’s true that most new laptops don’t come with CD drives anymore, a brand-name USB drive that reads and writes both CDs and DVDs sets you back less than 35 clams.

If somehow the files you ripped get lost or corrupted, just go back and re-rip your CD. Easy peasy.

For those who like to make and record music, here’s a bonus reason:

11. CD-Rs are Cheaper To Make than Cassettes (or Records)

Want to record and distribute your own music? It’s cheaper and easier to do it on CD than cassette or vinyl.

Of course you can completely D.I.Y. both cassettes and CDs. A spindle of 100 CD-Rs will only run you about 17 bucks, and can still be had at your local discount or office supply store. Finding blank tapes is tougher, though cassette stalwart National Audio Company will sell you 100 fresh C60 blanks for $90 – more than 5x the cost of CD-Rs.

Once you have those tapes, then you’ve got to dub them. Using a double-deck that’ll go no faster than double real-time. Better make a weekend of it.

Using just an inexpensive CD burner you’ll probably finish a full CD in just a few minutes. It’ll take just an evening to make enough to sell at a show.

And if you want to go the way of pro duplication, there’s probably still a company that makes CDs nearby. Even if you send it out, you can get 100 CDs made and printed, in custom jackets for under $200, and get them in just a couple of weeks. Cassettes? Budget more like $300 or more. And vinyl? Think more like two grand, and waiting for months.

I guess that’s why I still see stacks of new shrinkwrapped CDs in cardboard slipcases at local bands’ merch tables. Cost and convenience still outweighs hip, even in indie rock.

The post 10 Reasons Why CDs Are Still Awesome (Especially for Radio) appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Radio’s Wheels of Steel Are Coming Back: The Technics SL-1200 Mk VII

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 00:05:09 +0000

If Jennifer’s radio tours and my recent visits to stations are any indication, it seems like a large percentage of the physical media being played on community and college stations are vinyl records. Since true broadcast turntables have been out of production for decades, a variety of reasonably sturdy DJ turntables have filled in the gap (I gave an overview of some good ones a few years ago.) Yet, pretty much all of these are copies or clones of the original wheels of steel: the Technics SL-1200.

The 1200, however, had been out of production since 2010. A new, completely revised version emerged in 2016, but oriented towards audiophiles and home listening, and with a multi-thousand price-tag. But finally, at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Technics announced the new SL-1200 Mk VII, designed with DJs in mind, and with a more approachable price of $1199.

Now, I realize that some people will see a price over a thousand bucks and think “that’s neither approachable nor affordable.” I understand that reaction, but I also think it fails to take into account several important factors.

The first thing is that our contemporary perception of the price of consumer electronics is completely distorted by how cheap Chinese manufacturing is. Just thinking about turntables, back in 1987 I bought a decent, but not high end, Onkyo turntable that was typical of the late 80s, with a good portion of it made out of plastic. It cost me about $250, which is $550 today, adjusted for inflation.

Look at any online retailer and you will find more than a dozen very decent turntables (not Crosleys) for that same $250 in 2019 dollars , which is equivalent to about $113 in 1987. That’s thanks to inexpensive Chinese manufacturing.

Looking just at the SL-1200, when the Mark 2 version was introduced in 1979 the MSRP was $350, or – get this – equivalent to $1200 in 2019. (That price should ring a bell.)

Today the most expensive iPhone costs $1400, and it’s easy to drop nearly a grand on top-of-the-line Android phones. All for a device that is unlikely to last more than five years.

By comparison, there are thousands (if not millions) of 10 to 40 year-old 1200s still in service, because they were built like tanks, and are relatively easy to repair. Really, how many $1200 electronics items can you buy today and expect to be using still in 20 years?

Now looking at a college or community radio studio, how many different pairs of hands touch a turntable in a given week? In a month? Even with careful training, how many accidents or how much abuse will those turntables suffer? And how much of an inconvenience is it when that takes them offline for repair, or completely out-of-commission?

In my 30 years of radio I’ve certainly seen SL-1200s that needed repair, but far less often than cheaper turntables. Though I’ve heard about ones that were trashed beyond repair, I’ve never seen one with my own eyes. I can’t say that about CD players, tape decks or computers… never mind smartphones.

Now, I’m not making a sales pitch for Technics or the SL-1200. Rather, I’m just pointing out how nice it is to have a truly professional turntable option again, especially for the radio stations where vinyl not only continues to live, but is arguably more popular than any time in the last three decades.

If your station or DJ booth needs a turntable I would seriously consider holding out for a 1200 MK VII, or even putting one on pre-order with your favorite electronics or broadcast supply company (preferably local, if available). Or you could go find an earlier model used, with the caveat that even a little bit of sprucing up might be in order.

The lesson I’ve seen learned over and over is that cheap electronic gear in your studio doesn’t end up being a value over time. While you can certainly overpay, buying good stuff up front pays off in less downtime and not having repurchase gear over and over again. I understand that budgets can be tight, but when even some of your DJs and hosts are walking around with smartphones in their pocket that cost nearly enough, there’s probably a way to drum up the money.

¡Viva la vinyl!

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2018 Holiday Guide: Quirky Radio-Themed Gifts for the Audio Obsessed

Jennifer Waits — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 17:21:05 +0000

Being a radio fanatic, I keep an eye out for unusual radio-themed items. With the holiday shopping season upon us, it’s as good a time as any to share some recent finds, particularly since we haven’t done any Radio Survivor gift guides in awhile.

With that, here’s my 2018 Holiday Gift Guide for those in search of quirky (and not-so-quirky) radio-themed gifts:

1. Chocolate Radio

I picked up this novelty radio at Archie McPhee in Seattle and there’s something incredibly satisfying about an item that is so unusual that you can’t find it anywhere online! It looks like a tasty chocolate bar, but sounds like a radio. It’s not the best radio. The tuner is comprised of a scan button and a reset button, so it was tough for me to locate many stations. A personal listening device, it does not have external speakers, but you can listen to it with the chocolate bean ear buds included with purchase.

Chocolate FM radio. Photo: J. Waits/Radio Survivor

2. WVKR’s Dolphin Shower Radio

After seeing the cute dolphin shaped shower radio posted on social media by WVKR (Vassar College), I was even more motivated to schedule a station visit. Lucky for me, there were still some of these promotional items on hand when I stopped by and I plopped down my donation so that I could have my very own dolphin shower radio. Although it’s tricky for me to get fantastic indoor reception on a shower radio in San Francisco, the adorable quotient makes me willing to put up with some static.

WVKR’s dolphin shower radio. Photo: J. Waits/Radio Survivor

3. The Radio Historian’s 2019 Calendar of Early Radio Remote Broadcasts

John Schneider puts together annual calendars featuring spectacular vintage photographs. The latest one includes “colorized photographs of field reporters transmitting from outside their broadcast studio.” A few older editions of the calendar are also available, with images of vintage radio buildings and studios.

Calendar and radio buffs will also enjoy Scott Fybush’s 2019 Tower Site Calendar. This will be the 18th edition of this wonderfully geeky foray into radio tower sites.

4. Haynes Retro Radio Kit

I’ve experimented with a few radio-making kits over the years, with varying levels of success. The 1970s-style radio design pictured on the box for the Haynes Retro Radio Kit piqued my interest; so I picked this up for a future radio-making foray. Unlike some of the other radios that I’ve made, that were all solely FM or AM, this one results in a combination AM/FM radio. A similar item, the Haynes Build your own FM Radio Calendar Kit is styled like an Advent calendar and features 24 daily experiments.

Haynes Retro Radio kit. Photo: J. Waits/Radio Survivor

5. Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film

I’m in the midst of reading the Tom Lewis book Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, which casts inventor Lee de Forest as a bit of a scallywag. The well-read tome and resulting Ken Burns documentary Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio has influenced popular perceptions of de Forest. In his extensive and well-researched biography of de Forest, Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television, and Film, Mike Adams points that out and works to complicate the story of Lee de Forest, highlighting his profound influence on radio, television and film.

6. Freeplay Encore Buddy Self-Powered Radio

In March, the inventor of the Freeplay hand-crank radio, Trevor Baylis, died at the age of 80. In 1991 he came up with the concept for a wind-up radio. The New York Times writes, “…he saw a television program that mentioned one obstacle in the growing AIDS crisis in Africa: Reliable information was not reaching many people, because electricity was scarce or nonexistent and batteries were prohibitively expensive. A radio that ran on muscle power, Mr. Baylis reasoned, would give everyone an opportunity to hear the news, not to mention listen to music.”

His hand-crank radio Freeplay Radio has been recognized for both its function and design and is even part of the collection at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

7. Software-defined-Radio

On episode 168 of the Radio Survivor show/podcast, we had a fascinating discussion with Thomas Witherspoon about how one can create a radio time machine by making radio spectrum recordings using a software-defined-radio (SDR). Essentially, it’s possible to capture everything on a given radio spectrum using that tool, so that you can, for example, save a glimpse of the AM radio dial in your community on a specific point in time. I’d be hard-pressed to recommend a specific SDR, so I’ll direct you to Witherspoon’s three-part primer on SDRs on his SWLing Post site.

8. Wooden Walkman Clutch

OK. It’s not a radio, but I think of Walkman cassette players as radio-adjacent. This wooden purse is imprinted to look like an old school Sony Walkman and I think it’s just adorable. It comes in red, white, or baby blue.

9. Wooden Phone Amplifier

Again. Not a radio, but vintage-leaning audio lovers might dig this petite “wood acoustic amplifier for smartphones/mobile devices,” which features an antique phonograph horn design. At the bargain price of $15.99, this is on my Cyber Monday wish list (hint hint).

10. Portable Shortwave Radio with Built-in Recorder

Our conversation with Thomas Witherspoon on last week’s Radio Survivor show/podcast reignited my interest in exploring shortwave radio. So, it’s likely the perfect time to take a look at this cool little portable radio that my colleague Paul reviewed earlier this year: the Tivdio V-115. It not only gets AM and FM radio, but also shortwave. A serious bonus is that it also has recording capabilities so that you can capture air checks of interesting radio that you encounter. Another option that Paul mentions in a follow-up review is the Kaito KA29, which also gets a variety of radio bands and has recording capabilities.

11. Membership in a Historical Radio Society or Radio Museum

My final suggestion this year is to gift your radio enthusiast pals with a membership to an organization that is working to preserve radio history. A few ideas include the California Historical Radio Society (which is building a museum in Alameda, California), the Maritime Radio Historical Society, the Antique Wireless Association, the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting, and the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention.

For other suggestions, see the radio clubs links on the Antique Wireless Association website.

More Gift Ideas

For even more suggestions, see the previous guides that we’ve put together over the years:

5 Funky Last Minute Gifts for Radio Fanatics (2016)

2014 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fanatics – From Radio in a Jar to Bike Radios (2014)

Holiday Gifts for Easy and Enjoyable Radio Listening (2014)

Ten Essential Radio Movies for the Holidays (2014)

Eclectic Gifts for the Radio, Podcast and Streaming Music Fan (or Nerd) (2013)

Holiday Gift Guide for Radio-Lovin’ Fashion Mavens (2013)

Happy Holidays: Here’s an Emergency Radio (2012)

Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Listeners and Budding Podcasters (2012)

2012 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans (2012)

Holiday Gifts for the Radio Survivor: Paul’s Recommended Gear (2011)

Great Radio History Books for the Holidays (2011)

2011 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans (2011)

2010 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans (2010)

Top Holiday Gifts for Radio Lovers (2009)

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Radio Review Follow-Up: The Tivdio V-115 – Still Great, But Not a DX Champ

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 27 May 2018 01:14:56 +0000

Back in March I released a video review of the Tivdio V-115 portable digital radio. I praised it for being very nice sounding – especially for being so small – having decent reception, and for being able to record airchecks to a microSD card.

After using the radio during some travels I decided to record a follow-up review based on its performance. While it’s been a good travel companion for listening to strong local stations, I wasn’t able to tune in some of the smaller, funkier little local stations that I hoped to record air checks of. Earlier I had heard some of these stations with an analog receiver, the Kaito WRX-911.

That isn’t a deal killer; I still use this radio nearly every day. But I thought it was worth a follow-up. I’ve also purchased another little radio with similar features, the Kaito KA29, which I will test out on my next trip to see if it performs any better. Already I’ve heard some results that make me optimistic.

Learn all about it in this video follow-up review:

The post Radio Review Follow-Up: The Tivdio V-115 – Still Great, But Not a DX Champ appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Building a Better Portable Turntable: The Modified Numark PT01USB

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 06:30:52 +0000

A couple of holiday seasons ago I wrote about some inexpensive turntables that are very good alternatives to buying a cheap plastic Crosley or Victrola suitcase-style portable record player. Though some audiophiles are a little hyperbolic about how quickly these players will destroy your precious, it is true that they take their toll over time. Plus, they really don’t sound good.

In fact, they’re all based on low-end left-over designs from the 80s and early 90s, with arguably lower build quality. These are the tinny, pop-and-click and skip prone record players that drove people to embrace the “perfect sound forever” of CDs in the 90s. Why re-embrace the bad old days?

At the same time, I really wanted to have a nice portable turntable for my office, or back yard, that didn’t suck. Despite years of keeping an eye out, it was clear that no such player has been made since the 1980s.

However, this search led me to a class of DJs who use a particular model of portable turntable to scratch and mix out in the field. Because of this growing community, aftermarket suppliers have stepped in to the mix to make parts that address many of the problems with inexpensive portable record players.

Though these parts are intended for mixing and scratching, I figured there was no reason they couldn’t be used to create a hi-fi portable record player that would be kind to your records and produce good sound (at least when connected to a decent pair of speakers).

Behold: The Modified Numark PT01USB

To learn more and see it in action, check out the video above.

Want to create your own? Here’s what you need:

Numark PT01USB
Ortofon Omega cartridge

In North America you can order Bihari Designs from Open Format in LA:
Bihari Tonearm
Bihari Easy Install Preamp

Outside North America, order your tonearm and preamp direct from Bihari Designs.

The post Building a Better Portable Turntable: The Modified Numark PT01USB appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Apple Kills Off Its First and Only FM Radio

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 12:01:09 +0000

Apple recently announced the end for two more of its iPod music player models, the iPod Shuffle and the iPod Nano. The cancellation of the latter also eliminates Apple’s first, and only, radio receiver.

