I wanted to love the radioSHARK from Griffin Technology, I really did. I'm a big fan of radio and I've been disappointed that it took so long for a company to develop and AM/FM turner for the PC. So when I heard about the radioSHARK I was excited. A quick trip to the Apple store and I had this little fin-shaped wonder.
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I wonder how the Mac OS X version is?
Is it normal AM/FM tuner, that you can buy with usb tv tuner? That isn't any new thing.
Radio tuners have been there for a long time now. Their drivers are even included in the linux kernel in the V4L category. By the way, plugging such a device in USB is stupid, it's much better to have a device that directly plugs to the LINE IN input of your sound card, so that 1) any sound application will find it and 2) data will go directly to the sound card and the DSP, which is much better from a performance point of view.
By the way, the $69 price is very high. This product is definitely totally uninteresting. You can have radio cards with Line In plugging for much less than that, and, as I have one, I can tell that the sound quality is very good and linux detection is completely automatic.
So this is a shameless plug. Why should OSNews give uninnovative expensive products free advertising ?
Advertising WHAT? Did you even read the article? If this is advertising then I've been on the moon for the past several decades. The reviewer basically says the product doesn't work. He doesn't even know how it got out the door with such fatal bugs in the control software for it.
I still have the Psion Wavefinder, which I have never managed to get properly working on anything other than a copy of Win2K (and that was dodgy).
I'm convinced that if I want to listen to the radio, then I'll buy a (standalone) radio :-(
John
"Radio tuners have been there for a long time now. Their drivers are even included in the linux kernel in the V4L category."
Where can I find out more about FM tuners for Linux (and perhaps the BSDs)? What about DAB tuners?
"By the way, plugging such a device in USB is stupid, it's much better to have a device that directly plugs to the LINE IN input of your sound card"
I plug my standalone DAB tuner into my sound card's line-in, but I thought that some USB connected DAB receivers could capture the broadcast without decoding it and without any loss of quality. Is this true?
"I plug my standalone DAB tuner into my sound card's line-in, but I thought that some USB connected DAB receivers could capture the broadcast without decoding it and without any loss of quality. Is this true?"
Yes, because USB DAB recievers work by feeding the MP2 stream directly into the PC, which processes the audio itself. The reciever only demuxs the station, it does not decode it. You can then use software such as DABBar (for the Psion Wavefinder) to save streams as MP2 - which would be exact copies of what is broadcast.
The fact that DAB quality is not perfect and, especially for music stations, tends to be quite poor may put you off making MP2 recordings. Depends what you want to do - anything off Radio 4 (UK speech station) would sound fine, but XFM in 128kpbs stereo isn't worth capturing. For perfect (or at least decent) audio, you'd need a satellite DVB card...
"For perfect (or at least decent) audio, you'd need a satellite DVB card..."
Is the sound quality better than digital terrestrial TV? Are any DVB cards usable with an open source operating system?
Sorry. I owned a radiotrak in 1995 when win95 came out. Nothing new here haha.
Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (dvb-t) is of significantly lower quality than satellite (dvb-s). I think I read the stream has 1/2 or 1/3 of the bandwith if you compare dvb-t and -s.
'Lower Quality'? Both are digital transmissions. Maybe you should rephrase that in terms of modulation and Mhz bandwidth for the data to fit inside. DVB-S services are only as wide as the transponder space you are able to aquire (which could quite easily be segmented into less than the DVB-T station's total bandwidth). DVB-T is simply a smaller pipe.
The USA lives in the ice age in comparison with european digital radio services.
DVB-T can be up to 32Mbits per channel. How many 64Kbit digital radio services can you fit in that? Do the math...
I was curious about this device as I have both a Mac & PC, but after reading this review, I think I'll steer clear for ther time being.
I just wanted to say "Thanks" for one of the better written reviews I've seen on OSNews. Very informative, and well written!
a Mac product. Why did the reviewer forgot that side?!?!?
Computer controlled FM radio tuners (ATI All-In-Wonder, Aver's products, and RadioTrack, for example) have been around for a while, but AM tuners haven't, mostly because the RF interference generated by the PC. The radioSHARK offers both AM and FM, which makes it a step up.
Yes, you can plug a tuner into the line-in of your sound card, but actually changing the stations can prove to be an effort. I've found a couple of computer controlled tuners but they were way to expensive ($200+) for me. The XMPCR (which I had for a couple of days before eBay madness enticed me to sell it) had this capability, but was limited to XM radio and I wanted AM/FM.
So the radioSHARK, while still an immature product (IMHO), offers AM/FM at a relatively reasonable price which I'm sure will be driven down as time goes by. And hopefully, the software will improve (or even better, go open sourced), because I believe the underlying hardware is solid. I'm keeping my radioSHARK because it kind of works, most of the time.
Oh, and I don't have a Mac, so I can't comment on the radioSHARKS functionality on that platform.
John T.,
I totally agree. This product is definitely geared to the home consumer market since I can't see a business allowing their employees to connect the Radio Shark to their desktop. So if you don't want to use a portable music player such as iRiver http://www.iriver.com/ or even listen to your radio/stereo in your home then simply use a streaming radio application that is available for free on Windows, OSX and Linux. For Windows users they have Windows Media Player http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx and iTunes, OSX users there is iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/ and for Linux users there are several alternatives such as Amarok http://amarok.kde.org/ that even comes with integrated CD/DVD burning support when combined with K3B. All the applications I mentioned are free and so you can save your $69.99 (USD) to purchase something you truly need.