![]() ![]() The hardware is beautiful and solid.  The reception is just fine for all stations I want to listen to.  This is the third Griffin product I own (also an iMic and a PowerWave), and one place where I think the radionSHARK stands out is in its heft.  It is well weighted and will not get knocked about easily on a cluttered desk. Here is an email I wrote to Griffin with my complaints after using the product for a few weeks.-I have been using the radionSHARK for about two weeks now.  I occasionally listen to the radio live, but mostly I am using it to record programs and listen to them later.  It works pretty well, but I am somewhat dissatisfied. I would rate the RadioShark as a 3, not a 7. I disagree fundamentally with the rating this product was given. Unfortunately, since the system requirement is a 1 to 2 GHz CPU, most Mac users (myself included) are SOL - View image here:. It's a little bit more expensive than the radioSHARK, but the GNU Radio project's basic daughtercard has, I believe, enough bandwidth to deal with the entire FM radio spectrum at once. They could make a peripheral that automatically recorded and cataloged a huge collection of radio broadcasts, allowing the user to discover all the kinds of weird and wonderful stuff that's on the air. ![]() The demodulation would, of course, be done in software.Manufacturers need to think big. A 12-bit 64MS/s ADC would suffice to tune about a 20MHz chunk of spectrum, enough for the whole FM band. This one-at-a-time crap is quite a limitation. With a modern CPU you could easily tune and record *every* FM radio station at once. Originally posted by jwbaker:The peripheral seems like something of a disappointment. Here's one who does, and given how many iPod owners don't own Macs I'd say your assumption is a poor one! - View image here:. Originally posted by Rex Fenestrarum:I'm guessing that Eric is a native Mac user, as no PC user (well, only a few of them) would consider missing iTunes functionality to be a "bad thing". Options.options.)Let's hope Griffin will check this thread out and get the hint. That way they (presumably) wouldn't have to pay the licensing fee to Fraunhofer.(Actually, sinve LAME is fully command-line configurable I could probably just make a batch file to do the conversion, or schedule that as well somehow. Failing that they could've gone the route of many freeware apps and included a method of linking to an already installed verison of LAME for instant MP3 conversion. I've had my eye on one of these things for a while and your info definitely helped clear up a few questions, although I'm still in two minds whether or not to buy one.I too am a little disappointed that they couldn't incorporate MP3 into it, given its ubiquity. That's more than Finder and on a par with what the Window Server requires! That's a lot of RAM dedicated to a one-trick pony.I hope Griffin fixes the OS X software so I can bring the SHARK home! It seemed to take from 17-21 MB of real memory (not VM) and I just had to wonder if that was an indication of a program that leaked memory. ![]() Now I'm back to my old college ways of being able to snag songs off the radio!I'm glad the reviewer mentioned how weird the window buttons were in the OS X version.My dissatisfaction with the performance of the radioSHARK with my Mac stems from repeated checks on the radioSHARK server in the Activity Monitor, especially when the app was off. WAV to each one, import them into iTunes and convert them to AAC. Double-click the new file and Windows gives you the "WTF do you want ME to do with this" dialog.So, I manually had to add. Funny how the Instant Record feature makes a file with no extension. I was able to "harvest" six songs from that, skip all the commercials and best of all, the really crappy songs. I set that TimeShift buffer to one hour and while I was away on lunch, the station I had tuned in had an all-request hour. My system hung up once - it's the first time in about two years I've had to reboot a Mac by holding the power button for 5 seconds and then turning it on again!I took it to work today and have to admit that I think it works better on Windows 2000. I just got mine last Thursday! I hooked it up to my G5 and turned system sleep off. ![]()
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