While the iPod Touch remains in production, it’s really just an iPhone without a cellular phone function. Nice as it is, as with an iPhone, the only radio stations you can hear with an iPod Touch are those that stream over the internet. For all the rumors that iPhones have a latent, unactivated FM receiver hidden inside, no evidence of it has ever come to light. This, despite the radio industry’s persistent efforts to get wireless carriers just to activate the receivers already inside of many Android phones, or cajole device makers (or the FCC) to include radios across the board.

Frankly, I haven’t much considered the iPod Nano since its radio feature was first announced nearly eight years ago. While I was intrigued by Apple’s relatively innovative implementation, which included a “live pause” and PVR-like rewind function, I was never moved to actually buy one.

Seems the rest of my audio playback needs have been satisfied by my smartphone. So, instead of dropping $150 on a Nano, if I want to hear a radio I just drop a $15 portable into my bag. I guess that makes me part of the problem.

Of course, what I really want is an FM receiver inside my iPhone. Sure, I could get any number of Android phones that have a radio—and cost less to boot&mdashbut I prefer iOS and radio reception is not a deciding factor, even for a nerd like me.

Only a decade ago I didn’t think twice about carrying two different devices: a flip-phone for calls and texts, and a minidisc player for music on the go. That minidisc player even had an FM radio, and this set-up didn’t feel inconvenient at all. (In the pre-cellphone era my cassette walkmen usually had a radio, too.)

But a decade of smartphone use spoiled me with the joy of a single do-it-all (except terrestrial radio) device. Even though I might enjoy the higher resolution sound capabilities of today’s new breed digital audio players, the price of schlepping two gadgets is more than I want to pay.

Without a doubt, Apple’s cancellation of the iPod Nano (and Shuffle) has much more to do with getting out of the inexpensive MP3 player market than with getting out of the radio business. If you’re still in the market for a portable audio player it’s not hard to find one that also includes a radio, typically for a fraction of the Nano’s retail price. Now, these cheaper players won’t have the Nano’s cool pause and rewind functions, nor the Apple cache, but due to their cheapness you can also subject them to situations where you might not want to risk damaging your smartphone or iPod.

Unless the FCC is somehow convinced to make FM radios mandatory in smartphones (a very long shot) the Nano will go down as Apple’s first and only FM radio receiver.

The post Apple Kills Off Its First and Only FM Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Podcast #96 – Are Smart Speakers Smart for Community Radio?

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 07:05:32 +0000

Amazon Echo. Google Home. And soon, Apple’s HomePod. Smart speakers are quickly taking up residence in homes. Taking voice commands to deliver news, weather, music and more, they play a very radio-like role in people’s daily routine.

Radio journalist Brian Edwards-Tiekert joins to explain what these speakers can do, what they can’t, and what the implications are for community radio and podcasters. He recently completed a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University where one of his research topics was the relationship between smart speakers and local journalism, co-authoring a post on Medium with the findings.

Radio Survivor is a listener-supported podcast. You can support us two ways:

Make a monthly contribution through our Patreon campaign.

Make a one-time or recurring donation with any major credit card via PayPal.

Show Notes:

Brian Edwards-Tiekert at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship
Will Alexa Destroy Us? On Medium, by Gabriel Spitzer and Brian Edwards-Tiekert
How and Why Public Comments on Net Neutrality Make a Difference
Podcast #92 – Conspiracy Theory & Community Radio includes Matthew Lasar’s explanation on the value of comments in FCC proceedings

The post Podcast #96 – Are Smart Speakers Smart for Community Radio? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Progress Report: Archiving Cassettes & Minidiscs

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 17 May 2017 06:09:55 +0000

As I’ve written before, I’m in the process of archiving my collection of audio work that’s on audiocassette and minidisc. It’s a process that has unfolded in fits and starts over the last few years, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m nearing my last couple dozen tapes and discs, after digitizing about 300 in total. So here’s a progress report.

For the most part, the contents of these physical media are programs I’ve created myself—interviews, radio airchecks and the like—and other irreplaceable audio of an important or sentimental nature, like mixtapes or albums that are not on a streaming service or easily obtained on CD. A minidisc player was my main portable audio device from about 1997 to 2007, so I did amass a sizeable repository of albums I dubbed to MD and mixtapes. But I deemed only a handful of these to merit archiving.

As I charted my progress in digitizing all the tapes and discs, one of my concerns became: What would I do with all this media? I didn’t relish the thought of simply tossing hundreds of minidiscs and cassettes into a dumpster; that is both too wasteful and environmentally unfriendly. Yet, the contents of these artifacts is of interest to few people, in anyone at all.

eBay: Where Old Media Lives (and Sells)

I was relieved to discover that there is actually an active trade in used minidiscs and cassettes on eBay. The popularity of minidiscs, in particular, surprised me, since I felt like I couldn’t even give them away if I tried.

However, it turns out minidisc is a very robust medium, with many ardent enthusiasts still making use of the first practical digital recording format for average consumers. In fact, I can attest to this robustness. Out of the approximately 400 discs that I’ve either digitized or reviewed and reformatted, fewer than a half-dozen failed. Even amongst those, the failures weren’t with the little disc itself, but rather the plastic housing, wherein the protective shutter wouldn’t close or open correctly.

Moreover, at the start of this project I had four working minidisc recorders, all between 12 and 14 years old (one has since been sold off). The only niggling defect is the LED display on two models, which dims over time. Yet their playback and recording functions remained.

Even more surprising is that used minidiscs are going for between $1 and $3 each on eBay, which is the same range I paid for them new in the mid–2000s. I chalk this up to the fact that they haven’t been manufactured for at least five years, new-old-stock is drying up, and used ones still work well. It makes me happy that not only do my used discs end up in the hands of someone who will use them, rather than a dumpster, but I get a few bucks, to boot.

Particularly valuable are Hi-MDs, which are the 1 GB discs introduced in the mid–2000s. The culmination of mindisc technology just before flash memory recorders and smartphones would push the format aside, this final iteration of the technology allowed you to record uncompressed audio and upload it to your computer over USB. Used Hi-MD discs go for about $10 a pop, and I sold a couple of new, still-sealed ones for more than $20 per. I’m pretty sure that’s more than I paid a dozen years ago (not counting inflation).

Also in demand are the last generation Hi-MD capable minidisc recorders, which fetch hundreds of dollars in good, working condition. With luck these prices will hold up until I’ve finished my archiving project.

Used cassettes, even, can be sold for a dollar or two each, provided they’re still in working condition. The caveat here is that only the higher quality chrome and metal tapes from well-known brands like TDK and Maxell command these prices. Presumably the buyers have a need to make decent quality reordings, and new tapes from these brands are no longer manufactured.

After Digitizing, Off to the Archive

Still, I must insist that this project is not, and has never been about cashing in on my used blank media. That said, I’m pretty certain that I’m still not quite making back my initial investment; of course, that was never the point to begin with. It’s simply good to know that all this plastic and ferric oxide isn’t headed directly into a landfill.

Now, just because I’ve digitized all this audio onto a hard disk doesn’t mean that it’s safe forever. Hard drives fail–often more easily than a single cassette or minidisc. So I’ve got two copies stored in the cloud, with paid services where at least I have a service agreement giving me some measure of protection. I’m also making a second hard disk copy.

The next step is to organize everything better and add appropriate metadata, especially to the archives of my old radio show and associated interviews. Then I plan to begin uploading these files to the Internet Archive, and linking back those archives to my radio show’s website. I know there are a lot of dead links to audio files on the site because I moved hosts over the years. Giving everything a home at the Internet Archive should help lend even a little more permanence.

Though not every episode of the show was a gem, the show does serve as a history of sorts of the indepdendent media and media justice movements of the 2000s, which may be of interest to historians or people who were there.

I must admit it is satisfying to watch the to-do pile of tapes and discs dwindle, and then get shipped off to new owners who will put them to use. I think it will be even more satifsying to get my radio show archives in order and preserved at the Internet Archive.

As Matthew reminds us when he mines forgotten audio treasures at the IA, even at the time when broadcasts are transmitted and recorded, it’s tough to know what future interest or significance they may have decades down the line. That’s why I urge every independent, college or community radio producer to take care of your recorded works and considering preserving them at the IA, if nowhere else.

The post Progress Report: Archiving Cassettes & Minidiscs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Preserving Audio That’s on Cassette

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 14:01:38 +0000

In my continuing quest to stay a step ahead of recording media degradation and obsolescence, I have undertaken the digitization of my remaining audiocassette collection. Last year I wrote about preserving my archive of interviews and air checks on minidisc, with the hope that the post would be informative and maybe compel some readers with similar archives and still-functioning players to get moving.

I’m spurred to action on the tapes because I still own a reliable and functioning cassette deck and it’s increasingly difficult to obtain decent quality decks in working condition. Sure, a quick Ebay or Craigslist search may turn up dozens of decks stated to be in working order because someone quickly played a test tape in it, but components made of rubber and plastic easily degrade and break, often meaning a repair that costs several times what you paid.

You can also find a ready supply of USB-equipped cassette decks on Amazon and other online retailers that appear ready-made for the task of preserving your cassette collection. However, a little bit of research and reading reviews from knowledgeable people indicates that this modern generation of decks most resemble the bottom of the barrel, with flimsy and often slapdash construction. As it stands, no reputable major consumer or professional audio brand manufactures or sells new cassette decks.

That said, there are several record and stereo stores in my town which sell used audio gear that has been checked by a technician, or refurbished as necessary. If you find some of these stores in your local area that’s probably the best place to start if you need a deck. You’ll probably pay a little more than on Ebay or Craigslist, but have a better chance to get a working unit with a low-hassle return or repair if needed.

Pioneer days

My cassette deck is a late–90s vintage Pioneer CT-W606DR. By no means is this a high end model. It’s more of a bog-standard dubbing deck of the time, but with an interesting and rare feature: digital noise reduction. Readers of a certain age who amassed big cassette collections may remember how Dolby noise reduction could be persnickety. Turn on Dolby for some pre-recorded tapes and the hiss went away while leaving a relatively clean audio signal. But then try it on another tape and the high end would disappear along with the hiss.

With the CT-W606DR you can leave the Dolby turned off for all tapes and yet the hiss is cleaned up nicely without any significant degradation of the audio that I can detect. I’m certain this process isn’t perfect, but it’s a rare cassette that has such high fidelity to begin with.

Recording Zoom-Zoom

To make this process go as quickly as possible I’ve connected the outputs of the cassette deck to the line input of my 8 year-old and still-kicking Zoom H2 portable digital recorder. This way I don’t have to tie up a computer doing the real-time digitization. You could use any decent quality portable digital recorder that has a true line input. However, I would caution against less expensive digital voice recorders, since they’re intended more for voice dictation, and not the highest quality. Voice recorders also tend to only record in compressed MP3s.

Recording directly into a computer is fine, too. I have some specific advice for that route below.

A quick note about using the Zoom H2: you should keep the input level set at 100 at all times. As I learned from a blog post by media preservationist Richard Hess, setting the level to lower than that sometimes results in the audio being clipped and distorted. If the audio level seems too low you’re better off increasing the volume in an audio editor application later rather than having the Zoom amplify it by setting the record level higher than 100. I don’t know if this advice applies to the newer H2n model or any of the other Zoom recorder models.

Do the WAV

For archiving I highly recommend avoiding saving your audio files as MP3. Instead I recommend recording in uncompressed WAV files at CD quality (44.1kHz sampling rate at 16 bits) or higher. Then, if you’re really concerned about hard drive space (though with the price of USB hard drives dropping like a rock, I wouldn’t be), you can compress the files as lossless FLAC or lossless ALAC. These file formats do not throw away any audio data, and both are relatively easy to convert to other formats, like WAV, MP3 or AAC. FLAC has the added benefit of being open source, but it is not natively supported on Apple devices.

My advice to use uncompressed WAV to record is not just about audio quality. While an MP3 file may sound perfectly good to your ears, the files are much more limited in what you’re able to do with them. You can edit them, but you’ll also be introducing another compression cycle if you save the edited file to MP3 or another compressed format. If you play MP3s on the radio, the resulting internet stream–which is also compressed–can introduce distortion that can be very audible. So, at this point in time, the storage savings isn’t worth the compromise in utility and quality.

Although my cassette deck has auto-reverse, my experience is that the sound quality suffers a bit when playing back the B-side on reverse. So I only use the deck playing forward, choosing to turn over the tapes manually.

Give it a little trim

Once I’ve digitized a cassette to a WAV file then I transfer it to my computer, where I trim the heads and tails. You can do this in any audio editing software–the free Audacity software works great. Because I’m working with an uncompressed WAV file, there is no loss of quality.

Some of the cassettes I’m digitizing have music, albums that are out-of-print or otherwise unique or one-of-a-kind. With these I like to break down the WAV file of one side into the individual songs. You can do this with an editor like Audacity, but it’s kind of tedious. For this task I really like the MacOS app Fission. The app is specifically designed to cut up audio files, even MP3s, quickly and without loss. If there is a little bit of silence between songs Fission does a good job of auto detecting individual tracks. Then you just tell the software to export individual WAV files.

Never metadata I didn’t like

Another important step is to input metadata into your files. Right out of the recorder the file will probably just have a generic name and number. The first thing I do is rename the file to something clear, like “JohnDoe_interview–1996–06–05.wav.” I use the year-month-day date format because then when files are in alphabetical order they’ll be in date order too.

Most audio file formats also have additional metadata that you encode in the file, including fields like artist name, track title, album title, year, genre and comments. This is the info you see when you play a file in iTunes or on your mobile device. I always fill out this data as completely as I can. In Audacity you can edit the metadata by clicking File, then selecting Open Metadata Editor. iTunes also lets you edit a file’s metadata by right-clicking on the track and selecting Get Info. Fission also has a good metadata editor.

For tapes that have extensive notes on the liner j-card or some nice artwork, I also scan that in. If you don’t have a scanner you could take a picture with your smartphone or digital camera. Most audio files also permit artwork to be part of the metadata. I don’t know how to do this in Audacity, but with iTunes and Fission it’s just a drag and drop operation. I usually also save the artwork as a JPG or PDF file in the same folder as the audio files.

