The Skim
Capturing Audio to a File
Eww! Look at the mess that you're making!
There you are, blithely listening to audio on your computer. Are you giving any thought to what's happening to all that audio dribbling through the speakers and your headphones? That's right: It's just making a big sticky puddle on the floor.
You should catch that stuff. In a bucket, maybe. It's useful stuff — you really shouldn't just let it spill on the floor like that.
Yes, there are utilities that can capture all the sound your computer is generating and send it to an audio file. It's like holding a microphone up to the speaker, only less wire-y.
These apps can also automatically launch specific audio programs and thus act as a sort of "audio VCR," tuning in to your favorite overseas football broadcast via streaming radio, and have it ready for your iPhone by the time you wake up in the morning.
Finally, since we're talking about streaming radio, we might as well talk about two rather super-awesome apps and services for the iPhone and iPod Touch that bring live radio to your device, no matter where you are.
Bad craziness lies ahead.
There are utilities for the PC and Mac that can capture your computer's audio to a file.
The function of these utilities is so basic and fundamental that I need to break it out of that preceding paragraph and let it stand all by itself in its glory:
It can capture any audio playing through your PC to a file that you can import into iTunes and put on an iPhone.
Well, that's game, set, and match, isn't it? It's a solution to any and all permutations of the question "How to I get this audio onto my iPhone?" Examples:
On and on. An audio capture app is the sort of tool where you put it on your hard drive ... and then just wait. You can be certain that eventually, it's going to be the solution to some sort of problem.
Using these capture utilities is barely more difficult than pushing the Record button on a VCR.
(You kids remember what VCRs were, right?)
Applian Technologies' Replay A/V, part of Applian's Capture Suite (www.applian.com), is an absolute marvel. It's an awesomely sophisticated simple app whose purpose is to take your computer's audio and stick it in amber for all time.
"Snag whatever's coming out the speakers to a file" is barely worth its time. You'll see it stretch its legs later in the chapter. But for now, let's say you've inserted your DVD of My Dinner with Andre into the drive or you've pointed your browser at your favorite streaming radio station or ... well, you would know better than I what you're going to want to record.
It's asnap:
Launch Replay A/V. The main window is shown in Figure 18-2 but for the moment, please choose Record
Give your recording a name, and then select a recording time, if you want to have the recording stop automatically after a certain decent interval. Press O when all is as you like it. Replay A/V will begin capturing audio from your PC's audio circuitry. The app's main window will look like Figure 18-2.
Start the audio in the app of your choice. Remember, Replay started going the moment you clicked OK.
When you want to terminate recording, click on the program in the Replay A/V window to reveal its pop-up menu. Choose Stop Record/Download. is is unnecessary, of course, if you told the app to just stop automatically after recording for a specific duration.
Go back to the recording's listing and select View Shows to go to the folder where the recording was saved. There it is: a plain MP3 ready to import into iTunes.
The corresponding Mac app is a lot prettier than Replay (but don't judge the Windows app just yet, please). And at the basic task of "capturing live audio from your computer," it has a couple of fresh tricks. Replay A/V just holds a virtual microphone up to the PC's speaker; every bit of audio gets captured in one stream. Which is why 20 minutes into your capture of a conference call, the sounds of World War II air combat fills the audio picture.
Yes, this was the moment you got bored and started playing a game while half-listening to your boss.
Audio Hijack Pro from (yes, this is indeed the name of the company) Rogue Amoeba (www.rogueamoeba.com; $32) is more selective. When you launch the app, it immediately presents alist of every app it sees which can generate noise (see Figure 18-3).
So you can be very selective in what you mean to capture. Let's convert the audio from my Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD to an MP3:
Choose DVD Player from the list of apps, and then click the Hijack button. is tells Hijack to capture the audio generated by only this app. If new e-mail arrives while you're recording, the Mail app's "Bling!" won't appear in the movie recording. As with Replay A/V, the default recording settings are perfectly fine. But you can click on the Recording tab of the window to select a file format and choose a duration for the recording. Hijack is now in standby mode.
Click the Record button to start the recording.
Switch over to DVD Player and start the disc playing.
When the movie's over, return to Audio Hijack.
Click on the Hijack button again to turn off the recording.
The audio file can be found inside your Music folder, in the Audio Hijack subfolder. As promised, none of the cheerful "new mail!" sounds.
These manually operated apps work great. But there are other features and programs that can record streaming Internet audio in just one or two steps. It's not a case of knowing which, what, where, and when a show airs; just tell the app that you want this show recorded, and the app works out all the details on its own.
