Recordings can repeat hourly, daily, weekly, on weekdays, or on weekends. You can schedule repeating recordings, too. Despite the annoyances, I was able to schedule recordings rather easily. We barely noticed this because there are no check boxes or other tip-offs that denote these as changeable options.
You can toggle the AM and PM options in 12-hour mode, but to do so, you need to click on AM or PM. For example, the application can display time in either 12-hour or 24-hour clock mode. Scheduling a recording with RadioShark is fairly straightforward, though not as easy or elegant as it could be. Clicking on the TS button slides out a drawer, below the main window, containing “time-shifting” playback features that let you pause and rewind the live broadcast in case you need to step away from your Mac or want to listen to something a second time. To schedule a recording for a particular station at a particular time, or to play back those recordings, click on the Sched button. Most important, if you click on the Rec button, the RadioShark starts recording what you’re listening to. Buttons allow you to switch bands and find the next strong signal. A slider along the top lets you change frequencies, and a second slider lets you adjust the volume. As our original report said: “ can record audio Internet streams, either scheduled or real-time, from any streaming audio application.” That would be a nice feature, but honestly, it doesn’t seem to be one that’s integral to the product.The main RadioShark application’s interface is a metallic, iTunes-style window. There’s one feature, promised for the RadioShark way back when, that doesn’t exist in the version I’ve been using. And if you check the Accumulates When Closed preference, RadioShark will even continue to record the live radio buffer while it’s closed. This means you can quit out of RadioShark and the program will still grab your scheduled recordings. RadioShark is actually two different applications - the interface application and a background server application. The size of the recording buffer is completely configurable (as long as you’ve got enough hard-drive space), and you can also configure just how many seconds you skip when you press the Rewind and Forward buttons - a 15- or 30- second skip works great when skipping ads. Here, you can listen to music for 30 minutes, then switch to news - and still back up into the music. RadioShark’s time-shifting features work as advertised, although as a TiVo user I found it a little disconcerting to be able to listen to myself changing radio stations - on TiVo digital-video recorders, the recording buffer is wiped out when you change channels. You can play back recording items from within RadioShark’s scheduling window, but an easier path is to set the program’s preferences to automatically add your recordings to a special RadioShark playlist within iTunes. On the right, the Sched button opens up a window that lets you set up or play back scheduled recordings EQ lets you process the radio sound iTunes-style with an equalizer, and TS slides out a drawer below the main window containing “time-shifting” playback features. On the left, the Band button lets you switch between AM and FM the Seek button advances the frequency until it finds a strong signal and the Rec button automatically begins recording what you’re listening to. There are three buttons on either side of the “dial,” and a volume slider right below it. A slider along the top lets you change frequencies - there doesn’t seem to be a way to change frequencies by typing in a number.
The main RadioShark application interface is a metallic, iTunes-style window. And I can confirm that the RadioShark software does deliver on what it promises, although (as you might expect from a first version of any software) it’s not without some quirks. What has made the RadioShark a topic of interest over the past 14 months has been its combination of hardware and software. To be honest, a USB radio isn’t very interesting. However, we could only listen to the radio at a small number of sites, so we can’t vouch for what the reception would be like at your home or office. In testing at the Macworld offices and a few residences of Macworld staff members, we found the reception to be decent, although not quite as good as a quality radio. According to Griffin, the jack also doubles as an external antenna plug.
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