Then if the file is something I want to share with someone online or take along on my mobile device I may create a MP3 or AAC version of it for that purpose, being very careful to keep my full-quality WAV, FLAC or ALAC original. In most cases all the metadata will be included in the MP3 or AAC file.

Duplicate, duplicate

Very importantly, once I’ve digitized my tape I make sure I have more than one copy. I keep one copy on a hard drive which I back up into the cloud using Crashplan, and then at least one more burned to CD-R or DVD-R. As mentioned in my minidisc post, I’m considering uploading my radio work to the Internet Archive for further safekeeping, though I haven’t yet.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to make multiple copies. One of the biggest advantages of digital files is how easily they are copied, so it just makes sense. Also, if possible, keep a copy in a different physical location, like a office or a relative’s house–just in case of a real disaster, like a fire or flood.

Options and final advice

Now, this is not the only way to create decent digital copies of cassettes; it just happens to be the most efficient workflow for me.

For instance, you don’t need to use a digital audio recorder. You can just connect a cassette deck to your computer. The main stumbling block is that many modern computers (especially Macs) don’t come equipped with stereo audio inputs any longer. While some PCs still do, the quality rangers from acceptable to poor. Because the inside of a computer is hostile environment for audio, it’s not unusual for noise and hiss to be high, or for there to be chirp-like artifacts introduced.

For digitizing direct to a computer I recommend a USB audio interface. It shouldn’t be a huge expense–decent ones, like this Behringer UCA202 start at just $30. Just make sure it has a line-level input. A microphone input will not work correctly.

Finally, I strongly recommend using a cassette deck rather than a Walkman style portable player. Some vintage models were truly great sounding, but finding a unit that is working properly will be more difficult than finding a deck. You can find new portable cassette players, too, but they seem too be even worse quality than the decks you can buy, even the ones with a USB port that advertise being designed to digitize tapes. On top of these problems, with a portable tape player you’ll be forced to use the headphone output, which will introduce a little more noise.

If you don’t have access to a functioning vintage cassette deck and have to buy something new, then definitely stick with a tape deck. Though I don’t have any personal experience with them, the decks from Ion, Pyle, or Marantz Professional (which isn’t as professional as it used to be), seem like they’ll be OK. In fact, I think they’re all the same deck, just with different brand names on them. I would buy one from a retailer that won’t hassle you over returns, since I understand quality control can be one of the biggest questions.

Now, let’s preserve some cassette audio history!

The post Preserving Audio That’s on Cassette appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Technics SL-1200G: The Wheels of Steel Are Back, But There’s a Catch

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 01:03:18 +0000

DJs, vinyl-heads and radio nerds rejoiced at the unveiling this week of the new Technics SL-1200G turntable. It’s an all-new version of the venerated DJ deck that ruled clubs, radio studios and many living rooms for nearly 40 years until being discontinued in 2010. However, for many there’s a grey cloud looming over this sunny news.

The reason for this turntable’s enduring popularity is because it, well, endures. It was a rock-solid direct-drive design that could survive the inevitable wear, tear and abuse suffered by any equipment installed in a DJ booth, all while literally never losing a beat. Because the motor directly drives the platter the record comes up to speed quickly, and gives the DJ precise control over that speed, making it the perfect tool for beat matching, scratching and mixing. It also sounded really good, and could be had for about $500 – $700. Not a bad investment for a piece of equipment that could last a true lifetime.

When Panasonic–Technics’ parent–discontinued the turntable six years ago it cited two contributing factors. First was a decline in demand for analog playback devices. Second was a growing difficulty in sourcing necessary parts. I had heard rumblings that the tooling used to manufacture the turntables was simply wearing out and Panasonic declined to invest in the assumedly expensive process of making new ones.

While the second reason made sense, many observers were puzzled by the first reason, since even then the vinyl resurgence was well underway–for instance the 3rd annual Record Store Day happened in 2010–and the number of turntables on the market was increasing at the time, not decreasing. It seemed like Panasonic was grossly misreading the marketplace, leaving money on the table, leaving many DJs in the lurch, and causing a surge in the price of second-hand 1200s.

Obviously, Panasonic saw the error in its ways, announcing the imminent release of a new 1200 last summer, followed by its public debut this past week at the Consumer Electronics Show. What Hi-Fi? has a hands-on overview of the pre-production unit at the show for those who want to dig into the details.

But here’s the rain on the parade. If somewhat affordable pricing was one of the original 1200’s virtues, that quality has not carried over to the new SL–1200G. The fresh ’table will debut in a limited-edition 50th anniversary version, at a eye-popping cost of $4000. Those who don’t need to rush to get the very first units off the factory line can with for the non-limited edition, which will cost… just a little less than $4000. Wow.

Panasonic says the pricing reflects that the 1200G is an all-new and much improved design. There’s no reason to doubt that assertion. Still, that places the new 1200s well out of reach for LPFMs and community radio stations looking to equip for vinyl playback, as well as small clubs, new DJs and most folks who would love to have a nice turntable at home, but can’t quite part with four grand.

That said, there are reasonable alternatives. Read my post on reasonably priced turntables for radio stations to find a suitable substitute that won’t trash your LPs or break your bank.

The post Technics SL-1200G: The Wheels of Steel Are Back, But There’s a Catch 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.

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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.

Behind the Scenes of the Radio Survivor Podcast

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 21:29:42 +0000

In our second VLOG we go behind the scenes of the Radio Survivor Podcast. For the podcast nerds, Paul gives a tour of the production gear and set up, then Eric reflects on the feature interview with essayist and podcaster Chauncey DeVega from episode #19.

Let us know what you think in the comments, or drop us an email to podcast@radiosurvivor.com.

The post Behind the Scenes of the Radio Survivor Podcast appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Chromecast Audio Makes for an Even Better Internet Radio

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 20:29:40 +0000

I’ve written before how a Chromecast is a great and inexpensive way to bring internet radio into your living room, or anywhere you have a television. Now, Google is taking streaming audio one step further with the release today of Chromecast Audio.

Like the original video Chromecast, the Chromecast Audio receives content you send from your mobile device or computer, but the new one is specifically designed to connect and play over a stereo system or powered speakers. It also does it for a very low price: $35.

On the surface this may seem a lot like Bluetooth, except there are a couple of differences that may be significant.

Significantly for those who care about sound quality, the Chromecast Audio works over wi-fi, which means that audio isn’t recompressed like it is over Bluetooth. Also, according to its specs, it supports high resolution uncompressed audio up to 24 bits at 96 KHz, much higher than the CD standard of 16 bits at 44.1 KHz. This is higher than Apple’s AirPlay, which permits streaming to an Apple TV, AirPort Express or other compatible device, but only at CD quality.

Chromecast Audio also has an optical digital output, which lets you connect it to a compatible receiver, powered speaker or headphone amp, potentially delivering even better sound than the device’s analog outputs.

Additionally, when using compatible apps with a regular Chromecast you actually don’t stream the audio from your device, so much as hand off the stream to the Chromecast. That means you can do other things on your device, including listen to a different audio app. It’s not entirely clear if the the Chromecast Audio will operate this way, but it sure would be cool if it did. Then you wouldn’t be quite so tethered to your device, letting the music play on even if your phone runs out of juice or crashes.

Up to now one of the biggest limitations for many people for using the Chromecast for music was the lack of support for Spotify. That ends today, with the announcement that Spotify will support both the video Chromecast and the Chromecast Audio. Of course, Chromecast is already supported by Google’s own Play Music, as well as other services like Rdio, Pandora and Songza.

Now, the Chromecast Audio sure starts to sound a lot like the Sonos system (which I’ll be writing more about tomorrow), especially the Connect audio component which adds the Sonos system to any stereo system. Only the Chromecast costs about $300 less. So if all you want to do is send high quality audio from your phone to an existing stereo, the Chromecast Audio looks like a pretty good buy.

However, one of the things that I like about Sonos is that it’s actually independent of all your devices. While the desktop and mobile app control a Sonos speaker or Connect, the Sonos system isn’t dependent on the app. You can use any computer or smartphone running the Sonos app to control any Sonos device at any time, no matter which one you used to start up a stream. You can even start and stop, and control volume right on the Sonos device, and the app itself is pretty powerful and intuitive (again, more tomorrow about that). Plus when you factor in the cost of good powered speakers to use with the Chromecast, the price disparity narrows quite a bit.

That isn’t to say that I’m not a little bit excited about the Chromecast Audio and anxious to try one out myself, especially since the cost is so low. It seems like a no-brainer for anyone who has a decent stereo or nice powered speakers and wants to easily connect her smartphone wirelessly, and with higher fidelity than Bluetooth.

Right now the Chromecast Audio is only available directly from Google, and it comes with a free 90 day subscription to Google Play All Access, for commercial-free on-demand streaming.

The post Chromecast Audio Makes for an Even Better Internet Radio appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Digital Watch: Is the New Apple TV Your Next Internet Radio? Is HD Radio Adoption Like Color TV’s 50 Years Ago?

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 21:29:09 +0000

Apple held its perennial fall unveiling today, and amongst the updated products on display were a new, bigger iPad Pro and a fresh Apple TV. Of course, you can listen to internet radio on an iPad, though I don’t see how the iPad Pro will be any better for that application than any other model.

I am a little intrigued by the new Apple TV, which is a product that has sorely needed a refresh for a while. Though I’m now a Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV user (and I owe you a review of Fire TV radio apps), before getting those devices I considered Apple TV several times, but was put off by how infrequently Apple updates it, apparently treating it as a “hobby” rather than an important product.

Apple has provided a pretty nice ecosystem for listening to internet radio and podcasts via iTunes on MacBooks and iMacs for quite some time. Apple TV has shipped with the Radio app pretty much since the beginning of the product line, which brings in streaming stations in addition to Apple’s own iTunes Radio. It also features a dedicated podcasts app.

Frustratingly for current Apple TV owners, up to now there has been no direct access to Beats 1 Radio. The new version of this set-top device adds Apple Music, which includes Beats 1. Though I haven’t seen the new device yet, I presume and hope that Apple retains the Radio app, too. At the same time, a new App Store means that third-party radio apps should become available, potentially expanding the range of audio entertainment options.

At a starting price of $149, the new Apple TV is a much pricier option for living room internet radio compared to comparable competitors like Roku. Of course, Apple TV is much more than radio (as all these set-top devices are), so the added gaming and streaming video features are likely the principal selling points, along with the tight integration with other Apple devices and services, like Apple Music.

I don’t think I’ll be buying a new Apple TV, but I’d be glad to take it for a test ride and review if one somehow crosses my path.

John Anderson on DTS/iBiquity Deal

HD Radio historian and expert John Anderson has weighed in on DTS’s acquisition of iBiquity last week. He observes that the sale likely saved iBiquity from “a bailout (presumably from broadcasters) or trusteeship.”

He also notes that most of the research and development on HD Radio has come from broadcasters, which leads him to wonder, “Will these and other development-partners continue to throw resources into a system now held by a non-broadcast company with its own Wall Street presence?”

Anderson doesn’t foresee any major changes in the near term, since iBiquity is retaining its current corporate structure, though he does spell out some best and worst-case scenarios. I recommending checking out his post.

HD Radio Adoption Rate Is Like Color TV?

Speaking of HD Radio, Radio Magazine talked with the recently retired SVP of engineering for CBS Radio, Glynn Walden, who has been a long-time advocate of that technology. He compared the slow adoption of that technology to that of the adoption rates of FM radio in the 1950s and color TV in the 1960s, which each took well more than a decade to catch on. It’s an interesting parallel, though I also think that technologies are adopted a much more rapid rate now, more than fifty years after color TV’s debut.

Comparing HD to FM is like comparing touch-tone dialing to smartphones. Touch tone was introduced in 1963 and it wasn’t widely used until the breakup of Ma Bell in the 1980s. Whereas the first modern smartphone (Palm Treo 650) was arguably introduced in 2004, leading to 50% adoption rate just a decade later.

Consumers generally buy, upgrade and replace their technology more often than they did fifty years ago, in part because it’s all much cheaper in real dollars than it was then. HD Radio hasn’t been adopted as quickly as smartphones because it doesn’t offer significant upgrades over regular broadcast–especially on FM–and those upgrades, like additional channels, are not as easy to access because of the compromises of squeezing HD into the existing analog radio bands.

As smartphones show, a new consumer technology platform really shouldn’t take more than a decade to find wide adoption. That seemed like a reasonable span of time in the 1960s, or even the 1980s. But in the post-DVD era (at that time the most quickly adopted consumer electronics platform in history) HD Radio’s time to adoption is glacial and more indicative of fundamental flaws than anything else.

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Preserving Your Audio Legacy & the Perils of Minidiscs

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 18:01:03 +0000

If you’re at all like me, you’ve got boxes upon boxes of audiocassettes, minidiscs and CD-Rs filled with air checks, interviews, and all manner of audio detritus that you may have produced or just recorded over the years. Sometimes this motley collection feels like nothing but an albatross that I move from domicile to new domicile, for fear of losing some of my sonic legacy. As playback devices die, media degrade and formats slowly go obsolete I start to wonder if all I’m really toting around are boxes of flaking oxide and decaying aluminum substrate.

At the same time, even if dozens of these minidiscs are just air checks of DJ sets, this media archive can represent more than mere nostalgia. You never know when that obscure touring band you talked with will go on to find fame and success. I’m pretty sure the guy who was a college kid in 1974 is pretty sure he held onto this tape of his interview with Rush at a Dallas nightclub.

In my case I produced a weekly radio show about grassroots and community media called “Mediageek” for seven years, from 2002 through 2009. Because I also distributed online I have pretty good digital file archives of most episodes, though I’m discovering gaps. Beyond the finished shows I have dozens of unedited interviews, lectures, panels and actualities that were source material. This includes phone calls from independent journalists as they were being rounded up by police at the 2004 RNC in New York City, as well as audio from micropower radio pioneers Mbanna Kantako and Stephen Dunifer. Pretty much all of this is on minidisc.

