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I use a program called http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/Audio Hijack Pro to record internet streams for later playback on my iPod.

You mean like airfoil?

I hear these arguments about DRM, but to me, as long as I can make a high-fi copy of anything I can play, I don't see what the problem is. Personally I've been using Audio Hijack Pro by Rogue Amoeba. http://www.rogueamoeba.com/. I love it. I record my favorite radio shows from the internet on a regular schedule like tivo for internet radio, and if I ever had a DRM CD, I would just use Audio Hijack to record it while it played. Bring your DRM on, I'm not scared! If something was so DRM'd that I couldn't even play it, then we would have a problem...

I record NPR and PRI shows via RealAudio streams to .m4b (bookmarkable AAC) using Audio Hijack Pro on a Mac mini. I used to use Total Recorder Pro on Windows. TRP worked, but AHP has better auto-naming facilities so I can be lazy about deleting old stuff & still find the new. It also is able to "hijack" just RealPlayer's PCM output so I can use the computer for other audio stuff. TRP pretends to be a soundcard driver, so any other audio is recorded too.

Finding a stream with a high enough bitrate to sound good that stays up during a popular show like Car Talk is tricky, but doable.

I'll be switching to an FM tuner with an outdoor Winegard PR-6000 aimed at KQED and an Edirol UA-1A (out of production so I've linked the similar UA-1EX).

Outdoor antennas are cheap. A good chimney mount is going to double my cost, but the total is still cheaper than an indoor Terk & it'll actually work. If the PR-6000 or PR-5030 can't pull in that distant station Antenna Performance Specialties makes what many claim are the best around. $219 for the APS-13 might seem like a lot, but compared to an Audible.com or Sirius subscription, it's not too bad & a good strong FM signal sounds pretty good below 15kHz. I'm tempted to get one of these just for pure outrageousness of a 200" boom, but it's overkill for KQED from Santa Cruz-- need a rotor to really justify it.

I'll be using a cool 70's brushed-aluminum-faceplate Kenwood KT-5300 with analog "big knob" tuning that I got for $30 before I found the crazy FM DXers page that reviews every old radio & has info or links on tweaking them for better selectivity.

If I end up wanting to record another station, rather than getting a Radio Shark and hacking on an external antenna connector, I plan to just get more tuners & switch them with a repurposed Keyspan USB->serial adapter and some relays.

Airport express does only play iTunes, unless you use Airfoil. With that you can send any audio you want.

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

Airfoil lets you stream to an Airport Express from any Mac OS X application. Sadly it's not open source -- it's $25 shareware -- but it does sidestep the need for you to use iTunes for everything.

The MacOS has always been able to do this. OS X does one better than just mixing live audio through one audio input and actually allows you to direct the audio output of different applications to different devices. The OS supports this but there is very little GUI to control it. The application Detour will give you a more complete GUI for it.

There is audio content out there on FM besides music. In the US, it's National Public Radio, primarily, outside the US, there's CBC, BBC, etc.

In the past, this has been my primary objection to the iPod (lack of FM), however, I'm starting to think I can get along without it, now that I've started to use Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba. I can programmatically capture the broadcasts I want, similar to how Tivo works, as long as there's a station that does an internet broadcast, and copy the MP3s to listen to later. Granted, I hear things a day late, but I"m not usually listening for breaking news.

You might want to look into Air Foil. It allows you to stream any audio to AP Express.

It's OS X only at this point, unfortunately for users of other OSes.

Do you really think they would use Justeport when they could just license/request a key from Apple?

Rogue Amoeba are not some hacker group but rather respected developers.

How bizarre... my brother just asked me about another of their products (Detour) yesterday.

Anyone know if there is an equivalent product for Windows? I know I can reroute audio as a whole under Control Panel, but I haven't seen anything to give this level of per-program control.

maybe not for long?

from the FAQ (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/faq.php):

Is there a version for Windows?
There are no current plans for porting Airfoil to Windows. However, this is the most logical of all our products to be ported, so stay tuned.

Take a look at Nicecast. They claim "One-Click Broadcasting Of Any Audio On OS X"

A VideoLAN and VLC setup could also be the solution. It would be cheaper (as in free), but more work to setup.

There is a sync issue with this. It's got to do with the APEX standard and nothing the DEV's can do about it.

However. This is not a problem since VLC and MPlayer can move the sound all around. So just watch your torrents with VLC(which I guess you do anyway) and make the sound be a few seconds early. Easy peasy.

