As soon as I cracked open the box, I saw how the RadioShark (no relation to the store) got its odd name: The slim, USB-powered radio receiver looks like a dorsal fin. Designed to act as a radio recorder, this $69 unit proved to be easy to install and fun to use--with one significant limitation.
After installing the software that provides the radio-dial interface, I plugged the fin into one of my PC's free USB ports, and broadcast radio started playing through my machine's speakers. Once I had tuned the device to a radio station, I could save that setting as a preset.
Recording broadcasts to my hard disk was easy: I pressed the Record button, and the LED turned red to indicate that the RadioShark was at work capturing live audio. The recording can be saved in various formats, depending on your PC's audio drivers. I chose uncompressed WAV files to ensure the best sound quality.
The RadioShark's scheduling features make it easy to pause playback and then return to your PC later to continue listening from where you left off. However, you can't save the recording to the PC's hard drive. Rather than recording the audio that's in the RadioShark's memory buffer, the application records what's currently being played on the radio. Ideally, I would like to search through the time-shifted audio and select a portion to record and keep.
Still, the feature that lets you schedule recordings may come in handy, and it's possible to record shows as long as 2 hours. You can schedule recordings on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
I could integrate the songs and shows I'd recorded with Apple ITunes software. By dragging the recorded segments into the ITunes interface, I could add them to IPod playlists and listen anywhere.
Although the RadioShark will please radio buffs, for the rest of us, its recording limitation makes it a dispensable toy.
Chris Manners