Beginning in the mid–90s, going on for another 15 years or so, minidisc was the least expensive and the most convenient way to record and edit digital audio. However, the incipient problem with minidisc is that Sony, the format’s inventor, stopped manufacturing players in 2011. While there are plenty of used minidisc recorders floating around, and even pro-audio brand TASCAM still sells one model for $800, the supply of working decks will inevitably decline. As that happens the price for increasingly scarce decks that function will go up. That means time is of the essence for someone like me who knows he has hours of irreplaceable audio on minidisc.

What slows down or stops most people in transferring their minidiscs to hard disk for copying and archiving is that most of this work has to be done in real-time–one 74 minute disc requires 74 minutes to play back and capture. While this pace was common for copying most audio just a little more than a decade ago, these days we’re accustomed to ripping a full CD in just a few minutes. So, it’s tough to make the time commitment required to get that process rolling.

I still own several portable minidisc recorders that still seem to function. But I’m particularly lucky to have the very last one that Sony produced, the MZ-RH1. I’m fortunate because that’s the one with which Sony fulfilled all minidisc aficionados dreams, by endowing it with the ability to upload audio from any minidisc over USB at about 5–10x speed. Plus, you can save the audio in uncompressed and widely-compatible WAV files, about the most standard audio format
in the world.

Nevertheless, there are a few catches. The biggest one is that a minidisc recorder is not like a flash drive–you can’t just plug it in and transfer your files like so many digital pictures. Instead you have to use Sony’s proprietary SonicStage software which takes care of the transfers and also converts your files to WAV format.

That would be OK enough, except that the last version of the software shipped in 2007, and Sony no longer supplies downloads of it or patches it for new operating systems. Thus, you’d better have the CD that shipped with your recorder, or be willing to take your chances with downloads you find elsewhere online. Also, Windows XP is the most reliable choice for running SonicStage, itself a now unsupported operating system.

As it turns out I have an aging netbook that won’t run anything more modern than XP. And, because I was still using my minidisc recorder in 2007, I found a copy of the software in my archives. So today I plugged the recorder in and was absolutely thrilled to start ripping minidiscs.

I’m ready to stop hauling around boxes of minidiscs, so I would still be ready to start this project even if I had to transfer them in real-time. However, I would probably be a bit more selective than I can afford to be right now, when I can upload about ten discs in an hour.

If you’re sitting on a pile of minidiscs it’s my strong advice that you think about capturing them sooner rather than later. I’m happy to say that I’ve found the discs themselves to be quite robust–so far every one I’ve tried still works. It’s the survival of the players I’m less optimistic about.

Ironically, if your archives are mostly on cassette–a medium declared dead several times over in the last two decades–you probably have more leeway. The only caveat is that the decay rate of tapes is unpredictable, especially if they’ve been stored in hot garages or musty basements.

Ultimately, with just about any storage format time is never really on your side. While minidisc is an obvious case, I’ve had many a CD-R fail, and I’m sure most of us have had a hard drive, thumb drive or memory card completely crash with our valuable data on it. Even if you have a copy on a still-current format, you’d be well advised to make sure you have a second or third copy, too.

What kind of audio goldmine are you sitting on, or moving from house to house? And how are you dealing with it (or managing your denial)? Let us know in the comments.

The post Preserving Your Audio Legacy & the Perils of Minidiscs appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Digital Watch: Bluetooth Is Magic for Podcasts and Internet Radio

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 03:06:49 +0000

Call me late to the party, but I’ve finally fallen in love with Bluetooth audio streaming. At this point most readers should be familiar with Bluetooth, which facilitates pretty easy wireless connections between devices of all kinds. In this case I’m specifically discussing using Bluetooth to send audio from a computer or mobile device to headphones, speaker or stereo.

Now, Bluetooth has been around a good decade, and those little Bluetooth headsets have been hanging off people’s ears for nearly as long. I even picked one up a few years ago to make it easier to listen to podcasts while walking or riding my bike without getting tangled up in cables.

But aside from that convenience, I otherwise disregarded the development of other Bluetooth audio devices. I had a perfectly nice rechargeable iPhone dock that I used on my patio, and was otherwise happy to plug my smartphones into stereos and speakers via a headphone cable. Sure, it could be a pain when I misplaced the cable or the connection got weak and scratchy, but nothing I couldn’t prepare for or deal with.

In the last year, however, it seems like Bluetooth speakers went from being pricey toys to becoming near commodity items. On top of that, a number of companies started offering higher-quality powered speakers and Bluetooth receivers to plug into your stereo or existing speakers, all promising a step up in fidelity from the previous generation devices.

Sound quality was my biggest point of resistance. Until recently the Bluetooth headphones I’d heard were adequate for podcasts and phone calls, but pretty lackluster with music. Listening in the car was a much better experience. Although Bluetooth uses lossy compression to deliver audio, in the car with road noise and other sonic intrusions I really don’t notice much difference compared to a wired connection, and what difference I do hear is fleeting mostly not bothersome.

What finally convinced me was driving some rental cars and riding in friends’ cars with built-in Bluetooth. Not having to remember a cable, or deal with the beat-up cable already attached to a rental, immediately ramped up the convenience by a factor of ten. So does the fact that most in-dash stereos control over your mobile device so you don’t have to futz with it. Plus, you can leave your phone in your pocket, bag or glovebox, rather than sitting out, and sliding around, so you can keep the cable connected.

That experience drove me to check out small portable Bluetooth speakers, and I picked one up online for a song that’s about the size of a baseball. What sound quality compromises exist are mostly due to the size of the speaker, and not the Bluetooth technology. Being able to take it just about anywhere I want a little music or entertainment without messing with cables or power outlets pretty much makes up for that.

As I recently was planning some upgrades and changes in my home stereo I was also considering adding a high-fidelity Bluetooth receiver. Auditioning equipment at a local stereo store, I settled on a new stereo preamplifier for my system. Looking closes at its specs, I realized that it includes a free Bluetooth adapter that plugs into a USB port on the front panel. Score!

After getting the preamp installed at home I gave the Bluetooth function a whirl, playing both some podcasts and music on my smartphone. Even though iPhones don’t support the higher quality aptX Bluetooth standard, I found the fidelity to be pleasing and quite good enough for talk programs, internet radio or background listening. Since I play digital music using a Sonos Connect I doubt I’ll use Bluetooth for music too often, but it’s nice for podcasts, continuing to listen to something I started on my mobile device, or for when a visiting friend wants to share a song on her phone.

I’m not anywhere near ready to make a Bluetooth driven stereo my main system, especially for critical listening. But the convenience of Bluetooth is undeniable for portable listening, the car, or travel. For me, Bluetooth has helped me listen to more podcasts and internet radio as I do housework, spend time outside, or stay at hotels.

Author Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Therefore I declare that Bluetooth is magic!

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Have you ever had a “paranormal” experience with radio?

Matthew Lasar — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 19:32:02 +0000

Late last year Scientific American posted a fascinating commentary on an “anomalous event” with an old radio receiver. What caught my eye was that it was penned by Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer. It recounted his wedding to Jennifer Graf, who had been raised in Köln, Germany—in part by her grandfather, who died when she was 16. Prior to the wedding, many of Jennifer’s heirloom possessions had just arrived via mail from Köln. These included her grandpa’s 1978 Philips 070 transistor radio, which, despite Shermer’s best efforts, could not be resuscitated. Finally they gave up and put the device in a desk drawer in their bedroom.

Then came the day of their betrothal. They returned from City Hall and exchanged vows and rings at home. Jennifer was feeling a bit sad, wishing that her grandfather could be present for the occasion.

Suddenly, they heard music coming from somewhere. They rummaged around the house looking for laptops or a stray mobile phone whose alarm might have gone off, but to no avail. Then the couple realized where the sound was coming from:

At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I haven’t seen since the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. ‘That can’t be what I think it is, can it?’ she said. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out her grandfather’s transistor radio, out of which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for minutes. ‘My grandfather is here with us,’ Jennifer said, tearfully. ‘I’m not alone’.”

The radio played classical music for the rest of the day, then it stopped, “and has remained silent ever since,” Shermer noted.

I share Skeptic‘s general assessment of most “paranormal” claims. But I also agree with Shermer’s concluding comments: that we should remain open to the mysterious. I’ve had experiences that transcended mere coincidence and that to this day I cannot explain. On the other hand, I make no effort to read psychic or similar narratives into them. To borrow the line from the Scientist Dude in all those B-Movies: “There’s got to be a [scientific | rational | somethingorother] explanation for this.” We just don’t know what it is yet.

Which brings me to the Question of the Day. Have you ever had an “anomalous” experience with radio or some similar electronic listening gadget? If so, do tell.

BTW: The Radio Museum has some good images of the Philip 070. It was a nice little gadget.

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Retro Radio Farm and an Archive of Radio History

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 11:28:38 +0000

Happy New Year! For your holiday weekend enjoyment I thought I’d share a couple of fun radio-related sites I’ve been made aware of.

First, is the Retro Radio Farm, sent to me by Jenny. As described by MessyNessy Chic, it’s an Etsy store run by “a music box wizard of sorts, specialising in bringing some of the most beautiful vintage radios back to life and better yet, into the 21st century.”

The Portland, Oregon based company restores vintage radios while also adding modern features like an MP3 player and Bluetooth. But, crucially, they all still receive radio broadcasts, too.

Take a look at some of these beauties. It takes a lot of self-control not to max out my credit card.

Up next is AmericanRadioHistory.com, which I learned about courtesy of the SWLing Post. This site touts “two million pages of AM FM & TV broadcasting history online,” in the form of magazines, technical documents, books, directories and other printed matter.

You can check out the Fall 1979 Arbitron ratings for markets across the country, a New York City listener’s guide from February 1968 featuring a profile of Pacifica station WBAI, or The Broadcasting Yearbook from 1935. Seriously, I’m destined to lose days reading this site.

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Radio, Music and Podcast Recommendations for Your Sonos

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:13:23 +0000

If you received a new Sonos then you’ve got a great portal for listening to radio, music and podcasts with nice sound quality. This is our recommendation guide to the sources available on the system. I’ve tried every one of them and provide a short capsule review for each.

In addition to sound quality and convenient operation, I particularly like how the Sonos system connects seamlessly to most major streaming radio and music services. To me, the killer feature is the ability to create playlists that combine tracks from different services, like Spotify, along with tracks from your own library.

These are my recommendations for getting started with Sonos for listening to music, radio and podcasts.

Broadcast and Satellite Radio

These include both free and subscription services for getting your radio fix.

DAR.fm – DAR stands for Digital Audio Recorder, and it’s essentially a cloud-based DVR for radio. While podcasts give you on demand access to many popular radio shows, not every show out there is podcasted, especially music shows and many local and national commercial talk shows. DAR lets you record their live streams for later playback, just a like a radio TiVo. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. Learn more in our review of the service.
SiriusXM – Get access to hundreds of satellite radio stations, including Howard Stern’s channels and commercial-free music channels without using a satellite radio receiver. This service costs $14.99 a month for internet-only, or you can add the internet service to a satellite radio plan for $4.00 a month.
TuneIn Radio – TuneIn is nearly ubiquitous across all sorts of devices, and its availability on Sonos means you have access to an enormous catalog of broadcast and internet-only streaming radio for free.

Lossless Streaming Music

In September Deezer Elite introduced the first lossless, full CD-quality streaming music service in the US. A little more than a month later Tidal debuted, offering a competing uncompressed service. Both of these services offer on-demand access to an enormous catalog of music, and are now available on Sonos. Here’s an overview.

Deezer Elite – I reviewed this service in November and found that a real sound quality advantage compared to MP3s and other compressed music services. That said, this is most obvious with critical listening, and less important for background music. Deezer Elite is only available on Sonos, though subscribers can access the compressed premium service on web browser and mobile apps. With an introductory price of $9.99 a month the service is a great value, costing the same as compressed services like Spotify and Rhapsody.
Tidal – I’ve just started listening to Tidal, and my initial impressions are that its fidelity is comparable to Deezer Elite. Tidal’s primary advantage is that the full uncompressed service is available on multiple platforms, including web browsers and mobile apps. The disadvantage is that it costs $19.99 a month–twice as much as Deezer Elite (at the introductory price), Spotify and other competitors.

Podcasts

You can stream any podcasts stored on your mobile device or computer directly to your Sonos, which is likely the easiest way to listen to podcasts on the system. These apps are also good choices.

Soundcloud – Soundcloud is becoming a big podcast host, so you’ll be able to find many of the most popular shows here. A nice feature is that if you encounter episodes while browsing the web you can easily tag them for listening later without having to go through the rigmarole of subscribing.
Stitcher – This popular platform gives you free access to nearly every podcast out there, along with other talk radio programming. If you use Stitcher on your mobile device or computer your listening will be synchronized with your Sonos.
TuneIn – TuneIn now offers podcasts, although it’\s catalog isn’t as extensive as Stitcher or iTunes.

Streaming Music Radio

All of these services are free or offer free tiers, which make them solid ways to get started listening right away without using your credit card.

8tracks – Another free ad-supported service with human curated playlists, many contributed by outside experts and publications. A commercial-free subscription is $25 for six months. For some listening suggestions, Matthew recommends classical playlists and ones inspired by Welcome to Night Vale.
Pandora – Unlike many other streaming music services, Pandora lets you use its free, ad-supported service with Sonos and other devices. It’s the most popular streaming music service because it’s easy to get started building stations customized to your music tastes. One advantage to Pandora is access to some artists–like the Beatles and King Crimson–who don’t make their music available on Spotify, although you won’t be able to listen to tracks on demand.
Slacker – Also offers human-curated stations in a wide variety of genres and styles, along with talk programming from ABC News, American Public Media and ESPN. Many stations are artist curated or decade focused. The subscription Plus goes ad-free and gives you unlimited song skips as well as the option to add ABC headline news and Weather Channel updates, while Premium gives you on demand access to tracks, like Spotify.
Songza – This is a free service that offers human curated playlists tailored for different moods and activities. It’s a nice alternative to Pandora, especially when your stations start to get a little repetitive and you want to shake things up.

Streaming On Demand Music (Compressed)

All of the major on demand streaming music providers are available on your Sonos: Beats Music, Rhapsody, Rdio, Spotify and Google Play Music All Access. They all require a subscription, although Rhapsody offers a free 30-day trial to Sonos users that doesn’t require a credit card. I find all four services to be more-or-less equivalent, and so your choice likely depends on which you’ve used before or if your mobile carrier offers discounts.