More info at http://www.rogueamoeba.com/forum/ubb/Forum7/HTML/0 00010.html

From the site, under "Buy" on the right:

*Before purchase, noise is overlaid on all transmissions longer than 10 minutes.

Yes... OSX can do it too!

What you need is Audiohijack. (assuming you're using OS X)

Skype has just announced full versions of its software for Mac OS X and for Linux. Now I'm only waiting for some conversations recording feature.

Although I have not tried it yet, I imagine this could be accomplished via the use of something like Audio Hijack Pro or Wiretap.

You'll need nicecast Then we can all enjoy it too.

If you've got a mac, try audio hijack for grabbing the stream (from any software).

On MacOS X the tool you want is called Audio Hijack Pro and is works like a champ. You can intercept any audio stream being played on the machine, and allows you to apply any number of DSP effects to the intercepted stream. It totally rocks. I've used it to record streaming content from various radio programs which shall remain nameless, fscking RIAA.

No it's not. Its a radio receiver not a p2p app. Settle down. It is less of a threat to the evil RIAA than Audio Hijack Pro.

If you're using an Apple, it's called Audio Hijack Pro and it allows you to capture ANY audio that you can listen to with your computer and save it to a nice & tidy .mp3 file. I used to have something similar for windows before my enlightenment, but the name escapes me. Anyway, AHP can even be set to fire off at a certain time if you wanted to catch a specific program while you sleep, leaving it on your desktop to be dropped onto your iPod at your convenience. I use it specifically for NPR programming so I can jack it into my helmet on the way to work.

You could always plug a SW radio into the headphones jack on your Mac then use Rogue Amoebas Audio Hijack Pro to record the program.

I'll be sticking with Audio Hijack Pro and my old D-Link radio. It's a cheaper combination, and it does much more.

from Audio Hijack?

You've got to love how easy some Mac software is to use. (and, no, I am in no way affiliated with them, other than I'm about to own their software.)

Here is a clickable link for Total Recorder, a Windows app.

If you use a Mac you can try Audio Hijack.

Newsflash - RMS takes world's first crap! Read it only on /.

... as long as you're willing to give up hijacking already running applications. (not a huge deal, IMHO)

more info here

you mean something like this?

I have Audio Hijack Pro, but I ordered the Radioshark because the Real streams are so unstable... I often come back to an alert box rather than a recording.

Radio Shark looks like it will be scriptable and come with a tivo-esque program, but it also will show up as a regular input... and you could write a script (that AHP will trigger when the timer is triggered) to tune the station properly...

now if RadioShark would only ship...

Audio Hijack lets you grab a stream coming out of any app and record or process and record it. It works well, for what it does.

What I'm talking about is some sort of additional driver or app (I'd prefer a driver) which is a generic 'Airport Express Out' or something. You could then use Rogue Amoeba's Detour to then route the audio output from any app to the Airport Express.

But yeah, I can see latency problems if you wish to play a DVD on the laptop, but have the audio coming out of the stereo or something. However, for uses such as playing stuff via WMP or RealOne, it could be nice.

Regardless, I still think that it's a good option.

Audio Hijack lets you grab a stream coming out of any app and record or process and record it. It works well, for what it does.

What I'm talking about is some sort of additional driver or app (I'd prefer a driver) which is a generic 'Airport Express Out' or something. You could then use Rogue Amoeba's Detour to then route the audio output from any app to the Airport Express.

But yeah, I can see latency problems if you wish to play a DVD on the laptop, but have the audio coming out of the stereo or something. However, for uses such as playing stuff via WMP or RealOne, it could be nice.

Regardless, I still think that it's a good option.

I contacted Rouge Amoeba asking them to implement this into their Audio Hijack product. This is what they replied:

Jeppe,

It'd be cool, until we get sued by Apple for using illegal, reverse-engineered code. For now, see this article.

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Article/Three sCompany-2004-07-24

-Paul

--
Rogue Amoeba Software Support
support@rogueamoeba.com

>
>
>next feature in audiohijack? would be cool :)

iTunes-> AudioHijack -> Multiple Airport Express bases => your music in each room around the house. Would this work? I understand there might be a small sync issue between different stations, but I can live with some echo.

I contacted the guys at Rogue Amoeba about wanting to send RealPlayer audio to the APEX, and they sent me to this article. It works great for me, I dunno why they haven't publicized it more.

I contacted the guys at Rogue Amoeba about wanting to send RealPlayer audio to the APEX, and they sent me to this article. It works great for me, I dunno why they haven't publicized it more.