Boy, I love this app. Have I told you that I love this app? Well, I do. It sells for $49 but I've recommended other Applian products elsewhere in the book — the company makes a sweet app for capturing even tightly-locked-down commercial Internet videos — so I think you ought to spend $99 for the full Replay Capture Suite.
Here's what I mean. The BBC is airing a radio series based on Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I can, um, figure out what time it airs, and what BBC Radio streaming channel it's on and what day and what time. And what time that would be here in Boston. Then stay up and hijack the recording. And remember to do that every time every new episode of the show airs.
But why would I do that? I have Replay A/V!
Click the Open Recording Wizard button in the main Replay A/V window. A simplified list of functions appears (see Figure 18-4).
Click on Browse the Media Guide. Replay gets in touch with Applian's media servers and opens the home page of their extensive guide to Everything at Happens Via Streaming Audio.
Click on the Shows button. A search page opens (see Figure 18-5).
Type in details about a show you want to find. In this case, I'm looking for a specific program so I type in the title.
Click Find Show. Well, whaddya know ... it found it right away (see Figure 18-6).
Click the Add button, and Replay A/V does the rest. The app knows what it needs to do and when it needs to do it.
That's it. Replay adds the show and all of its upcoming episodes to its recording schedule. Every time a new episode airs, Replay will record it.
And you can search for all kinds of things. Search for topics, search for locations, search for radio stations. The Replay guide is extremely thorough.
I wish there were a Mac app that was quite as meaty as Replay A/V. RadioShift — another great app by Rogue Amoeba, a name that I repeat I am not making up — isn't as powerful, but it feeds from the same trough. And it's a lot prettier.
Once again, I want to record a show off BBC Radio 4. But this time, I'm not thinking of a specific show. I'm just browsing for content in a specific channel. Figure 18-7 shows you RadioShift's leadoff search page.
Type in a search term. Here I've searched for "BBC Radio 4" and the app quickly found the station's details.
Click on the name of the station. A program guide for BBC 4 appears (see Figure 18-8).
Radio 4 Comedy sounds good. Click on the show listing and click the Subscribe button. There's one final little detail page but once you click the Save button, a new subscription is added to the app's to-do list. Every evening at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, RadioShift will tap into the BBC's stream and capture the audio to a file, which will be stashed inside a RadioShift folder inside the Music directory.
It's another "set it and forget it" solution. Recording this material on schedule becomes the app's problem, not mine. I can listen to my library of recordings directly in RadioShift, and send selected episodes to iTunes so that they can be synced to my iPhone.
Tip
Better to risk stating the obvious than confuse y'all: Replay A/V can't record any of your scheduled programs unless it's running. It also can't add new recordings to iTunes unless that's running as well. So make sure that both apps are launched and standing by at all times.
This also means that your PC will have to be up and running at the appointed hour. Head on over to the Start menu and choose Start
RadioShift is a lovely app. You can search for specific things, but you can also browse, browse, browse. By topic, by region, by category. You can even call up a map of the world. Cities with streaming radio are marked with a green dot (see Figure 18-9). I don't know what they listen to in Reykja-vik, but I sure intend to find out.
The Mac and PC apps go at the same problem from slightly different angles, but the end result is equally terrific: Wonderful programming from all over the world just magically arrives on your hard drive on a daily basis. And it's all free, free, free.
One of the iPhone's true transformative software categories is the huge collection of iPhone apps that streams live audio from Internet radio sites. You think it's a neat trick to have 16 gigabytes of music? How about having millions of songs? And you never need to sync them up, and you never need to pay for them, either?
I'd wear my poor little fingers to nubs trying to describe all the streaming audio apps. Chiefly, if you have a radio station, a network, or an Internet music service, you're keen to release a free app that lets users access that stream through the iPhone. As yet, there's no one tuner to rule them all.
So instead, I'll champion my two favorite apps.
I don't think I could get through my day without Pandora.
Pandora represents a powerful new perspective on radio. It's an almost perfect melding of the "I am a deejay" mentality of an iPod/iPhone owner who mixes his own playlist and the "I'm not made of money" sensibility of someone who loves music but who can't pay for hours and hours and hours of tracks at a buck a throw.
So Pandora is a compromise. Give Pandora the name of a band you like. It'll use music from that band as a starting point and draw upon a sophisticated database to choose music that "fits" alongside.
You don't assemble playlists. You create personal "radio stations." You start by installing the free Pandora iPhone app and creating a free user account at www.pandora.com.
You can create, manage, and listen to Pandora stations via any Web browser, but let's keep this an iPhone party, eh? Figure 18-10 shows you the first step: tap the New Station button and Pandora asks for a starting point.
Type the name of a band. I'm starting with the Asylum Str ... well, whaddya know: Pandora knows about that band and guesses the name after just a few characters. Click, and it creates the station and starts playing an Asylum Street Spankers tune (see Figure 18-11).