Streaming Music You Bought

These services let you stream music that you’ve bought from the cloud, without ads.

Amazon Music – Amazon has a big MP3 music store, but the company also gives you MP3s of nearly every CD or vinyl LP that you buy from them, too. It’s a convenient way to add tracks from your CDs or LPs to playlists without having to rip them yourself.
Bandcamp – I’m a big fan of Bandcamp because it lets me buy high quality digital tracks and albums directly from artists and labels, often including music that’s not available on Amazon, Google Play or iTunes. Many albums are available in lossless CD-quality files, in addition to MP3 and AAC. On Sonos you can stream any music you’ve bought on Bandcamp, though it isn’t specified what quality they stream at.
Google Play Music – If you buy music from Google’s Play store, then you can access it to stream from the cloud on your Sonos. It also includes any music that you’ve uploaded to Google. You can store up to 20,000 tracks for free, and subscribe to store even more.

A Little Bit of Everything

Soundcloud – This platform is turning into the YouTube of audio, hosting a wide gamut of music, mixes, playlists, radio shows, podcasts, audiobooks and other kinds of audio. It’s free to listen, and a fine choice to dig in to some unique and independent sounds. Check out Matthew’s recommendations for classical music, world music, dance music and space music on SoundCloud.

Are you a Sonos user? Are there other services or platforms you like to us on your Sonos system? Let us know in the comments.

The post Radio, Music and Podcast Recommendations for Your Sonos appeared first on Radio Survivor.

Your New Chromecast Is an Internet Radio

Paul Riismandel — Sat, 27 Dec 2014 21:17:19 +0000

Today, if you’re a radio, music or podcast enthusiast who just got a Chromecast then you’re in great shape. The device is a fantastically simple way to turn your TV into an internet radio that can do much more than that.

Chromecast has come a long way since it was first introduced eighteen months ago. In fact, when I first wrote about how my Chromecast is an internet radio there were only two radio apps. Now there are more than ninety.

Below are my recommendations for Chromecast radio and music apps. Because you control your Chromecast using a mobile device or computer, using these apps means either installing them on your device or using the associated website in your computer’s Chrome browser, which should give you the option to send audio directly to your Chromecast.

Using the Chrome browser on your computer or using an Android device running version 4.4.2 or later you can simply mirror any browser tab or app directly to your Chromecast. However, doing this requires you keep that tab or app open. When using a Chromecast-compatible app, your Chromecast takes over the audio stream directly, freeing up your browser or device to do other things.

Recommended Chromecast Apps for Radio Listening

Pandora – Still one of the best and most popular ways to create and share custom stations of music based on what you like.
TuneIn Radio – Arguably the most comprehensive database of radio stations available online, it includes broadcast stations, internet-only stations and podcasts.
8tracks – This service focuses on human-curated playlists and stations. The 8tracks mobile app is Android-only, but you can play 8tracks Radio from your Chrome browser. For some listening suggestions, Matthew recommends classical playlists and ones inspired by Welcome to Night Vale.
NPR One – This app is great for when you want to get a stream of updated news and talk programming. Learn more about NPR One in my review.
last.soma – Soma.fm is a great independent internet radio broadcaster in San Francisco that offers 32 eclectic and interesting commercial-free music stations. Learn more about Soma.fm in Matthew’s review.
Songza – Another great service for human-curated music stations that was one of the original two radio apps on Chromecast.

Recommended Chromecast Apps for Podcast Listening

Beyondpod – This is one of the most popular podcast apps for Android, but it is Android-only.
Pocket Casts – This one is available on both Android and iOS, and is also a perennial favorite.
TuneIn Radio – Also lets you search for and play a wide selection of podcasts, although its catalog is smaller than the other podcast apps.

Recommended Chromecast Apps for Streaming Music

There aren’t a lot of choices in this category. The world’s most popular service, Spotify, is notable for not having Chromecast app support. Last April Rhapsody announced Chromecast support, but it’s not currently listed by Google, and I’m not a user, so I can’t confirm. However, the two choices here are solid, and a good choice if you don’t already subscribe to another service.

Rdio – This is a fine service, and a particularly good choice if Chromecast support is important to you.
Google Play Music – This service should come as no surprise, and it’s a good choice if you’re a big user of Google services.

Not Really Radio

YouTube – Obviously, this really isn’t radio. But because YouTube has become the internet’s default depository for all manner of media content, there’s a ton of great music and concerts, as well as podcasts, interviews and other stuff that is really more auditory than visual. Much of it comes from radio stations. It’s all on YouTube simply because the platform is still the easiest place to upload and share.
Vevo – This is the MTV of our time, with both curated playlists of music video and the ability to make your own selections.

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2014 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fanatics: From Radio in a Jar to Bike Radios

Jennifer Waits — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 03:16:11 +0000

There’s a chill in the air, the Thanksgiving leftovers are nearly gone, and thoughts are turning to holiday shopping. For me, scoping out interesting radio-themed gifts is a highlight of the season, as there’s always something new that piques my interest. If you have a radio fan in your life or if you are searching for some items to put on your own wish list, take a look at some of my latest finds. Also be sure to scroll down to see more gift ideas from some of our prior gift guides.

1. Radio in a Jar

This single-station radio is actually on the top of my list. Although it won’t arrive in time for the winter holidays, you can pre-order for delivery in May, 2015. Dubbed the “Public Radio,” the single station FM radio, had a very successful Kickstarter campaign this fall, bringing in more than $88,000 in order to fund production of these radios built into small Mason Jars.

2. Huffy Radio Bike + Other Bike Radios

What could be cooler than a bicycle with a built-in radio? The Huffy Radio Bike first appeared in 1955, and included a built-in radio. Read more about the bike here on Dial a Ride. It turns out that earlier bicycle radios appeared in the 1930s and a more recent detachable bicycle radio was marketed in the 1990s. These are all probably pretty hard to find, but as an alternative, there are also some portable radios that can be attached to an existing bicycle, including the Barbie Bike FM Radioand the Evo Sync AM/FM Handlebar Radio, With LED And Horn.

3. Radio Making Kit

This is the year that I’m going to build my own radio and this Wonderology Snap Plug and Play radio kit seems like the perfect, simple first-time radio-making project. The pieces snap together and according to the product description, it’s appropriate for ages 5 and up. There are plenty of other radio-making kits out there, including an Elenco FM Radio Kit, theElenco Short Wave Radio Kit, theBuild Your Own Working Crystal Radio Lab Kit, and the Tecsun AM Radio Receiver Kit.

4. Wooden Phone Dock that Looks Like a Radio

There are a whole range of products out there that look retro, but are actually brand new and are designed to connect with modern devices like iPhones. The Areaware Decorative Radio Dock looks like a funky wooden radio, but it’s actually a dock for one’s iPhone.

5. Circa 1928 Speakers

I fell in love with the look of these “vintage” speakers that I spotted in the Restoration Hardware catalog (take a look at their website for more retro audio pieces plus numerous other vintage-inspired items, including some that are seemingly pulled from a steam punker’s dreams). According to the catalog copy, “Inspired by a speaker from 1928, the dawn of radio’s golden age,” the cast-metal speakers can be connected via wireless to your phone or mp3 player. Although not nearly as glamorous, there are some other vintage-looking radios and speakers out there that will also connect with your phone, including the Philips Charging Speaker Dock for iPod/iPhone and the Wolverine Retro Table Top Bluetooth Speaker and AM/FM Radio.

6. New Radio Books on Walter Benjamin and Top 40

If you are looking to pick up some scholarly radio tomes, there are two new books that I’m eager to read. Radio Benjamin compiles radio transcripts from scholar Walter Benjamin, who hosted a radio show in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Additionally, Eric Weisbard’s new book, Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music, is worth checking out for its analysis of popular radio genres and their intersections with mainstream music in America. I hope to review both books in the weeks to come. UPDATE (12/17/14): To get more scoop on Eric Weisbard’s book, see my Q&A with him.

7. Betsey Johnson Radio Purse

Last year I found a bunch of radio purses and am adding to that list with this cute hand bag by designer Betsey Johnson.It actually has functional speakers that can plug into your phone or mp3 player so that you can effectively play music out of your purse! Another option is this Vintage Retro Radio Messenger Bag.

8. Antique Radios Curated by the New York Times

In another example of the celebration of all things vintage, the New York Times Store has an entire section devoted to antique radios. These aren’t your standard cast-offs, with some of them priced for thousands of dollars.

9. Space Heater with Built-In Radio

Every year I find a totally random radio item that serves a dual purpose (like the radio toaster and the radio cooler). For 2014, the bizarre appliance, the JNH Lifestyles Infrared Space Heater, Radio and Media Playercombines a space heater with a functioning radio.

10. Countdown to Christmas Radio

This Hallmark decoration from 2013, the North Pole Countdown Radio Tabletop Decoration, looks like a vintage radio, but when you turn the dial you can hear recorded messages that count down to Christmas. It can also be connected to an mp3 player.

11. 2015 Tower Site Calendar

Last, but not least, is Scott Fybush’s annual Tower Site Calendar. The 2015 edition features color photographs of radio towers from all over the United States. Signed and numbered copies are also available.

Be sure to peruse our prior gift guides and my 2013 gift guide for Radio World for more gift ideas:

Jennifer’s Holiday Gift Guide for Radio-Lovin’ Fashion Mavens

Paul’s Eclectic Gifts for the Radio, Podcast and Streaming Music Fan (or Nerd)

2012 Radio Gift Guides (including whimsical gifts, podcasting gear, books, and emergency radios)

2011 Holiday Gift Guides

The post 2014 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fanatics: From Radio in a Jar to Bike Radios 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.

Notes on the Boombox/Walkman war of the early 1980s

Matthew Lasar — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 12:45:39 +0000

An attempt to resolve Walkman/Boombox tension via a ‘boombox/walkman’ [stereo2go.com]
I’ve been rummaging through old articles about the emergence of the Walkman in the 1980s, and one thing stands out: some people thought it was a social cure for the Boombox. Here’s an excerpt from an old column by George Will, responding to the charge that the Walkman isolated people from each other.

‘Some sociologists and other cranks are quite cross about the popularity of the Walkman,” Will wrote in June of 1981. “They say the device is ‘isolating’ and prevents people from ‘relating.’ I say: Yes, and isn’t that great?”

“Leaving aside the fact that a walk with Bach is bliss, who wants to ‘relate’ to strangers in the street or seated next to one on airlines? Who does not want to be isolated from the blather and screech of metropolitan life? Walkman is the civilized answer to something that should be illegal—those 20-pound stereo ‘boxes’ carried by young men with strong backs and bad manners, ‘boxes’ that pummel the ears of anyone within 50 yards.”

As this commentary was published, city police in New York and elsewhere were confiscating Boomboxes and handing out summonses by the dozens. Meanwhile, still somewhat pricey Walkmans sold by the ton, their owners tipping their headphones to each other on the street.

”It’s just like Mercedes-Benz owners honking when they pass each other on the road,” one Yuppie told The New York Times. Reading Walkman related articles from back then, I’m struck that when most big city newspapers covered the technology, they assigned fashion reporters to the story. At the same time, the Boombox was increasingly relegated to crime pages.

“Nobody ever asks the fellow who totes it to turn it off,” a Washington Post commentator complained. “That’s’ because he’s usually eight feet tall and weighs 400 pounds. If he’s small, he is generally believed to conceal a knife in one pocket and a zip gun in the other.”

Spike Lee got at the racial angle in this tension via his 1989 masterpiece Do the Right Thing. Remember Radio Raheem?

For my own Boombox experiences check out this essay.

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Amazon’s New Fire TV Looks Like a Nice Internet Radio

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:42:30 +0000

Amazon Fire TV

Today Amazon announced its own set-top streaming box, the Fire TV, to compete with the likes of Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast. It’s more like the two former devices and less like Chromecast because it’s not completely device-dependent and can be operated with its own remote using an on-screen menu. However, it does offer mirroring from your Kindle Fire tablet.

Though I haven’t yet used one, the Fire TV looks like it will also make a really nice internet radio. Out of the gate it has apps for Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn. In particular, TuneIn should provide access to nearly every radio station on the internet. Amazon says it will also soon have the capability to stream all of your digital music purchases from the company.

Sound quality is one area where Amazon is trying to differentiate Fire TV. The company touts Dolby Digital Plus surround sound with up to 7.1 channels, delivered via HDMI into your soundbar or receiver, as well as an optical digital audio out. Surround sound is not so important for typical radio listening, but that optical out potentially gives the Fire TV some true high fidelity cred, letting you connect it to an outboard digital to analog converter to bump up audio quality. To be fair, Apple TV offers an optical out, too.

Another trick Amazon added is voice command, which could be useful to some folks. The Fire TV is also a game machine, which certainly sets it apart, as well.

While TuneIn does offer access to podcasts, I’d like to see some more podcast-specific app support. You should be able to stream podcasts from your Kindle Fire tablet, though at the moment that appears to be the only device you can stream from.

The battle for your living room entertainment heats up even more. I’m glad to see radio apps are there from launch. Given that all these set-top boxes are $100 or less, I don’t doubt that some early adopters will have more than one connected to their home entertainment systems. The choice of which one to use might be dictated by app availability and overall performance on that app.

Who will be the internet radio champ in the set-top universe? It should be a fun race to watch.

The post Amazon’s New Fire TV Looks Like a Nice Internet Radio 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.

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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!

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Decorating for audio nerds: “Advance of Audio Apparatuses” poster

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 17:22:03 +0000

As Radio Survivor’s technology editor, I have to come clean as the biggest audio nerd here. That’s why I’m seriously geeking out over this Pop Chart Lab poster of the “Advance of Audio Apparatuses.” If their marketing strategy was to get audio nerd bloggers like me to link to it for free publicity… well, it worked.

Radios, of course, take up a good middle of the chart, when receivers and phonographs were most people’s primary audio devices. Though, radios and turntables are represented all the way up to the modern day, too, including a (cheap, plastic) Crosley USB turntable and a Pure One Classic Series digital radio from the UK.

See, this poster is proof these technologies haven’t been abandoned yet.