Fortunately I'd already picked up a Powerbook 3400 on eBay ($65) and an Oronoco Wavelan card from a garage sale ($5) as a Debian/PPC plaything.

On the MacOS 9 boot partition, I added iTunes 1.1, IE 5, the Macast mp3 player, and "iHam on iRye". If I could run iTunes 4.5 on the Powerbook as well as the iMac in the upstairs office, my job would be done, but I was left with trying out a number of streaming servers. Many of the servers on OSX use iTunes as a backend (nicecast, for instance), which sucks up added CPU cycles on my 400MHz iMac, and with the three I tried, I couldn't quite figure out the correct URL to connect to from the Powerbook. I looked at gnump3d, which doesn't use iTunes, but haven't tried it yet. I had played with the Squeezebox' server, the slimserver, a year ago, so gave the update another try. The instructions provided a URL format even I could grok, and the resulting stream played on both iTunes 1.1 and Macast on the Powerbook. Using IE (or whatever browser), I can surf to the Slimserver's web interface to select playlists, and after plugging the Powerbook's line out into my stereo, the result wasn't too bad.

What makes a really slick remote control is iHam on iRye, an iTunes 4.x remote control that works on MacOS 9.x and X. Not Windows, for better or worse. It provides an iTunes-like interface, and it seems I can even select webcasts. Provided that the Airport Express' stereo line out provides a signal of at least the same quality as the PB 3400, I may have found my ultimate solution.

Real audio was a mature technology when they (NPR) first signed on for their service. It has served them well. If you want them to consider free alternatives, make a presentation to them.

Exactly. Look at what happened with Car Talk (story one, story two). Click & Clack didn't like the way that Real tries to abuse their users either, so they reluctantly tried switching to Windows Media instead, knowing that this solution wasn't much better. After getting lots of complaints, they switched back to Real, but not before getting Real to relax on some of their policies.

And you may have other options, as well. In Boston, WBUR provides streams in each of RealAudio, Windows Media, and Quicktime, and even goes so far as to tell users how to listen to the station through iTunes (or, but they don't quite spell this out, any other player that can take an MPEG-4 URL as a stream source).

But if these formats aren't enough for you, and you've just got to have these shows in your format of choice (and you're using a Mac, but I think we can take that as given if you're an NPR junkie :-), then maybe you should take a look at Audio Hijack, which is a neat little program for, either on-demand or on a schedule, starting up an audio stream in your player of choice (or the site's player of choice, as the case may be) and capturing the output as AIFF files. (Actually, it does far more, and can record any audio on your Mac, but I'm trying to stay focused on internet audio here.) These files can in turn be converted by a program like Amadeus II or LAME into MP3 or OGG or what have you; Audio Hijack can even fire off the converter program for you automatically if you want it to. The audio quality of a Real->AIFF->MP3 recording may not be anything spectacular, but for talk radio this isn't such a bad compromise (hint: an episode of This American Life averages around 30mb this way). For a year or two now, I've been idly wondering how to do a decent TiVo for radio on my computer, and now with this I think I've found a pretty good solution...

Real audio was a mature technology when they (NPR) first signed on for their service. It has served them well. If you want them to consider free alternatives, make a presentation to them.

Exactly. Look at what happened with Car Talk (story one, story two). Click & Clack didn't like the way that Real tries to abuse their users either, so they reluctantly tried switching to Windows Media instead, knowing that this solution wasn't much better. After getting lots of complaints, they switched back to Real, but not before getting Real to relax on some of their policies.

And you may have other options, as well. In Boston, WBUR provides streams in each of RealAudio, Windows Media, and Quicktime, and even goes so far as to tell users how to listen to the station through iTunes (or, but they don't quite spell this out, any other player that can take an MPEG-4 URL as a stream source).

But if these formats aren't enough for you, and you've just got to have these shows in your format of choice (and you're using a Mac, but I think we can take that as given if you're an NPR junkie :-), then maybe you should take a look at Audio Hijack, which is a neat little program for, either on-demand or on a schedule, starting up an audio stream in your player of choice (or the site's player of choice, as the case may be) and capturing the output as AIFF files. (Actually, it does far more, and can record any audio on your Mac, but I'm trying to stay focused on internet audio here.) These files can in turn be converted by a program like Amadeus II or LAME into MP3 or OGG or what have you; Audio Hijack can even fire off the converter program for you automatically if you want it to. The audio quality of a Real->AIFF->MP3 recording may not be anything spectacular, but for talk radio this isn't such a bad compromise (hint: an episode of This American Life averages around 30mb this way). For a year or two now, I've been idly wondering how to do a decent TiVo for radio on my computer, and now with this I think I've found a pretty good solution...