An invisible deejay who knows about every band that ever got a record deal starts playing music. The next song won't be an Asylum Street Spankers tune; it'll be from a band that it considers to be similar.
Uh-uh ... the next song is from Black Flag. I don't like that song. So I tell the dee-jay by tapping the thumbs-down button and then tap the Next Track button. By voting thumbs up and thumbs down, the deejay gets a better handle on the sort of mood that comes to mind when I think, "Asylum Street Spankers radio."
Huh? It's playing a Squirrel Nut Zippers song now? It makes sense, but I wonder why?
I needn't live in mystery. I tap and receive an explanation (see Figure 18-12).
And it's a good tune. I want to remember it for later. So I tap the pop-up button (the up arrow) and see a list of options (see Figure 18-13). I can actually buy it immediately via iTunes! Tap, and it's mine.
If I don't have 99 cents to my name, I can just bookmark it so that later on, when I'm at a Web browser logged in to www.pandora.com, I can pull up a list of all the great discoveries.
I'm quite addicted to Pandora. Obviously, the more you use it and the more songs you rate, the better Pandora gets at picking songs you've never heard before but instantly fall in love with. You're like Howard Hughes. You own the radio station and if the deejay wants to keep his job, he'll focus on making the boss happy. The only real downside is that your deejay doesn't take requests. It only selects songs that fit the theme of the first artist you chose, and will shape future requests on that radio station using your thumbs-up and thumbs down votes.
Last.fm and AOL Radio are two more great streaming services supported by free iPhone apps. But Pandora is the one I shall forsake all others for.
The Rhapsody music service represents not an opponent to the iTunes Store, but an opposite. The iTunes Store model is that of a traditional store. Want to listen to an Elvis Costello album? Fine: Buy it for $9.99.
Rhapsody is "subscription" music. For $15 a month, you're not buying anything. You're merely subscribing to monthly access to a library of millions of tracks. You can search for Costello's Mighty Like a Rose; you can listen to Mighty Like a Rose in its entirety.
In fact, you can do nearly anything with the Rhapsody library that you can do with the iTunes Store library — but if you cancel your subscription, all of "your" tracks and playlists disappear. Again, you don't actually own anything (although Rhapsody makes it easy to purchase tracks as well).
I'm glad that subscription music on the iPhone is no longer an either-or question. I've used subscription music on players like the Zune and enjoyed the experience greatly. The obvious upside is that it makes music exploration far, far more affordable and attractive. You hear a piece of music on TV or at a party and moments later, you're listening to a sampler of that artist's catalog.
You can manage all your Rhapsody favor ites and playlists remotely — build a playlist via the Web browser on your desktop PC, and it becomes available to the iPhone player — but you can also access the entire catalog via the iPhone.
Figure 18-14 shows you the basic Rhapsody experience. Here I've searched for Imogen Heap and am presented with the full buffet: I can play any of her albums or tracks, or just go straight to a sampler of tracks selected from her entire catalog.
The good news — besides the "all you can eat for one low price" aspect — is that all of your Rhapsody music lives on their servers and streams to your iPhone via Wi-Fi or 3G. Which means that you can choose from millions of songs wherever you are in the world, without needing to sync up anything to your phone ... and this library takes up next to no space on your device.
The bad news — besides the "$15 a month and you don't actually own any music" aspect — is that the sound quality suffers a little due to the streaming technology. It's typically like listening to FM radio. Clean and clear, but you can certainly tell the difference between a Rhapsody stream and a music file in your iPhone's music local media library.
I hate to end on a negative note so here's another piece of good news: Rhapsody offers a weeklong free trial. You don't even need to hand over a credit card number. Just download the app from the iTunes Store, create an account on Rhapsody, and start listening to music right then and there.
So do you see what I mean? All those electrons shouldn't just slop out of your desktop speakers and spill onto the carpet. They work their way deep into the pile. Silverfish feed on them. Then they become super silverfish who are no longer intimidated by humans.
Keep the insects down, my fellow humans. Capture and stream!
Above and beyond protecting our species from insectoid overlords, capturing audio is just too good a bargain to pass up. People wonder how radio can survive in an iPod era. Well, this is how radio survives. It delivers the product that radio does best — hours of fresh and often insightful content each and every day — and it delivers it through a medium that lets us enjoy the programming on our own terms.
As for Pandora and Rhapsody ... you'll get hooked. Just give in and don't fight it. If you're lucky, the money you save by having 90 percent of your music needs sated by unlimited, streaming music will help cover all the tracks you buy from bands you'd never heard of, but instantly fell in love with once these services tossed them in the mix.