Nerd that I am, I also was quite thrilled to see the oft-forgotten minidisc three times. Yes, some days it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

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Exploring San Francisco’s vault of old car radio stereos

Matthew Lasar — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 12:03:37 +0000

The New Sound HQ on Valencia Street

Just got a new car audio/radio device installed over at New Sound car stereos on Valencia Street in San Francisco. New Sound is an awesome place: great selection; fast service; I love my new system. But on top of that, it has a wonderful secret: a magnificent basement crypt of ancient car stereo/radios.

We’re almost there . . .

To get there, New Sound proprietor Eduardo “Ed” Sosa led me to the back of the shop, where a small sampling of deceased stereos can be found. “That’s nothing,” Ed noted. We descended down a rickety stairwell into the basement, past a vestibule, through a room, and into another room, and there it was in all its glorious darkness: The Vault.

. . . welcome to The Vault.

Full disclosure: we at Radio Survivor love big piles of old radio/audio technology. Check out Jennifer Waits’ exploration of the radio exhibit at the San Francisco History Museum. Here’s another basement room at New Sound:

. . . more goodies.

No surprise that New Sound has this treasure trove. The hallowed shop is over four decades old. Looking at these machines, one is struck by how comparatively big some of them were, which makes sense if they had some of those long gone components—eight-track consoles and such. I was proud to give my old machine to the collection. Thanks to Ed at New Sound for showing me all that buried treasure.

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My iPad is an internet radio

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 19:11:11 +0000

Listening to KFJC on the TuneIn app.

When the iPad was first announced three years ago, I have to admit that I was initially skeptical. At first blush it seemed like an e-reader on steroids, something that would be great for reading and games, but not a serious tool. I was wrong.

I’ve had my iPad for two years now, and it’s been a great all around device for reading and writing, as well as creating and editing photos, music and videos. Lately, I’ve also loved using it as an internet radio.

Back in 2011 Matthew wrote a piece called “My Kindle Fire is an internet radio,” discussing his experience with that tablet. With this post I’m shamelessly following in his footsteps.

So many sound connections

What pushed me into using the radio features of the iPad more was becoming more well acquainted with the myriad ways I can get sound out of the device.

Quite against my audiophile tendencies, I’ve been using the iPad’s built in speaker much more than I used to. This speaker is not suited for high-fidelity listening. But when I’m out on my back deck enjoying the outdoors I don’t necessarily want to drag around an extra speaker or be tethered to headphones. In this environment the iPad speaker compares rather well to small pocket radio of the sort I’ve used outdoors in the past.

Indoors I often plug the iPad into a couple of different home stereos using either a 1/8″ headphone cable or using a 30-pin dock cable. In this setup the sound improves proportionally to the quality of the stereo you’re plugged into. I think the dock cable sounds best by a small margin, though with this connection you only control volume with the stereo, not with the iPad

The big leap forward came when I installed an AirPort Express in my living room and connected its audio ouput to my home theater. Using Apple’s AirPlay I can simply select my Aiport as the audio output and wireless send sound from my iPad directly to my home stereo. The quality is typically as good as a wired headphone connection, but is much more convenient. The iPad doesn’t even have to be in the same room, just on the same wi-fi network.

Using a Bluetooth speaker would provide the same convenience, though I think the sound quality is a little rougher. Outside, in a noisier environment, or as background music, a Bluetooth speaker is adequate for me, and can be louder and clearer than the iPad’s built-in speaker. But if I’m in the living room, I prefer a wired or AirPlay connection.

Radio apps and portals galore

But what use is a high quality audio connection if there is no good content? Here is where apps like Stitcher, Slacker, TuneIn and web based portals like UberStations really shine. One of the reasons why I use internet radio is to expand my range of possibilities beyond what is on a local station right now. Sometimes I want international news from the BBC when my local public outlet has on Fresh Air, or I want to hear some jazz when there’s none to be found on the FM dial.

Stitcher is nice when I know I want to listen to, say, US news, but I don’t want to have to select a specific station, network or show. As its name implies, the app stitches together podcasts and other on demand content into a program stream. You can start by selecting a program from the Stitcher catalog, like the NPR Hourly News Summary, and then Stitcher will queue up a playlist of similar shows.

Of course, Stitcher is really designed to let you set up your own stations of content made up of just about any audio or podcast available on the internet and share them with others. I will often use it to queue up podcasts to listen to while doing the dishes or performing bicycle maintenance.

I’ve started listening to Slacker more often, too. The news and information programming options are more limited, featuring just ABC News, ESPN, American Public Media’s Marketplace, and the Weather Channel. But I’m really enjoying some of Slacker’s own genre station when I’m in the mood for some good background music without having to think too hard about what exactly I want to hear. It’s not unlike Pandora–and Slacker offers artist-based stations as well–but with more curated content that you can still skip through (a limited number of times) if you hit a track you don’t like.

If I’m interested in listening to a specific station or program stream, then either TuneIn or UberStations is my choice. On TuneIn I like to check in on stations in Buenos Aires where I visited a couple of years ago. Sometimes I just enjoy browsing through stations of different formats or listening in to distant cities that I never before would have the chance to hear in my own living room.

Obviously, there are many more radio apps and websites that I haven’t covered here. Plenty of stations and networks have their own apps that are great if you listen to that specific source frequently.

I was going to include the Public Radio Player, but it’s not optimized for the iPad, and I’ve had difficulty listening for more than 15 minutes without it crashing. This is an app I really wish were updated to take advantage of iPad’s bigger screen.

Also worth mentioning is the SiriusXM internet radio app. If you are a fan of this service or exclusive channels like Howard Stern’s, the SiriusXM app works quite well, giving you both live and on demand access to stations and individual programs. I find that the sound quality is similar to what you hear on satellite, which means that it’s not quite on par with many other internet stations or music services. But on the iPad’s built-in speaker, over Bluetooth or as background music the difference isn’t distracting.

You can certainly listen to all of this radio on an iPhone, Android phone or tablet. I prefer a tablet because the larger screen and better speaker provide a much nicer browsing and listening experience than on a smartphone. The longer battery life of tablet means more listening between charges.

Do you listen to internet radio on a tablet? What’s your favorite app, portal or station? Let us know in the comments.

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Sprint to add FM radio to smartphones – too little, too late?

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 05:28:00 +0000

The biggest radio news to come out of CES this week was Sprint’s announcement that it struck a deal to integrate FM radio tuners in some of its smartphones. Radio listening will be available through the forthcoming NextRadio tuner app on Android and Windows devices, which Sprint says will offer, “a wide range of interactive listener features not available today.”

For users there are several advantages to a real FM tuner compared to using a streaming radio app. Importantly, broadcast radio does not use any data bandwidth and won’t incur any additional charges no matter how much you listen. Also not all broadcast stations are available as live streams, and, especially when it comes to major league sports, not all programs are available as live streams. Finally, FM tuners are misers when it comes to battery consumption, especially compared to keeping a data connection active for an hour or more.

I used an HTC EVO that had an FM tuner for a few years. And while I only used the radio occasionally, every time I greatly appreciated its utility. I used it mostly while traveling so that I could tune in local stations without having to carry another radio.

I actually got a lot of use out of the EVO’s radio when I was in Argentina in 2011. My hosts–Americans spending a year abroad–did not have a radio at that time but wanted to listen to some local broadcasts. I had the cell radio turned off, since it wasn’t compatible with Argentine networks, but could connect it to speakers so we could enjoy Buenos Aires stations.

Despite my enthusiasm for FM tuners in smartphones, I don’t think this deal is such an enormous boon for the radio industry. Rather, I think it’s a matter of too little too late.

The radio lobby has been pushing for a few years to have radio tuners in all smartphones, but in this case they’ve succeeded only with the #3 wireless carriers, and not with all that carrier’s smartphones. A very notable exception to the deal is the iPhone, which has never had an FM tuner, despite past rumors. This is not a minor exception, given that the iPhone is still the most popular smartphone in the US.

There is no mention of HD Radio either. One might recall that at last year’s NAB the radio industry was all excited about a prototype smartphone with integrated HD radio. Nearly one year later that device is vaporware, and there’s no mention of HD radio as part of the Sprint deal. I would have been more impressed if the radio industry had been able to pull that off. But, that would also be much more expensive for Sprint.

In fact, this is a pretty cheap deal for Sprint, which can use all the publicity it can get, as the #3 carrier. FM radios are already integrated in a lot of smartphone models available outside the US. For instance, I recently got a Samsung Galaxy S3. The US version has no FM radio, but the EU version does. So it doesn’t seem like such a big deal for Sprint to ask Samsung to assemble a US version that has the radio included.

I have a hard time seeing an FM radio being the feature that drives the average consumer’s choice of carrier or smartphone. One might think that I am that sort of consumer for whom it would be important. Yet, none of my smartphone choices over the last five years have been driven by FM radio inclusion. Sure, I enjoyed the tuner in my HTV EVO. But day to day, other features, like 4G data and operating system features, have been much more pivotal. The FM radio is frosting, not the cake.

Because of this, I will be very surprised if this deal has any effect on the other carriers. I simply don’t see an incentive for AT&T and Verizon to jump on the FM tuner bandwagon; they won’t be fighting some tremendous erosion to Sprint over this feature. Even if they do find it advantageous to agree to take the smartphone versions with FM radios, I still don’t see that expanding the radio audience by any significant amount.

It’s a good thing that there will be FM radios in some Sprint smartphones. It’s just too little, about four years too late.

The post Sprint to add FM radio to smartphones – too little, too late? appeared first on Radio Survivor.

What might be in store for radio at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show

Paul Riismandel — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:01:45 +0000

The 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show kicks off on Tuesday and runs until Friday. As usual, I will be monitoring the announcements and news from the show for anything of import to radio, broadcast and online, podcasting and streaming.

Announcements for the show are just getting started. Monday is “press day” at CES, when there’s a heady stream of press conferences and press releases, which should reveal a large percentage of the show’s announcements.

Pandora’s CEO Joe Kennedy is scheduled to present at the Citi 2013 Global Internet, Media and Technology Conference happening with CES. His presentation is scheduled for 2:15 PST on Monday, the 7th. It will be streamed live at the Pandora investor relations site. There hasn’t been any word about what he’ll be talking about, though I suspect he’ll be discussing Pandora’s fight to have its listenership ranked along side terrestrial radio, as well as a Nielsen exec’s recent statements saying that after its Arbitron acquisition the company will start monitoring internet radio services.

While Pandora still rules the roost in online radio, a prominent Apple analyst says he believes that the company will debut its competitor service, which he dubs “iRadio,” this year. Apple doesn’t participate in CES, so it’s unlikely we’ll have an announcement this week.

In terms of hardware, I don’t expect to hear about any monumental new radio gear this CES. Internet radios continue to be a niche item, and HD Radio seems to hold little appeal outside of car radios. There will probably be some product updates announced, but I don’t imagine anything truly new or groundbreaking.

However, I predict we’ll hear about more Bluetooth-enabled devices that make listening to mobile devices even easier by cutting the cord between your smartphone and car or home stereo. That’s the kind of step forward that will greatly assist the growth of listening to internet radio on the go.

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Holiday gift guide for radio listeners and budding podcasters

Paul Riismandel — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 05:35:51 +0000

Jennifer does such a great job at rounding up an eclectic list of fun and useful radio items of all types, so I like to complement her list with a focus on radios and listening accessories (though Jennifer also helped me this year). This year I’m adding some items for the current or aspiring podcaster (or radio producer), along side some radios and headphones.

I don’t make these recommendations lightly. I have used and tested all of this gear. So my recommendation comes from real experience. We only ask that if you buy these items, please use our links. We make a little money for the referral, but it doesn’t cost you anything extra. Consider it a holiday gift for Radio Survivor.

Headphones and Earphones

I can’t stress enough what a difference good headphones or earphones make for the radio, podcast and music listening experience. Last year I recommended some fantastic headphones that are all still available and highly recommended. This year I have a few more recommendations

Monoprice is a company I rely on for inexpensive but high-quality audio cables and electronics accessories. Their “Premium Hi-Fi DJ Style” headphones have quickly earned a reputation for being the best value in headphones out there. At less than $30 a pair, I can testify they sound better than any other headphones I’ve auditioned at twice the price.

They won’t win any prizes for style, and they seem kind of plasticky. But in use they are actually comfortable and stand up to wear. Aside from their sound quality, their next outstanding feature is a replaceable cord. That feature alone will probably extend their useful lifespan by a factor of 2 or 3. With a closed-back design that insulates you from outside sounds, they’re good for DJing, audio production and even airplanes.

I don’t always want to wear full-size headphones, whether at home or on the go. I’ve been really happy with JLab sound isolating earbuds. I’ve found them to have a great balance of build quality, fidelity, sound isolation and price. I keep a pair of the under $20 J3 earbuds in the office, and another pair in my travel kit. Sometimes I want one ear free in case I need to be alert, so I purchased the J6M single-ear earbud that also has a mic for smartphones, also for less than $20. These are the models I own myself, but I feel confident in recommending just about any of the earbuds that JLab makes.

Radios

For 2012 I’m adding two more radios to previous years’ lists (see 2010 and 2011).

This year I got C. Crane’s CC Radio 2, and it has become one of my most listened-to radios. The CC Radio 2 is designed for talk radio listening, with sensitive and accurate AM tuning and a very good FM section, as well. To my ears voices on AM sound more natural than any radio I’ve heard in more than a decade.

It also features a well-designed and useful clock and alarm, which makes it the perfect clock radio for the true radio lover. Mine has taken up residence on my bedside table, where I make frequent use of its sleep timer. While it’s not an inexpensive radio, I think the CC Radio 2 is one that will be used for years to come.

This year Jennifer’s husband gifted her with a Grace Mondo Wi-Fi internet radio, which I wrote about earlier this year. Jennifer says this radio “has changed my life.” She continues, “I know that sounds radical, but with this radio I can finally listen to KFJC (where I DJ) inside my house.” You see, KFJC-FM 40 miles from her house, too far to get good terrestrial reception indoors.

She’s also using the Mondo’s clock-radio functions so she can wake up to KFJC and enjoys being able to see the title for the track that’s playing on the radio’s 3.5“ color screen. For all these pluses, the Mondo is not quite perfect. Jennifer wishes it had broadcast AM/FM reception and more station presets. Also, she tells me ”[I] am at times frustrated because the interface isn’t as intuitive as I’d like.”