Real audio was a mature technology when they (NPR) first signed on for their service. It has served them well. If you want them to consider free alternatives, make a presentation to them.

Exactly. Look at what happened with Car Talk (story one, story two). Click & Clack didn't like the way that Real tries to abuse their users either, so they reluctantly tried switching to Windows Media instead, knowing that this solution wasn't much better. After getting lots of complaints, they switched back to Real, but not before getting Real to relax on some of their policies.

And you may have other options, as well. In Boston, WBUR provides streams in each of RealAudio, Windows Media, and Quicktime, and even goes so far as to tell users how to listen to the station through iTunes (or, but they don't quite spell this out, any other player that can take an MPEG-4 URL as a stream source).

But if these formats aren't enough for you, and you've just got to have these shows in your format of choice (and you're using a Mac, but I think we can take that as given if you're an NPR junkie :-), then maybe you should take a look at Audio Hijack, which is a neat little program for, either on-demand or on a schedule, starting up an audio stream in your player of choice (or the site's player of choice, as the case may be) and capturing the output as AIFF files. (Actually, it does far more, and can record any audio on your Mac, but I'm trying to stay focused on internet audio here.) These files can in turn be converted by a program like Amadeus II or LAME into MP3 or OGG or what have you; Audio Hijack can even fire off the converter program for you automatically if you want it to. The audio quality of a Real->AIFF->MP3 recording may not be anything spectacular, but for talk radio this isn't such a bad compromise (hint: an episode of This American Life averages around 30mb this way). For a year or two now, I've been idly wondering how to do a decent TiVo for radio on my computer, and now with this I think I've found a pretty good solution...

If you don't like it, don't use it. Plain and simple.

Some of us, for example, route audio from different applications to different places; when I play music or games, it comes out through my audio system and the amplified speakers - when an e-mail dings at me, it comes out through an internal speaker.

Haxies like Detour, which provide real, interesting function, which is useful for any pro-audio guy with a lot of very loud audio hardware that you don't want system beeps playing over, is fundamentally interesting - moreso if you've got more than one set of audio outputs.

So, before people go off badmouthing how awful it is, they should think twice: that same code injection technology enables everything from Shapeshifter to reskin your UI to useful functions like being able to reroute your audio away or into your pro-audio equipment on an application-by-application basis.

In other words: despite everyone's nasty opinions, it provides a useful service to those of us with unusual requirements of our systems.

For works under 30 seconds, you can listen to the whole thing; however, you can't save what you hear.

you get a nice capture of all your PC noise, which even for a high quality PC is fairly noticeable. You can stick in your headphones and crank up the volume with nothing actually playing, and havea listen to your capacitors charging and transformers humming.

One better solution would be to use something like Rogue amoeba's "Audio Hijack to 'capture' the program playing the stream and get a noise free high quality MP3 of it directly. the problem is Hijack is for OS X only, and Napster have decided to snub Mac users by keeping thier service windows only. I am sure there are similar programs though.

In support of this suggestion, you can get the mplayer binaries, and a GUI player, from here.

You could also use Audio Hijack, which is (very nicce) shareware, or Wiretap, which is free(beer)ware.

I find mplayer is very nice to have around and will often chip in and help where Quicktime fails. Same can be said of VLC.

If you don't have a TiVo, but have a Mac, AudioHijack and a broadband connection will let you record radio from the BBC's website. You can then sync to your iPod when you come home and listen to the shows at your leisure.

If you have Mac OS X and $12, you can do this with Detour.

You could also broadcast a live audio from anywhere with network access, as well...

I sent their support crew problem tickets and I got a vapid response about toggling the buffer settings and the internet speed but it didn't make an iota worth of difference. I thought it was because I'm using Mac OS X RealOne but the same behavoir was duplicated on my wife's Windows box.

I wish everyone would fire off a e-note to whoever posts audio material in Real format to persuade them to switch to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis or even heaven forbid Windows Media Player format.

RealOne, RealPlayer or whatever catchy moniker they wish to attach to that piece of rubbish is indeed a pile of garbage...

I'm not sure if the tuner audio unit can be tweaked or not -- perhaps it is included under Darwin, but I somehow doubt it...

I forgot to mention that I used the tuner audio unit inside of Audio Hijack Pro, which can alter iTunes output in realtime. There may be another VST pitch/time shifter out there that will work with it, but I didn't find any when I searched around... Good luck!