October 2008, about.com, quotes and excerpts from
the article:
"I've previously reviewed Radiotracker and for what it is, this
software performs quite flawlessly in monitoring the type of music you want to
rip and save from Internet Radio. Simply decide the genre or artists you're
interested in and Radiotracker will do everything else.
Let Radiotracker grab the music then sort through the
results and pick and choose the best quality MP3s it has downloaded.
Radiotracker Premium is $26.90. Radiotracker Platinum is
$39.90 - which includes MusicFinder to target specific artists.
Pros
- Simple to use yet full of more options you can imagine
- Easy way to add a lot of music to your personal library
- Interface is intuitive and well-designed
- Huge built-in database of 20,000 Internet stations, Podcasts
- Burn MP3s to CD, add to favorite player, create ringtones
Cons
- Some MP3s fade in, others may be clipped
- Limited to quality of streams available
Description
- Easy to install and use.
- Automates the search and recording of your favorite music and Podcasts.
- Simple and elegant interface with enough options to allow total
customization of process.
- No every recording will be perfect. Some final MP3 cuts may have portions of
the front or intro clipped.
- Some recordings, when not clipped, may have a fast fade-in.
- Now includes a ringtone creator.
Guide Review - Radiotracker 5.0 Turns Internet Streams
into MP3s
Let me start this review as I did my previous one. According to
webopedia: "The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act...deems copying of
copyrighted music (with the exception of making a copy for your own use) as
illegal."
And that is the premise Radiotracker operates under to
allow users to stream practically any Internet radio station and automatically
grab the music and save it to mp3 files.
Just choose the genre of music or artists you want songs
from and press the "Start Autorip" button. You're done. Radiotracker scans
streams and finds what you want.
In my test for this review, I put 4 well-known artists into
MusicFinder and let it search for about one hour. Radiotracker presented me with
26 songs within that time.
What Radiotracker can't control is the quality of the MP3
being streamed. It will also record a DJ speaking over an intro or outro.
But, there are other times when songs are perfectly
recorded from the very beginning all the way through. 20% of the MP3s it grabbed
for me were actually worth adding to my library.
Radiotracker has many options and the interface is smooth
and elegant. You can drill down in specific places to totally customize your
experience. When using Autorip you can select by genre, favorites, your taste in
music, how many stations or bandwidth, how long the ripping should continue, and
what type of filtering you wish.
Besides ripping MP3 music, Radiotracker will download
Podcasts. Users can select from an enormous database which is categorized to
make selection easy.
Play your MP3s, add them to your favorite player (iTunes,
Winamp, Windows Media Player), burn MP3s to CD right from the software and even
create ringtones with Radiotracker.
I've always liked this software but Radiotracker 5.0 is
better and slicker than ever. For the price, you will not be disappointed."