Gifts for the Podcaster

It’s difficult to overstate how much podcasting has helped revive interest in radio production. With inexpensive, high-quality computer audio gear and microphones it’s never been easier to record programs with sound quality that would have required an expensive studio just a decade ago.

A portable digital audio recorder is a great way to get started with audio production. Today’s recorders are like old-school tape recorders on steroids, packing much better microphones, audio processing and hours of storage in packages that aren’t much bigger than an iPod.

Zoom pretty much revolutionized portable audio recorders a few years ago, introducing models with great fidelity at very competitive prices. Zoom’s current line-up is popular with podcasters, radio journalists and independent videographers who need to record great sound without breaking the bank. Using SD memory cards, just like the ones used in digital cameras, it’s no problem to record tens of hours of CD-quality audio.

I’ve been using the first model in Zoom’s H2 line for more than four years, and it completely changed my approach to recording audio, like interviews in the field. With four mics built in–two on either side of the recorder–you can place the recorder between an interviewer and subject and pick both voices up well. It also does a great job with live music. The newest model in the line, the Zoom H2n, kicks it up a notch, while retaining all the original model’s strengths. At less than $200 the Zoom H2n is a bargain.

Amazingly, you can spend even less with the Zoom H1. The under-$100 H1 is smaller than a typical hand-held microphone and has two stereo mics and records audio with quality darn close to its big brother. It’s particularly popular with journalists who often hand-hold it just like a microphone and videographers who mount it right onto their cameras.

If you want the option to use external professional microphones that have XLR connectors, then the Zoom H4n is the best choice. Larger, with more heft, the H4n is well suited to more heavy use or circumstances where you might also want to jack into a existing sound system.

Since all of the Zoom recorders have very good built-in microphones the beginning podcaster really doesn’t need to buy anything else to get started. Just get a memory card, record, then transfer your files to your computer.

However, if you want to record in a more studio-like environment, it pays to have digital audio interface directly attached via USB to your computer, and some higher quality microphones. The step forward in fidelity will give your podcast a more professional sound.

I’ve been using the Presonus AudioBox 22VSL for almost a year. It works with both Macs and PCs over USB 2. It’s also a bargain at less than $200. Compared to a portable digital audio recorder, its microphone preamps are detailed with very low noise, and have plenty of gain to deal with a variety of different microphones. It has phantom power, which means it will work with high-quality condenser microphones. The AudioBox is also powered directly by your computer’s USB port, so you don’t need any extra power supply. At about half the size of a hardcover book, it’s also very portable, and could definitely be part of a mobile laptop recording rig.

The best value microphone to pair with the Presonus AudioBox is the Audio Technica AT2020 condenser microphone. Audio Technica has long been well known for the quality of its microphones. The AT2020 is its entry level mic costing less than $75, which is an absolute steal. It sounds particularly nice with voiceovers, making it ideally suited for podcasting. There is even a USB version which connects directly into your computer, without needing an interface.

However, because they are so sensitive, condenser microphones are particularly susceptible to popped “p”s and other mouth noises. It’s simple to eliminate these using a pop filter like the $18 Nady MPF–6. It bolt onto your microphone stand and the filter extends in front of the microphone.

Help your favorite radio enthusiast enjoy listening to and creating radio programming.

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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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Radio was a highlight at an otherwise lackluster 2012 Consumer Electronics Show

Paul Riismandel — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:07:12 +0000

It’s been a week since the Consumer Electronics Show wrapped up in Las Vegas, and I apologize to Radio Survivor readers for not having kept closer track this year. Warm Las Vegas certainly seemed like it would have been a nicer place to be than bone-chilling snowy Chicago, where I’m writing this post. But as it turns out we didn’t miss much. There wasn’t much new or revelatory in general at CES this year, although radio was a bright spot.

2010 saw car audio systems making the leap into internet radio with smartphone connectivity and integration with services like Pandora. Last year’s CES moved a few steps forward on that track, with more manufacturers and radio apps joining the fray.

This year’s big radio announcement came from Ford which added much broader device and apps upport to its Sync AppLink system. Now a Ford vehicle with Sync will work with Apple iOS, Android and Blackberry devices and apps like iHeartRadio, Slacker Radio, NPR News and Tune In Radio, allowing drivers to control the app through the car’s interface, patching the audio into the vehicle’s sound system.

GM also finally debuted its own smartphone sync systems called MyLink in Chevys and CUE in Cadillacs. AM/FM radio is still standard, but CD players are optional, causing some commentators to declare this is yet another indicator of the inevitable death of the compact disc (a topic I will take up at a later date). Subara announced that it would be offering Harman’s Aha Radio platform in some 2013 vehicles.

Slacker radio announced a new Verizon 4G optimized app for Android tablets as well as new content deals. Slacker, which provides free and subscription channels of music and news content via smartphone apps, internet radios and the web, will offer ESPN Audio, which includes live streaming ESPN Radio coverage of games. The company also announced a deal with American Public Media to provide free access to programs like Marketplace, as well as music from Minneapolis AAA station The Current. Finally, Slacker will be adding content from the Weather Channel, featuring local and national forecasts.

In terms of actual radios, the French electronics company Archos had the most exciting product on display with its “>Archos 35 Home Connect clock radio. The device runs the Android operating system and features a touch screen to navigate internet radio, weather reports and other apps. Blackberry announced that its 7.1 OS release will activate the FM radio chip inside its BlackBerry Curve 9360 and 9380 smartphones.

The bright side of CES 2012 is that radio was no more lackluster than any other sector. In fact, one might argue that the radio announcements were some of the highlights.

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Holiday gifts for the Radio Survivor: Paul’s recommended gear

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:01:19 +0000

Following up on Jennifer’s well-rounded radio gift guide and Matthew’s essential recommendations for radio books, I’ve assembled a list of gear I recommend to enhance the radio listening experience, from broadcast to internet. I have tried everything on this list, and many of these items are in my personal stash of audio equipment.

When you buy any of these items from Amazon using our links you help Radio Survivor keep surviving and it doesn’t cost you an extra cent. Even if you end up buying a different item, if you clicked through using one of our links you still help us out.

Headphones: Sony Sony MDR-7506 & MDR-V6 and the Grado SR60 & SR 80.

First off, every radio and audio lover should have a good set of headphones. Sometimes you want to shut out the world around you and escape into a great broadcast, or you simply don’t want to bother others nearby. I go through earbuds like crazy for portable use, but for more relaxed or serious listening I prefer more traditional on-ear and circumaural (over-the-ear) headphones.

The Sony MDR-7506 is a mainstay of radio, music, film and video production. I’ve been using these ‘phones for well over a decade for my own professional work. The reason is simple. They have very balanced, uncolored sound in a very rugged package. Their circumaural design effectively isolates the listener from outside noise without the use of any electronic active noise reduction hardware. A sound recordist on a film set needs to be sure she is hearing what her microphone is picking up, not the ambient sound, just as a radio announcer needs to hear his own voice clearly without the headphone’s sound being picked up by his microphone. These Sony’s perform well in all these circumstances, and are just as well suited for listening at home.

For home use I own a similar model in Sony’s consumer line, the MDR-V6. The difference between these and the 7506 are very slight. The V6 seems to have a bit more padding around the ear. The sound is every so slightly warmer, and so a bit more suited for extended music listening at home. Right now Amazon has the V6 priced at the amazingly low price of $65, which is an absolute bargain. These are the kind of headphones that are built to be used for years, not months.

While the Sonys are great headphones, sometimes you want to trade in some of the sound isolation for a slightly more detailed experience. Grado Labs is a small Brooklyn-based company that primarily makes headphones and phono cartridges, almost all of which are still made in the US. Their headphones range from a very reasonable $79 all the way up to about $1700. I haven’t had the pleasure of auditioning the high-end Grado headphones, but I’ve greatly enjoyed their two least expensive models.

The Grado SR60 headphones are the company’s entry model, and easily outclass other manufacturers’ headphones at several times their $79 street price. Unlike the Sonys, these don’t seal you off from your surroundings, so they are definitely more appropriate for using in settings where you might need to hear some ambient sound. They are very balanced, and do not over-emphasize bass the way so many other under-$100 headphones do.

The Grado SR80 headphones are the company’s next model up. I use these at home when listening to CDs, my iPhone or internet radio. The SR80s are a bit more detailed than the 60s, with a somewhat more realistic soundstage. The only complaint I might have is that they reveal the flaws in compromised digital sound sources, like poorly encoded MP3s. Yet listening to analog sources with restricted fidelity, like AM radio, is very pleasant.

USB Audio Interface + Headphone Amp: HiFiMan HM-101

As I’ve been writing about lately, digital audio, especially from the internet, can be all over the place when it comes to fidelity. One simple way to improve your computer audio listening experience is to use an external audio interface. The headphone amplifiers in most computers are pretty poor, certainly not even on par with what’s in most iPods, MP3 players and smartphones. Plus, all of the components inside a computer, laptop or desktop, are pretty hostile to audio signals. So taking the digital to analog processing and headphone amplifier outside the computer instantly improves the listening experience.

These days there are dozens of USB audio interfaces aimed at musicians and audiophiles, with prices from $25 to $2500. I recently bought a little USB audio interface and headphone amplifier that knocked my socks off, especially for its tiny price of only $40! Just slightly bigger than a matchbox the HiFiMan HM-101 has just two connections for headphones and line-out, the latter of which can be used to connect to a home stereo.

Compared to the built-in headphone jack in my MacBook Pro the HM-101 gives individual instruments a little more space, rendering them more distinct. Somehow at the same time it also makes the sometimes grainy high frequencies of MP3s a little less annoying and fatiguing. I can’t really think of a less expensive upgrade to your computer’s audio that will yield as much bang for the buck.

Paul’s Desert Island Radio: The RCA Super Radio III.

Last year I recommended four great radios that fit a variety of uses. This year I’m adding one more to the list, the venerable SuperRadio III. I last wrote about the Super Radio in 2010 when this much beloved radio started becoming available again. This radio is particularly well suited to AM listeners because it pulls in distant stations well, and delivers higher fidelity on strong local stations. Its large two-way mono speaker is designed for natural reproduction of voices and sounds very nice with FM music, as well. If I could only own one radio, the Super Radio III would be my choice.

If there’s a radio lover on your gift list this year I’m certain you can’t go wrong with any of this gear. Is there a radio listening accessory you’d recommend? Let us know in the comments.

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2011 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans

Jennifer Waits — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 22:48:33 +0000

If you are getting a jump on holiday shopping on this Cyber Monday, then it’s a perfect time to start sleuthing out radio-related gifts for your friends and family. While you’re at it, you can also help support Radio Survivor by shopping through our Amazon links. Since radio gifts never go out of style, you can take a look at the guides that we put together in 2010 and 2009. Here are our latest additions:

1. 2012 Tower Site Calendar: Call it porn for the radio geek in your life. Scott Fybush’s latest calendar features images of transmitter sites from all over North America.

2. Radio Jewelry: There are a variety of choices, including a silver vintage radio charm, microphone cufflinks, and HAM radio cufflinks.

3. Radio Lit: If you want to find some radio literature, there are some great options, including Michael Keith’s tome The Radio Station, Eighth Edition: Broadcast, Satellite and Internet. For tinkerers, there’s 22 Radio and Receiver Projects for the Evil Genius.

4. A Kids’ Clock Radio: I think it’s important to get kids listening to radio early, so this LEGO Alarm Clock Radio is a no-brainer for Lego-obsessed school kids. If you have a girly girl on your gift list, the Lego radio also comes in pink and there are also a number of sweet Hello Kitty clock radios and boomboxes.

5. Stylish Gear and Underground Sounds from Your Favorite Non-Commercial Radio Station: Some of the best radio-themed apparel can be found by perusing the webstores of your favorite local college and community radio stations. KCSB at UC Santa Barbara is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and they have a special commemorative T-shirt. I’m also quite fond of the new KFJC girlie T-shirt featuring a retro cat eyeing a fish bowl record player. Non-commercial stations are also a great source for intriguing music compilations, including KDVS’s new cassette-of-the-month club subscription, featuring both musicians from the Davis/Sacramento area as well as “out of town” artists.

6. Emergency Radio to Keep You Informed During a Disaster: It’s becoming increasingly clear that terrestrial radio is a vital source for information during a natural disaster. Heroic stations have guided citizens safely through emergencies when their communities have been hit by earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Hand-crank radios, solar-powered radios, and weather radios are good tools to have in your emergency kit. One option is a Solar-Powered Radio and Cell Phone Charger, another is the Voyager Solar/Dynamo Emergency Radio, which also includes shortwave and weather radio options. There’s even a shower radio that has a built-in weather radio in case you want to keep apprised while lathering up.

7. A modern clock radio: There are all sorts of clock radios that combine features from both smart phones and the classic AM/FM radio technology. Try the Dual Alarm Clock Radio for iPhone/iPod with AM/FM presets.

8. Build Your Own Radio Kit: Every self-respecting electronics nerd built their own radio back in the day. Share this tradition with your favorite youngster. One DIY kit is the Snap Circuits FM Radio.

9. Cool Tabletop Radio: There are some beautiful tabletop radios out there, including some that are focused on AM/FM radio (like this Crosley Solo Radio), satellite radio, and Internet Radio.

10. Radio Movies: I’m a big fan of “djs in peril” films and one of the best is Play Misty for Me. If you want something nostalgic, there’s Radio Days and if you want something educational, there’s the Ken Burn’s documentary Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio.

If you need more tips, take a look at our previous posts:

Paul’s Recommended Radios for Holiday Gifty Time

2010 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans

Top Holiday Gifts for Radio Lovers

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Sony to end manufacture of minidisc, a stalwart of radio studios

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:01:10 +0000

My last minidisc recorder.
Minidisc is an audio technology that never quite took off in the US the same way it did in Asia, and especially Japan. After enjoying a brief period of mainstream popularity just prior to the introduction of the iPod, many people are probably surprised to learn that minidisc is actually still around now. However, Sony has just announced that it will end production of their last portable minidisc walkman this September, nineteens years after introducing the format, and just under a year after ending production of the cassette walkman.

First released by Sony in 1992, minidisc was the company’s second attempt to create a recordable digital audio device for consumers, after the release of digital audio tape (DAT) was complicated in the 1980s by the recording industry. Although Sony first boneheadedly marketed MD as an ultra-portable CD replacement, eventually the digital recording capacity of the medium won over.

One place where MD found a foothold was in radio. It’s hard to remember a time when you couldn’t listen to an MP3 online or load up thousands of songs on a player the size of a wristwatch. But back in the mid-90s digital computer-based audio was still a tricky and expensive proposition, and the recordable CD-R had yet to be released. A decent PC or Mac-based digital audio workstation easily could set a station back five to ten grand. Storage costs easily went up from there, since a gigabyte hard drive storing a bit less than two hours of audio cost hundreds of dollars.

By comparison, minidisc offered stations an inexpensive way to digitally record programs from satellite, prerecorded shows, on-air spots or airchecks. A pro-level deck could be had for just around $1000 and the reusable discs cost just a couple of bucks. Operating much like a tape deck, very little training was required for air staff to begin using them.

Portable minidisc recorders were also smaller than most other portable recorders of the time, while offering better sound quality and durability than the ubiquitous cassette recorder. By the late 1990s most major radio networks and producers, including NPR and the BBC, were using minidisc recorders for field reporting.

An especially useful feature of minidisc was the ability to edit right on the disc. Although the process seems slow in comparison to editing a waveform on a computer, it was still a lot easier and less error-prone than editing reel-to-reel tape with a razor blade, as many stations were still doing in the early 90s. I edited a lot of minidisc in my day, and while I wouldn’t have wanted to edit together a complex half-hour feature, it was very simple to trim the heads or tails off a track or move tracks around. At community radio WEFT we used minidisc to record our daily syndicated news programs from satellite and relied upon the editing function to cut some programs into sections for easier station breaks.

Minidisc also caught on with amateur and home recordists. Although the multi-track minidisc recorder never caught on, the technology offered an inexpensive, high quality and very portable way to record audio in the field. Many musicians relied upon minidisc to record their own live shows, or to demo tracks at home.

Even though minidisc was popular in radio, studios and amongst amateur recordists, Sony always hoped it would be a hit consumer technology. And, frankly, with some 22 million recorders sold by Sony worldwide in the last nineteen years we really can’t call minidisc a failure. Still compared with 297 million iPods sold, poor minidisc is a bit outclassed.

TASCAM's newest minidisc deck
Sony has pretty much already ended manufacture of all but one minidisc recorder model by now. I don’t think there’s been a pro deck in their lineup for a few years. However, pro audio manufacturer TASCAM actually introduced a brand new CD/MD combo deck just this past April. The MD/CD1mkIII is aimed squarely at radio stations and recording studios that either still have minidisc as part of their workflow or have an archive of discs they still want to play.

There are at least four working minidisc recorders in my house, and I must own several hundred discs. About half of my discs have audio that I recorded myself, containing airchecks of my radio shows, segments I recorded for air, live shows or other field recordings. The other half contains music, many of them minidisc mix tapes. You see, a minidisc recorder functioned as my main portable music player for a decade until about 2007 when I got my first reliable MP3 player. I even used to listen to podcasts downloaded to minidisc.

Yes, Sony may be ending manufacture of their minidisc recorders, but minidisc is not dead. Sure, a large percentage of those 22 million minidisc players are probably lost in the back of closets and drawers. But a lot are still in use today by people who don’t see a need to ditch a technology that works, or who have a cherished archive of music and programs recorded on MD.

I’m always a little annoyed when the tech press/twitter/blogosphere jumps on these announcements declaring a technology to be obsolete and dead. I’m not just driven by nostalgia. Rather, in some regards it’s wasteful to ditch a functioning bit of technology only because it’s not popular anymore. Just because Sony soon won’t be making recorders doesn’t mean that the deck in your studio or on your shelf is instantaneously useless.

I agree that by and large portable digital audio recorders that use memory cards and computer editing are actually easier to use than minidisc. But anyone who has lost multiple hours of stuff to a corrupted SD card, or thousands of songs to a dead hard drive might see the value in a study little disc that only hold a few hours at best, and is built to survive a lot of abuse. You lose a hard drive and your whole music collection might be gone. You misplace one minidisc and you’ve lost no more than a couple hours of audio.

¡Viva la minidisc!

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Radio at CES: Not much new under the sun

Paul Riismandel — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 04:32:55 +0000

Every day I watched the news reports and press releases from the just-ended 2011 Consumer Electronics Show hoping for some interesting radio news. Instead, what we got was mostly more of the same. You might call it CES 2010 2.0. Aside from the Android-powered car radio that Matthew covered the other day, there was nothing new or innovative offered up in the radio world.

CES 2011 is over, but iBiquity is still pushing CES 2010

Even though the company never updated its website from the 2010 CES, iBuiquity did announce that HD Radio would be standard in 36 car models from 17 brands, which does indicate some stability for the technology. But as far as satellite radio is concerned XM/Sirius only had one announcement on hand, touting a deal with Nissan offering a a three-month intro subscription on dealer-certified pre-owned Nissan and Infiniti cars.

Internet radio primarily built on the smartphone integration model introduced by Pioneer at last year’s CES. Toyota jumped into that fray with its Entune system offering control of not just Pandora, but also Clear Channel’s iheartradio, XM satellite radio and HD Radio. However, this system is just an option on “select vehicles,” which means that in reality only a minority of Toyota buyers will end up with it. Sony and other after-market mobile stereo manufacturers also announced smartphone-connected head units that will control Pandora and other apps.

What we haven’t seen yet is a car stereo with native internet radio capability built-in. While smartphone sales are growing I still doubt that the majority of owners are willing to deal with the hassle of connecting their phones most of the time in order to take advantage of internet radio access. Furthermore, this functionality is mostly offered on optional equipment or after-market items, further limiting the number of car owners likely to use it.

I don’t see mobile internet radio reaching any kind of critical mass–even on par with Sirius/XM–until the experience is completely integrated. That will likely require manufacturers to pair up with mobile broadband carriers similar to how Sirius/XM struck deals with them. But I don’t think such an idea is farfetched, noting how Amazon bundles AT&T 3G service with its Kindle e-readers. Still, it hasn’t happened.

Although the car has always been an important place for radio listening, more than ever it is now the battleground for radio technologies. Major electronics manufacturers seem to be largely ceding the home HD, satellite and internet radio market to niche players.

New radio platforms will succeed or fail in the car based upon their ability to offer a seamless, integrated experience with desirable programming. Sirius/XM has the leg up here with 20 millions subscribers and established relationships with most major auto manufacturers. HD Radio’s principal advantage is that it’s free, but it’s also hampered by far less diverse programming, even taking into account HD2 and HD3 channels. HD also has all sorts of reception problems outside of the strongest signal areas.

Internet radio poses the greatest threat to HD and satellite, but not as long as people have to plug in their smartphones to tune it in.

In the end, I think the dirty little secret is that when it comes to radio in the car, traditional analog broadcast still wins. It’s standard equipment on pretty much every vehicle sold and it’s a feature in pretty much every aftermarket stereo, alongside CD, MP3, satellite, HD or smartphone connectivity. Broadcast is also free, and while we can find many faults with mainstream commercial programming, there is still plenty that attracts millions of listeners every day.

This is not the sort of conclusion that makes news at the Consumer Electronics Show. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

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What’s in store for radio at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show

Paul Riismandel — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 14:01:47 +0000

The annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off this Thursday in Las Vegas. While all the biggest buzz around the show is in anticipation of new tablet competitors for Apple’s iPad, we can still expect to hear announcements of new radio gadgets across the spectrum, from analog broadcast and HD Radio to satellite and internet radio. Some companies have already started with their press releases, while we’re left guessing what will be up in other segments of the industry.

None other than Clear Channel Communications has announced its intent to “have a vital presence” at CES, touting its iheartradio mobile app. The app, which is available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7, allows the user to tune in the web streams of 750 Clear Channel-owned terrestrial stations. In addition to a deal for iheartradio to become available in some Toyota vehicles, Clear Channel promises that “numerous vendors” will display “iheartradio-capable” products… whatever that means. I’m not sure I really get the attractiveness of tuning a distant Clear Channel station via the internet in your car when there are likely plenty of stations with nearly the same playlist on the local FM dial. But I guess I’m not the target market.

We should expect plenty of home internet radios to be announced from companies like iHome, which made a name with iPod docking radios, and Grace Digital Audio, which was an early player in standalone radios able to tune in internet audio streams. Also expect more car stereos and add-on kits that make it easier to listen to internet radio on the road via an attached smartphone. Pioneer tried to make a splash at last year’s CES with a car receiver designed to play Pandora streams via an iPhone, integrated so that the driver can control the Pandora channel via the receiver instead of the smartphone. I didn’t hear much more about it once CES was over, though the receiver garnered respectable reviews.

iBiquity is still stuck at CES 2010

On the satellite radio and HD Radio fronts things have been quiet for the pre-show period. I expect we’ll hear about some more factory-installed Sirius and XM capable car radios, especially since a rebounding auto industry this year is something Sirius/XM is depending heavily upon. I’m anticipating something similar from HD Radio, and I won’t be surprised to hear iBiquity–HD Radio’s parent company–trot our their not-so-new deal with Ford again. In fact, it doesn’t seem like iBiquity is even ready for CES this year, since their press release site is still touting a special section to highlight HD Radio at the 2010 CES from twelve months ago. Regardless of HD Radio’s tardiness, it seems as though mobile in-vehicle electronics will be a significant focus of the show, with keynotes from Ford’s CEO and Audi’s chairman of the board.

For us policy geeks there’s a “one-on-one” with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Friday afternoon. I’m not sure much of that session will be radio-specific, but he is likely to talk quite a bit about wireless spectrum, which certainly affects internet radio, especially mobile. I wonder if anyone in the industry will take him to task over the Commission’s failure to implement any real network neutrality for mobile broadband. I reckon the electronics industry stands to lose quite a bit if consumers’ wallets are penalized for streaming radio and video on the go.

Unfortunately, the Radio Survivor 2011 budget doesn’t come close to allowing us to send a correspondent to Vegas to cover the show first-hand. Nevertheless, the deluge of press releases this week should provide plenty of grist for the mill. We’ll do our best to chew it up and try to digest what it means for the state of radio in the forthcoming year.

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Radio Survivor’s Holiday Gift Guide Round-Up

Jennifer Waits — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:11:49 +0000

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays from Radio Survivor!

As the shopping season gets even more frenetic, we wanted to help simplify things for you by sharing a few of the radio-themed gift guides that we’ve put together for our readers over the past year.

On these lists you’ll find radios, books, toys, accessories, DVDs, radio shows, and other items that might appeal to you or to your radio-obsessed friends and family.

And, remember that when you purchase items on Amazon through links on Radio Survivor, we get a small referral bonus, which is a lovely gift for us.

I’m still waiting to get that build-your-own-radio kit, myself…What’s on your list?

Paul’s Recommended Radios for Holiday Gifty Time

2010 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans

Top Holiday Gifts for Radio Lovers

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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.

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2010 Holiday Gift Guide for Radio Fans

Jennifer Waits — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 00:41:37 +0000

Happy Cyber Monday! If you’re starting your holiday shopping, don’t forget radio-related gifts. Last year I wrote a handy guide outlining the most perfect radio-themed gifts for the different types of people on your list. That list is still a great starting point, so this time around I’m just going to add a few new additions. If you shop Amazon through Radio Survivor, we’ll also get a referral bonus, so you’ll be helping to support our mission here as well. Of course, don’t let that stop you from supporting your local, small businesses too.

Here are my suggestions of gifts for radio lovers-2010 style:

1. 2011 Tower Site Calendar: This is the 10th edition of this calendar, which features photographs of towers, including radio towers. Put together by Scott Fybush, an associate of the radio tower loving Garrett Wollman (our very first Radio Obsessive); this calendar would be a great gift for radio engineers and fans of radio architecture.

2. Areaware SSKMRS Magno Model 1 Sustainable Personal Radio: I saw one of these gorgeous wooden radios in a local store this weekend and was in love. This would be the perfect gift for design-minded eco-conscious radio fans. It’s made from sustainable wood and a percentage of the sale goes to sustainable forest replanting.

3. Gear from Your Favorite Local Non-commercial Radio Station: One of the best purchases that you can make is gear from your local non-commercial radio station. Whether it’s a cool T-shirt, compilation CD or LP, baseball cap, fly swatter, or a shot glass; supporting local radio is a very good thing. Might I suggest the brand new KFJC zip-up hoodie? Or you could send some funds to WFMU in order to get your name on a balloon attached to station manager Ken Freedman during their Lift-Off event next week.

4. Fisher Price Build & Fix – Radio Repair Toy: I was excited to see an episode of the kids’ TV show Handy Mandy in which the protagonist heads over to a radio station to do some repairs. So, you can get your kids into the groove of understanding radio’s relavance by picking up this toy radio repair kit for them.

5. SportSyncRadio: Earlier this month I wrote about various radio options for sports fans who want to listen to a radio broadcast while watching a live event on television. This stand-alone radio is an all-in-one solution.

6. Another option for synchronizing radio with live sports is the Griffin Technology RadioShark AM / FM Desktop Radio with time-shift recording, which can also be used to record radio.

7. 40 Watts from Nowhere : A Journey into Pirate Radio: Every time a new pirate radio station appears on the scene, I’m reminded of this fascinating first-person account by Sue Carpenter. In this book she eloquently outlines the challenges of running a station based on anarchistic principles. You can read Matthew’s review of the book here.

8. Hello Kitty Boombox Wallet: I love that radio imagery is making its way into fashion and this Hello Kitty wallet adorned with a radio boombox is adorable.

9. Rhinestone Old School Boombox Gold Belt Buckle: This belt buckle is over-the-top, with its gilded boombox and is a great gift choice for radio fans who embrace hip hop culture and fashion or for anyone who wants to add a bit of glamor to their life.

10. Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound: There are lots of great radio books out there, but “reality” radio doesn’t get much ink. Here’s a recent book full of essays written by documentary radio practitioners, from Ira Glass to audio performance artists.

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